HP Pavilion: wlan, acpi, etc..

XJNick · 07-16-2005, 06:16 PM

Hi,

I just got an HP Pavilion ze2000 laptop with the AMD Turion. I've got Mandrake (Mandriva?) LE2005 working on it. However, there are a few things that I still can't get to work right:

I bet you can guess what comes first... wireless networking problems. Unfortunately, this computer has a Broadcom 802.11b/g adapter built-in. I've installed ndiswrapper and loaded the driver for this card into it, but wireless networking still doesn't work. Typing ndiswrapper -l at the console returns:

Code:

bcmwl5a driver present, hardware present

but typing iwconfig returns:

Code:

lo       no wireless extensions.
eth0    no wireless extensions.
eth1    no wireless extensions.
sit0     no wireless extensions.

Also, the keyboard button that toggles the wireless adapter on/off does nothing and the associated LED never lights up. I'm not sure what to do from here?

Another irritating problem is that suspend and hibernate don't work. If I try to put the computer into suspend, it seems to enter suspend successfully (screen shuts off, power LED begins the flash)... but it won't successfully come out of suspend. All that happens when I try to wake it up is that the power LED goes on solid, and the hard drive becomes active for a few seconds. Then it stops (screen never turns on) and freezes completely. Hibernate also doesn't work. When I try to put the computer in hibernate, the following shows up on the screen:

Code:

Stopping tasks: ========================
Freeing memory... done (28547 pages freed)
swsusp: Need to copy 21282 pages
swsusp: critical section/: done (21410 pages copied)
swsusp: Restoring Highmem

Then the laptop freezes and I have to completely power it down then back on. I'd really like to get either hibernate or suspend to work so I can close the lid without the computer still running full blast. Any ideas/opinions?

Thanks,

Tanc · 07-17-2005, 05:10 PM

I assume this won't help, but this is what happened to me.

I do have the same trouble as you have for the wlan.
I'am running an ubuntu 5.04 on my zd8147ea HP Laptop, but hibernate is working ( i didn't change any option in bios ).

When looking at ubuntu forum and google, it says Broadcom b/g is not supported.
I'll post here if i have any solution.

XJNick · 07-17-2005, 05:41 PM

Hi,

Thanks for the response. I actually was able to get my Broadcom wireless adapter to work with the ndiswrapper and drivers. I still can't get online, but at least the wireless adapter will power up and respond now... I've posted more info regarding this subsequent networking issue: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...hreadid=344029 .

What I really need help with here is the suspend/ hibernate problems I'm still experiencing... I can't figure out if they aren't working because of a software problem, or because something in the hardware isn't compatible with Linux?

At the very least I'd like to be able to have the laptop go into a less power consuming state when I close the lid.

Thanks,

Poetics · 07-18-2005, 01:55 PM

did you remember to modprobe ndiswrapper?

XJNick · 07-18-2005, 06:51 PM

Hi,

Quote:

Originally posted by Poetics
did you remember to modprobe ndiswrapper?

Yes... and I've verified that ndiswrapper is loading successfully. But I still can't get the internet to work despite the fact that everything seems to be loading properly.

Thanks,

stabile007 · 07-19-2005, 06:01 PM

I have been having the same issue and last night I finally got online (I have an HP zv5000 pavilion also with a broadcom device) on SuSe 9.3

here is what I did:

1) Ndiswrapper stuff

2) Check the wlan0 configureation by typing

Code:

iwconfig

Mine when I did this said OFF/ESSID which was no good of course I wanted my antena on. Also that command may not work by default. Well one of the problem I found was wireless tools seemed outdated or not installed. So I went and downloaded and installed it and rebooted

anyways next step:

3) Enter in

Code:

iwlist wlan0 scan

That should show you all the wireless points it can access.

4) Now most likely the network you are trying to access is an infrastructure (or Managed) network which means you are connecting through a router or an access point. So in order to tell the configurator that it is so enter the following:

Code:

iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed

5) Good now we need to tell iwconfig that that the network is secure and that we need to enter in the security key (Which I hope your network is secure if not you can skip this step) Replace restricted/open with whatever type of network you are on (Probably open on a home network) Make sure you use 10 or 26 digit hex codes.

