Hi CentOS users. I am experimenting with CentOS along with a few other distros on an old Celeron M laptop. Everything has been going pretty well accept I can't get my wireless to work so far in CentOS.

I have successfully got it working in Slackware/Vector Linux and Lubuntu but am stuck when working in CentOS-5.

The driver I need is the b43 module. I have followed the instructions to download the package files but then when I go to verify I get errors. The website (http://linuxwireless.sipsolutions.ne...s/Drivers/b43/) tells me I "need to import the following key:". It gives me a Key ID and then a Key Fingerprint. But then I get stuck.

I have read many pages of instruction on how to import a key and have tried several permutations of the commands but I can't figure it out.

Can anyone show me how to import a key? If I could figure this out I can finish installing the b43 driver. I'm fine following directions but this website, and all the others I have read, have not shown me how to import the key.

I appreciate the help.
Sean

The key part of instruction is not strictly required. This part only verifies the authenticity of downloaded file.

Anyway you have to install gnupg and then download the public key.

Run this:

And now run that part again. Gpg output would say among many messages 'Good Signature'.

Thank you for the tip. I proceeded without the verification and made some progress.

I successfully extracted/installed the firmware files. But after reboot I still didn't have a working wireless adapter.

I checked lsmod and noticed no "b43" driver but a driver named "bcm43xx".

I was able to get the wireless to activate using the modified instructions here:
https://www.centos.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=24119
using the bcm43xx driver

But it seems unreliable so far.

Can I update CentOS to use the b43 driver? If so, how do I do that?

Thanks again,
Sean

I don't know why this worked but I got it working by changing two lines in my modprobe.conf file.

I commented out the bcm43xx line and added a b43 line, like this

#alias eth1 bcm43xx
alias wlan0 b43

I then rebooted.

Now the Network Manager immediately came up with "you are connected" and I have wireless.

I did so much reading today I am dizzy and I really don't know what I did.

I did run the firmware extraction for both b43 and bcm43xx. I was trying to figure out how to use the b43 driver instead of the bcm43xx driver. After I did the above change to modprobe.conf I was going to blacklist bcm43xx to see what happens. But now I think I'll just leave it alone. Does anyone know why my change seemed to get this working? The b43 driver is listed in the hardware tab of the Network Configuration widget, as type wireless, device wlan0, and status configured. I suspect this has something to do with it but I am unclear of the relationship to the eth1 device used by CentOS for my wireless adapter.

Sean

When I click on "Connection Information" the interface is shown as eth1 and the driver is bcm43xx. So I clearly am not using the b43 driver. Maybe by adding the wlan0 alias for b43 I released eth1 to be used by bcm43xx? I don't know.

Anyway, the wireless is working. But I did notice the speed is at about half of the wireless-G capability of this adapter.

Sean

The page you gave link to says b43 is a broadcom chipset driver. So may be bcm43xx also represents the same. Just a difference of spelled name. Also chip id listing shows bcm43xx where xx is a number.