problems after using dd to copy drive

[gamblor01]

I was recently able to obtain a new laptop at work. Rather than reinstalling the OS, reconfiguring all of the software, and then copying over all of my data from my old laptop -- I decided to try to use dd to clone my drive. It worked pretty darn well (thanks Saikee!). However, I have two problems that I have noticed so far:

1) The system does not seem to offer me the option to install the proprietary nvidia driver.

I was able to manually install the nvidia-glx-180 package and then edit xorg.conf appropriately and I'm running with the nvidia driver now. So this problem is resolved (though I still find it odd it didn't even offer my the "restricted hardware drivers" option in System -> Administration).


2) Wireless is not working.

I checked dmesg and it doesn't seem to have any errors in it. Here is a list of things I have checked/found which I think might be relevant:

- Oddly enough it seems that my wired device always gets renamed from eth0 to eth1, and my wireless device gets renamed from wlan0 to wlan1. I'm not sure why (though I would prefer them to be eth0 and wlan0).

- dmesg output looks good shows some message about the wlan1 link not being ready


bmayes@bdmlin:~$ dmesg | grep wlan
[ 10.915831] udev: renamed network interface wlan0 to wlan1
[ 185.179556] bridge-wlan0: peer interface wlan0 not found, will wait for it to come up
[ 185.179559] bridge-wlan0: attached
[ 189.016091] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan1: link is not ready
bmayes@bdmlin:~$ dmesg | grep -i network
[ 2.754168] e1000e: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Driver - 0.3.3.3-k6
[ 3.063416] 0000:00:19.0: eth0: Intel(R) PRO/1000 Network Connection
[ 9.041059] udev: renamed network interface eth0 to eth1
[ 10.915831] udev: renamed network interface wlan0 to wlan1
[ 177.507871] type=1505 audit(1253885209.412:5): operation="profile_load" name="/usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action" name2="default" pid=3977
bmayes@bdmlin:~$ dmesg | grep -i iwlagn
[ 10.728577] iwlagn: Intel(R) Wireless WiFi Link AGN driver for Linux, 1.3.27ks
[ 10.728580] iwlagn: Copyright(c) 2003-2008 Intel Corporation
[ 10.728681] iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
[ 10.728713] iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[ 10.728822] iwlagn: Detected Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965AGN REV=0x4
[ 10.769310] iwlagn: Tunable channels: 11 802.11bg, 13 802.11a channels
[ 10.769411] iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: irq 2295 for MSI/MSI-X
[ 188.291079] iwlagn 0000:03:00.0: firmware: requesting iwlwifi-4965-2.ucode
[ 188.317509] iwlagn: Radio disabled by HW RF Kill switch



- lsmod seems to have the correct driver loaded. This page shows that iwlagn is the correct driver for my chipset:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HardwareSupportComponentsWirelessNetworkCardsIntel

and here is what I have:


bmayes@bdmlin:~$ lspci -v | grep -A 7 "4965"
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection (rev 61)
Subsystem: Intel Corporation Device 1010
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 2295
Memory at df2fe000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: iwlagn
Kernel modules: iwlagn

bmayes@bdmlin:~$ lsmod | grep iwlagn
iwlagn 100228 0
iwlcore 93184 1 iwlagn
mac80211 217592 2 iwlagn,iwlcore
cfg80211 38288 3 iwlagn,iwlcore,mac80211



Any ideas?

[saikee]

I let others answering your technical problem regarding the wireless and just commenting on the "dd" operation.

All your problems should be unrelated to the change of the hard disk. This is because "dd" only read the binary bits of your old hard disk and write the same on the new hard disk, in a sector by sector arrangement. There should not be even one binary bit that is different because the operation cannot technically produce anything other than a 100% mirror image of the former.

The same partition table on the new hard drive can be modified, only if you wish to and actually by executing a reszising program like Gparted, but that does not alter the content of each file. Only the filing indexing system is changed and some files may be relocated to new positions in the hard disk.

