[barney_1]

I wanted to try out XBMC 9.11 on my Dell Vostro A90 (same hardware as the Mini 9). It was no problem to boot up and use but, like all other ubuntu distributions on this hardwrae, there was no sound. There's a workaround that's pretty simple and I thought I'd share in case anyone else is having trouble.

1. Download the XBMClive image
2. Put it on a thumb drive (I used uNetbootin to do so)
3. We will need to make changes to the OS that's now on the thumb drive so we'll need to make a persistent image. I followed the sticky to do this. Boot into "Intel Safe Mode" on the thumb drive and logging in with username: xbmc, password: xbmc. Run these commands: (WARNING!!!!! /dev/sdb1 is my thumbdrive... you can check this address by typing: "sudo fdisk -l" but make sure you know what you're looking at so you don't bork your netbook's drive)

Code:

sudo mount -t vfat /dev/sdb1 /mnt
dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/live-rw bs=1M count=600
mkfs.ext3 -F /mnt/live-rw

4. Reboot into the thumb drive to safe mode once more and login as above. We need to add a line to alsa-base.conf:

Code:

sudo su
echo "options snd-hda-intel model=dell" >> /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
exit
sudo shutdown -r now

That should add the appropriate sound configuration and reboot the computer. Just select "Intel" at the boot menu and you will have a working XBMClive on your Dell netbook.

I may update this thread with WiFi instructions if I get those working.

[barney_1]

I've got the wireless card up and running. I haven't worked out a connection yet but this is a start.

1. Install wireless-tools:

Code:

sudo apt-get install wireless-tools

2. Install the Broadcom drivers. I downloaded the 32bit version from the following link and followed the Readme to install it:
http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php

I'm finding this driver will not persist through a reboot. I've added "blacklist ssb" to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf but it fails to stop ssb from loading. The result of this is that wl cannot load. At any rate, the driver can be manually loaded by running these commands:

Code:

sudo rmmod ssb
sudo depmod
sudo modprobe wl

I'm looking for a fix to this problem but no luck as of yet.

[barney_1]

I feel like a rockstar. I've got my wireless up and running with WPA2 encryption.

After getting the Broadcom driver installed you should be able to use "iwcong" to display potential wireless devices. My WiFi card registers on "eth1" because it says IEEE 802.11 next to it.

You need to find the ESSID of the access point you want to connect to, I used this command:

Code:

sudo iwlist eth1 scanning | less

Once you've found your access point, you need to generate a file to hold the password for the WPA2 encryption protocol. First we'll install the neccessary package, then generate this file:

Code:

sudo apt-get install wpasupplicant
sudo su
wpa_passphrase 'theESSIDyouJustFound' 'thePasswordForYourWirelessAccessPoint' > /etc/wpa.conf

I then edited the interfaces file. I'm not certain this is the best way, but it works for me. I used the nano editor:

Code:

sudo nano /etc/network/interface

I commented out the lines for eth0 and added the configuration to use eth1 as my wireless connection. That file looks like this for me:

Code:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
address 127.0.0.1
netmask 255.0.0.0

#auto eth0
#iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
pre-up wpa_supplicant -B -Dwext -i eth1 -c /etc/wpa.conf
post-down killall -q wpa_supplicant

Now restart your networking an you should automatically connect to your WPA2 access point:

Code:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

[odoll]

thx a lot! I was even considering to give up!
For others. The steps mentioned diectly above work for me as well on an ASRock ION330HT with an XBMC Camelot installed from Live CD.
Adapting in my case is that the interface's name is not eth1, but wlan0.