Code:

iwconfig wlan0 key restricted/open XXXXXXXX

6) Finally enter in the ESSID

Code:

iwconfig wlan0 essid ESSID

7) Now depending on what you use use the folowing commands to bring it online:

Code:

ifconfig wlan0 up

or

Code:

dhclient wlan0

or

Code:

dhcpcd wlan0

8) Your light shoudl blink as information is transmitted or at leats on mine it did. Which is actually quite cool and not a feature of windows :-p

Good luck

This gave me a headache as well and unfortuantly Suse tries to be too helpful with the process and has about three different tools to configure with and I had no idea what I was doing. For reference I got these instructions fromt he ndiswrappers site and used it and it worked. However at my school i still can't get it to work.

XJNick · 07-19-2005, 09:13 PM

Hi,

Quote:

Originally posted by stabile007
I have been having the same issue and last night I finally got online (I have an HP zv5000 pavilion also with a broadcom device) on SuSe 9.3

here is what I did:
1) Ndiswrapper stuff
2) Check the wlan0 configureation by typing iwconfig
3) Enter in iwlist wlan0 scan
That should show you all the wireless points it can access.
4) Now most likely the network you are trying to access is an infrastructure (or Managed) network which means you are connecting through a router or an access point. So in order to tell the configurator that it is so enter the following: iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
5) Good now we need to tell iwconfig that that the network is secure and that we need to enter in the security key (Which I hope your network is secure if not you can skip this step) Replace restricted/open with whatever type of network you are on (Probably open on a home network) Make sure you use 10 or 26 digit hex codes.
iwconfig wlan0 key restricted/open XXXXXXXX
6) Finally enter in the ESSID
iwconfig wlan0 essid ESSID
7) Now depending on what you use use the folowing commands to bring it online: ifconfig wlan0 up or dhclient wlan0 or dhcpcd wlan0
8) Your light shoudl blink as information is transmitted or at leats on mine it did. Which is actually quite cool and not a feature of windows :-p

I've done all of this, and still have the same end result... no internet. This despite the fact that my wireless card successfully gets an IP address from my router and sees my router as well.

Here is the output of my iwconfig after I load ndiswrapper and do all the necessary stuff with iwconfig:

Code:

Warning: Driver for device wlan0 recommend version 18 of Wireless Extension,
but has been compiled with version 17, therefore some driver features
may not be available...

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"xxxxx"  Nickname:"localhost"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.442 GHz  Access Point: 00:0F:66:46:5C:B6
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:25 dBm
          RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr=2346 B
          Encryption key:xxxx-xxxx-xx   Security mode:open
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:100/100  Signal level:-51 dBm  Noise level:-256 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Of course, the ESSID and Encryption key show up as the correct value for my network. Now I'm wondering if the warning message above about the wlan0 driver is where my problem is? This is really starting to get frustrating as I'm still stuck and wirebound with Linux....

Thanks,

stabile007 · 07-20-2005, 01:53 AM

Hmmm well that means the card is on......but yeah the same thing was happening to me at school today. I was unable to fix it but my home network works fine.

stabile007 · 07-20-2005, 10:09 AM

I just noticed it said you have an odler version of the wireless tools and as the warning says maybe you want to try compiling a newer version?

XJNick · 07-20-2005, 11:49 AM

Hi,

Quote:

Originally posted by stabile007
I just noticed it said you have an odler version of the wireless tools and as the warning says maybe you want to try compiling a newer version?

I just downloaded and installed wireless tools version 27, which I believe is the newest version for my kernel (2.6.11-6mdk). However, the warning message is still present... and the problem still exists (no internet). I'm think that the warning is complaining about the version of Wireless Extensions I'm using (version 17), not Wireless Tools.

I see that I can upgrade my kernel to Wireless Extensions version 18 using the patch for kernel 2.6.11 found here: http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_...ux/Tools.html.

I know how to apply the patch to the kernel, but beyond that I don't really know what I'm doing... so I'm really hesitant to try this unless I can get some instruction about how to recompile the kernel and modules (or whatever?) after installing the patch.

Though I still don't understand why the internet won't work despite the fact that the wireless card is detected and (appears to be) set-up properly.

