Dell Inspiron 1564 - wireless problems and crashes

[Horace]

Hi everyone,

I have been trying to get BT5 installed of my Dell Inspiron 1564 - but have had a number of problems. I have used previous versions of BT for several years, but I am not a Linux expert....I rely heavily on these forums for fixes.

I have tried both BT5 64bit Gnome and BT5 64bit KDE. I can get both installed, but with Gnome my sound doesnt work. So right now I am using KDE.

When I first got it installed, I had a problem with startx not working which was documented on these forums...and I successfully used the fixes to solve that problem.

I have 2 current problems - first, I am having big problems with my built in wireless - it is a Dell Wireless 1397 mini-card rev 5 (BCM 4315 based). First of all, it won't stay connected to my AP - it drops the connection repeatedly. And second, for some reason it isn't automatically getting configured with the DNS servers I use. When I use a wired connection, it picks up which DNS servers I use. I also have an Alfa AWUS036H and it works fine....it doesnt drop its connection with my Access Point, and when I connect it to my AP, it gets set up with my DNS servers.

The second big problem that I have been having has to do with crashes/hangs. They seem to happen when I am using the touchpad (Alps). I am at a different computer now so I cant post any logs....but I will do that later.

Finally, after I installed BT5, from a console I updated everything (apt-get update, apt-get upgrade, apt-get dist-upgrade).

I have not tried to use the 32bit versions because I have 8gb RAM.

I think I will attempt to try BT5 Gnome 64bit again and see if I have any luck with it - I don't recall it crashing every few minutes. However, the Broadcom issues were present in that version as well.

Thanks in advance for any help.
Mike

[scottm99]

I never had any luck with the built-in wireless on my Dell Inspiron 1545; had the same problems as you describe, but with BT5 32-bit gnome. Do you have BT installed alongside another o/s? I had some problems dual-booting with Win 7 Pro & the 64-bit BT5 gnome version. I switched to the BT5 32-bit gnome & Win 7 Pro, and that works fine for me.

[Horace]

Hi - thanks for replying.

I dont know if this is the right way to do it, but I have 3 primary partitions set up - the first is Win 7 Home 64bit....the second is EXT4 and it has BT5...the third is the linux swap partition. Anyway I have had no problems dual booting at all...and I have tried both BT5 64bit Gnome and KDE.

Have you experienced the WICD dbus error? It happens when you launch WICD and you're logged in as root. It is caused because root is not part of the netdev group...so I found a post describing the fix -IIRC its "usermod --group netdev root" -- and it temporarily fixes it...but when I reboot the problem is repeated.

Have you had any luck running Armitage? I keep getting various Java errors....however I have had it launch a few times on my 1564. I also have an EEEPC and have the 32bit KDE version on it....and I get the same Java errors when I try to start Armitage, but unlike the Dell, it wont launch at all.

And I have one more question - are both Postgres and Mysql installed? When I do a "dpkg --list", it doesnt show Postgres being installed (but MySQL is listed) - Postgres wasnt listed as an installed package using Synaptic either....however Postgres is listed as a running process....weird.

I think I am going to try 64bit Gnome again. I dont want to use the 32bit version if I dont have to because I have 8gigs of ram.

[drakedeon]

I have had many problems with the Dell Inspiron laptop I used to use with backtrack. The wireless in built on dual boot had lots of hangs and issues, the first time I used a WUSB54G usb adapter fixed my problems. I now use Alfa cards which also can have thier issues but work mostly out of the box if not useing VMWare.

[scottm99]

Yeah, I have seen the WICD dbus error, but haven't really bothered to look for a fix (I typically use a wired network connection). Thanks for the tip about the fix, though I haven't tried Armitage yet...been sidetracked on the other tools/packages in BT5!

You're seeing a running Postgres process because that's the default database used in Metasploit. If you start msfconsole, and run db_status, you'll see a connection to a Postgres database named msf3. Have a look in /opt/framework3/postgresql for more details, and at /opt/framework3/postgresql/scripts/ctl.sh