No hardware detected on Toshiba Satellite

[bytesmythe]

Binary package hint: hw-detect

I have a new Toshiba Satellite (L355-S7812) that I tried to install the most recent Ubuntu Hardy beta on. The installer cannot detect anything during the network hardware detection step, and later during the main hardware detection process the installer seems to hang. (I left it sitting for at least a couple of hours.)

I installed Gutsy, which worked perfectly fine, then tried upgrading to Hardy. The updater program downloaded and started running, but hung up in the first "Preparing to upgrade" step. (I had run the upgrade from the command line and couldn't even stop it with ctrl-C. I had to switch to another terminal and use 'kill'.)

[Milan Bouchet-Valat (nalimilan)]

Thanks for reporting bugs. What do you mean by "main hardware detection process"? How is your computer connected to the network? Did the installer or the upgrader manage to reach the internet?

[bytesmythe (bytesmythe)]

I'm not sure what else to call it other than "main hardware detection". The first thing it tries to detect is network hardware, which fails. Then a bit later, it tries to detect all the hardware, which results in the system hanging.

There is no network connection at all when booting from the Hardy alternate install CD, since it can't find any hardware. After installing Gutsy, the network connection is fine. I ran the update manager, which downloaded some upgrade software and executed it. The upgrade software started running, but hangs in the first step. There is no indication of what it's actually doing, though, as the step simply says "Preparing to upgrade". I would assume that it could access the network if it attempted to do so, so I suspect the problem is unrelated to the network itself.

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Rejecting the ubiquity task; this bug report is apparently about the alternate install CD, not the desktop CD.

I don't suppose there's any way to get some log files here? Is it possible to switch virtual terminals after the installer hangs? I'd like to know whether this is a kernel-level hang (if you can't switch VTs, then definitely that).

[Colin Watson (cjwatson)]

Milan: for the record, hw-detect was a perfectly reasonable place for the original report, as the d-i component responsible for hardware detection. The bug should have been left there, so I've put it back. (Creating an update-manager task was fine, though.)

[bytesmythe (bytesmythe)]

Colin,

Do you mean log files from the boot CD installer or the update-manager installer? I should definitely be able to come up with something from the update-manager one. Are there any logs in particular that would be helpful? (Note: this laptop isn't mine, so I won't have access to it for long. I'll hang on to it as long as I can, though.)

[Richard Birnie (rbirnie-deactivatedaccount)]

bytesmythe

update-manager puts it's log files into /var/log/dist-upgrade. So all the files from there would be useful. I think the installer logs to /var/log/syslog but Colin would know for certain

[bytesmythe (bytesmythe)]

This is from dist-upgrade/main.log

===================
2008-04-23 23:27:41,782 INFO release-upgrader version '0.87.24' started
2008-04-23 23:27:42,136 DEBUG Using 'DistUpgradeViewGtk' view
2008-04-23 23:27:42,193 DEBUG enable dpkg --force-overwrite
2008-04-23 23:27:42,270 DEBUG lsb-release: 'gutsy'
2008-04-23 23:27:42,270 DEBUG _pythonSymlinkCheck run
2008-04-23 23:27:43,399 DEBUG checkViewDepends()
2008-04-23 23:27:43,400 DEBUG running doUpdate() (showErrors=False)

term.log is empty, and apt.log just shows what time I started the process. I also checked the various system logs, but the end of those logs just showed me bringing my wireless interface back up, so the upgrade process didn't add anything to them.

I'd like to say I hope this helps, but from here it looks fairly useless. I'm not even sure the problems with the installer hardware detection and the update-manager not working are the same issue.

[Richard Birnie (rbirnie-deactivatedaccount)]

bytesmythe,

I'm inclined to agree. I think you may have two separate bugs here. I thought the hanging update manager window might be bug 186465 but your main.log looks different so I'm not sure what's causing it to hang.

For the sake of information with regard to the hardware detection what make/model of network card do you have?

[bytesmythe (bytesmythe)]

Richard,

The laptop has the following ethernet controllers:

Wired: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101 PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)
Wireless: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)

Still, the network card isn't the only thing it fails to detect. It doesn't detect ANY hardware as far as I can tell.

As for the upgrade problem, I noticed in the forums someone else mentioned theirs was hanging on the same step. The solution was to use do-release-upgrade instead of update-manager. (I had to point the servers to the UK to test this, since the US servers are completely swamped at the moment!) The upgrade is currently running, and main.log has a lot of info in it now, so I'm sure that the update-manager version was definitely not working for some reason. I looked at the other bug you mentioned and it sounds pretty similar to what I'm getting. The last comment there has the same final log message that mine did. We can reserve this bug just for the hardware detection problem.

[Jean-Baptiste Lallement (jibel)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. You reported this bug a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering is this still an issue for you? Can you try with latest Ubuntu release? Thanks in advance.

[Martin Mai (mrkanister-deactivatedaccount-deactivatedaccount)]

 We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!