Hello,

I have a lap top running CentOS 5. I am totally a noobie with Linux.

I ran the command lspci to verify the WiFi card installed on the Dell Latitude D610.

I see that the ethernet controller is Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One]802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

I verifed if it was supported in Linux via the command

lspci -vvn | grep 14e4 and it basically had the same information showing 14e4:4318 (rev 02. I found that yes this NIC is supported

I ran the command lsmod

I see the following for what I believe should be my NIC because it references ieee802.11

ieee80211 size 34313 used by 2 bcm43xx,ieee80211softmac

So I configured the NIC via iwconfig

eth1 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"hartsportal" Nickname:"Broadcom 4318"

I don't connect nor to confirm the radio is enabled on the Dell D610 (fn+f2) the led showing it's on will not light up.

The concern I see in iwconfig is the following:

Mode:Managed Access Point : Invalid


I do not understand why it shows "Access Point:Invalid". I have an open SSID with no encryption.

I then made another change via iwconfig. I set the Encryption key: to Security mode: open.

I cannot basically get the NIC up and operational and don't have a reason for the Access Point : Invalid.

Please help

thanks,
Mike

Hi Mike,

I don't know if it's the same with CentOS as with Ubuntu, but I had the same problem with that NIC under Ubuntu 9.04 on an Acer laptop. I only got it working using the windows driver and ndiswrapper. Again, it might be different with CentOS, so if I'm wrong, sorry. I'm sure someone else will kick in soon enough.

Anyway, this is the howto I followed from here on LQ. Seems that particular NIC is causing problems all around.

Kind regards,

Eric

Thank you for your help. I will click on that link and try the ndiswrapper/windows driver solution.

Hope it works out!

Kind regards,

Eric

I followed the howto link. I grabbed ndiswrapper 1.55. I read the "README" and the "INSTALL" files. I followed them. I retrieved bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys. I followed and everything seems ok until I hit one area.

Here is the last step I did
sudo dmesg | grep ndiswrapper

Here were the results I should have received..well close to it..
[17190465.820000] ndiswrapper version 1.22 loaded (preempt=no,smp=yes)
[17190465.828000] ndiswrapper: driver bcmwl5 (Broadcom,12/22/2004, 3.100.46.0) loaded
[17190465.840000] ndiswrapper: using irq 217
[17190466.560000] ndiswrapper: changing interface name from 'wlan0' to 'eth1'

This is what I received:
ndiswrapper version 1.55 loaded (smp=yes, preempt=no)
usbcore: registered new driver ndiswrapper

.....

That's it. I am not sure about the drivers at this point. I am back to where I was. I still see Access Point : Invalid

Also the usbcore: ??? maybe it really is the wrong driver (.inf .sys)

Man I stink at Linux...well I will try another set of drivers I researched on.

Thanks,

Mike

Couple of things to try.

1. go back to the original driver and try a iwconfig with the channel. I have used several broadcom cards and they can be "difficult". if you dont know what channel your using try iwlist eth1 to get that information. Make sure to issue this first before any other iwconfig commands.

If its still not working try using the proprietary driver from broadcom. Im not sure if this card is supported by that driver but its something you can try anyway.

http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php


I checked the site and it does not have this one listed but ehh.

Ok, tried everything I could. I then came across some interesting information.

"b43-fwcutter"

I even tried this via CentOS and for some reason I can not get my broadcom card to work.

I decided to try something different. I obtained a live-cd of Ubuntu. I ran it and in Ubuntu it saw my card and wanted to use "b43-fwcutter" to load the drivers for the NIC.

It is now up and running and I can connect to my wireless network. I have not given up. I do know that this card will work with a linux destro. The challenge now is to figure out how to correctly use "b43-fwcutter" in CentOS to achieve the same results.