Kurt McKee

lessons learned in production

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Hey there! This article was written in 2009.

It might not have aged well for any number of reasons, so keep that in mind when reading (or clicking outgoing links!).

Saved by a squid

Posted 30 June 2009

I finally took the plunge and upgraded Ubuntu on my computer to the latest version. However, I'd put it off so long that I had to upgrade through two versions: first to Intrepid Ibex, and then to Jaunty Jackalope. When I upgraded to Ibex, my video card, my sound card, and my wireless card no longer worked. The video card was a quick fix, but without my wireless card I was stuck.

Luckily, my friend Andrea let me borrow her laptop, which has both a wired and a wireless card. The first thing I did was install Squid on Andrea's computer. Squid is a piece of software that acts as an internet proxy (simply, it accepts connections from computers on the local network and downloads the webpages they request). Now follow this: I had Andrea's computer access the internet using her wireless card, and I connected both of our computers together using our wired ethernet cards.

From the desktop, off the router, through the proxy
Nothing but internet

Now with internet access, I downloaded and installed the Ubuntu package "linux-restricted-modules" which gave me the drivers I needed to use my wireless card. Sweet.

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