Network Card Determination

Driver problems are relatively rare with ubermix, but if you are going to have a driver problem, more often than not it will be with a network card - usually wireless. When searching for help, online or otherwise, it is always useful to know exactly what wireless chips your device actually has in it. Before you go to search for help, be sure to first determine exactly which wireless chip is in your device by opening a terminal and typing the following:

lshw -C network

When you run the command, you should see a ton of useful information that looks something like this:

  *-network               
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller
       vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0
       logical name: eth2
       version: 06
       serial: 18:03:73:78:36:67
       size: 10Mbit/s
       capacity: 1Gbit/s
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=half latency=0 multicast=yes port=MII speed=10Mbit/s
       resources: irq:41 ioport:e000(size=256) memory:f1104000-f1104fff memory:f1100000-f1103fff
  *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       product: Centrino Wireless-N 1030
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:09:00.0
       logical name: wlan1
       version: 34
       serial: ac:72:89:51:0f:e5
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlagn driverversion=2.6.38-12-generic firmware=17.168.5.2 build 35905 ip=192.168.10.105 latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn
       resources: irq:49 memory:f7e00000-f7e01fff

When searching for solutions, always use the "product" part and "Ubuntu" or "Linux" in your search string. If you see a driver listed (like "iwlagn" above), include that too. So, for example, if I was having problems with my wireless, based on the listing above I would search for:

Centrino Wireless-N 1030 Ubuntu Linux iwlagn

and look for results related to my problem. If you can't find what you are looking for or need a little help deciphering the results, you can always shoot me an email at jnetman1@ubermix.org and I'll do what I can to help you out.