My guess of your changes in the OS is that you might have accepted an Internet invitation to update the system, say with new patches and even a newer kernel which are normally the culprit making something used to work suddenly going south.

[gamblor01]

No, it's definitely not any updates...I keep my system up to date. It didn't work the second I booted it up. I did apply like 3 updates, but they didn't resolve the problem either.

The old box didn't have an nvidia card in it, it was an integrated Intel card (which was one reason why I wanted this new laptop), so I'm not surprised that the nvidia drivers weren't loaded. I am surprised that the option to enable the nvidia driver wasn't available though. I would expect that Ubuntu would detect the nvidia card and then say "Hey, look you can enable these drivers now if you want."

And the fact that the wireless card doesn't work even though it correctly detects it and loads the correct driver is beyond me.

[saikee]

Hey, you sold us down the river!

You cloned the hard disk from one PC but used on another PC!

The hardware will be different. Most Linux will work but possibly not optimised. I recommend a new installation.

Cloning a hard disk by default is to be used on the same PC.

[LewRockwell]

plainly obvious from the original post...

an operating system installed on one particular specific hardware set...

will not necessarily work properly for any other particular specific hardware set...

also note that, in some relatively infrequent individual cases, the same model of the same device made by the same manufacturer might have a different version of a chipset...

as always, your mileage may vary, buyer beware, and buyer be aware

we now return you to your regularily scheduled programming

.

[gamblor01]

Man...new installs take forever! :(

It actually seems to be running really well, except for the wireless issue. There was a slight tweak I needed to make to my VM to get the resolution correct as well, but that was an easy fix. I guess I can go ahead and reinstall then.

I will be going back to the other post though Saikee -- the cloning of my failing sdb drive to sdc didn't work. Let me try it again and if it fails then I'll post the EXACT error message from dd.

[gamblor01]

Man do I feel silly. The wireless didn't work because there is a hardware kill switch for it. I turned it off because I thought it was for bluetooth. On my T60 the switch ONLY controlled bluetooth (so I turned it off). Apparently on the T61 it controls both bluetooth AND your wireless radio. This explains the message:


188.317509] iwlagn: Radio disabled by HW RF Kill switch



Of course, I didn't figure this out until AFTER I have already reinstalled. I also deleted the file that dd created on my nfs share. I could do another dd but why bother at this point. I have a brand new install now so I'll just go through and reconfigure everything.

[LewRockwell]

Man do I feel silly. The wireless didn't work because there is a hardware kill switch for it. I turned it off because I thought it was for bluetooth. On my T60 the switch ONLY controlled bluetooth (so I turned it off). Apparently on the T61 it controls both bluetooth AND your wireless radio.

Don't feel badly. You are one of many...too many.

Some equipment owners go for YEARS without knowing about THE switch.

Which is just another reason why those posting trouble-calls on the various interweb help forums MUST provide specific equipment specifications AND installed operating system(s) information AND and recent updates/upgrades/hacking/changes to their system(s).

To wit:

The man walked through the door with his laptop and said the following:

"I tried to install Ubuntu and now everything is gone and nothing will work"

We looked at the Ubuntu LiveCD and asked how it operated in LiveCD mode...

"What's that?"

{{sigh}}

.

[gamblor01]

I just love how the functionality changed from the T60 to the T61...I assumed it would behave in the same manner. Silly me!

It was interesting to discover that cloning the drive to a different model laptop worked as well as it did. It required a few tweaks here and there but otherwise seemed to work perfectly -- especially now that I figured out the wireless problem was simply due to user error.

[saikee]

gamblor01,

You are making use the characteristic of Linux by migrating it from computer to computer.

This is of course impossible with the M$ systems.

[mrrangerman43]

saikee

gamblor01,

You are making use the characteristic of Linux by migrating it from computer to computer.

This is of course impossible with the M$ systems.

Not impossible just a pain!!