Thanks,

DaveAtFraud · 07-20-2005, 10:03 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by XJNick
Hi,

I just downloaded and installed wireless tools version 27, which I believe is the newest version for my kernel (2.6.11-6mdk). However, the warning message is still present... and the problem still exists (no internet). I'm think that the warning is complaining about the version of Wireless Extensions I'm using (version 17), not Wireless Tools.

I see that I can upgrade my kernel to Wireless Extensions version 18 using the patch for kernel 2.6.11 found here: http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_...ux/Tools.html.

I know how to apply the patch to the kernel, but beyond that I don't really know what I'm doing... so I'm really hesitant to try this unless I can get some instruction about how to recompile the kernel and modules (or whatever?) after installing the patch.

Though I still don't understand why the internet won't work despite the fact that the wireless card is detected and (appears to be) set-up properly.

Thanks,

Once you load ndiswrapper and go through the configuration steps, does the wlan button above the keyboard flash/blink from time to time? If it does, the radio is working and you just have a configuration issue. If this is the case, set everything to "wide open" (if possible), get the connection working and then start re-adding security features. If the wlan button stays dark (absolutely dark) your radio is powered down. The only way I found to recover from this was to re-install windows and use the windows control panel to re-enable it. I ended up just setting up a 10GB partition for windows and have the rest of the hard disk for Linux with grub taking care of the dual boot.

Note: I have a zv6015 so the behavior won't necessarily be identical.

XJNick · 07-21-2005, 11:42 PM

Hi,

Quote:

Originally posted by DaveAtFraud
Once you load ndiswrapper and go through the configuration steps, does the wlan button above the keyboard flash/blink from time to time? If it does, the radio is working and you just have a configuration issue.

Yes, the blue light in the wlan button above my keyboard blinks on and off every so often while I'm setting settings using ifconfig and iwconfig. Once I've set the essid to the appropiate value using iwconfig, the blue wlan light then turns on and stays on solid. This indicates to me that the radio is working just fine.

Quote:

Originally posted by DaveAtFraud If this is the case, set everything to "wide open" (if possible), get the connection working and then start re-adding security features.

I've tried this and it makes no difference. Whether WEP is enabled or my network is wide open, I still cannot get onto the internet using the wireless adapter.... and this is despite the fact that my card is successfully broadcasting to my Router's DHCP server and getting an IP address from it.

Puzzling

Thanks,

DaveAtFraud · 07-22-2005, 01:35 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by XJNick
...
I've tried this and it makes no difference. Whether WEP is enabled or my network is wide open, I still cannot get onto the internet using the wireless adapter.... and this is despite the fact that my card is successfully broadcasting to my Router's DHCP server and getting an IP address from it.
...
Thanks,

Check the settings on the router and make sure it is set to NAT your traffic. If you're getting a DHCP address, then things should work but you could also have some oddity in your network configuration.

Are there any other "internal" systems on your network that you can try "pinging?" That is, systems that are on the same 192.168.0.0/24 subnet? Also, try pinging the router's "internal" IP address. This should be in your router's documentation but will generally be either 192.168.0.1 or 192.168.0.254. Do an ifconfig on your laptop and make sure that this is the gateway address the laptop is getting from dhcp. Also, if you switch between the wireless and the wired LAN, make sure that the route changes appropriately. I set up some simple shell scripts to take care of these chores once I got everything working.

XJNick · 08-07-2005, 10:37 PM

Hi,

Good News... I was able to solve my wireless network problems (with the help of a fellow Linux user)!

I'm a bit embarrased to say that after all of that the cause of the problem was simply that the firewall was blocking wlan0 as an internet device. All I had to do was go into the firewall settings and configure wlan0 as an internet device (unblocking it). Now my Broadcom 4318 wireless adapter is working perfectly, and I am enjoying the new freedom from ethernet cables.

But it's always the simple things I overlook...

Thanks,

tomto · 10-24-2005, 01:26 PM

I'm having similar problems here on a pavilion zd8000 with Suse 10.0. My problem is that I cannot seem to find a driver that works. Anything I try loads ok in ndiswrapper, but the machine hangs when I do the modprobe of ndiswrapper. I can see in my logs (after reboot) that the module gets inserted OK (I see "driver bcmwl5 (broadcom, 02/11/2005, 3.100.64.0) loaded"and then the msgs of the PCI subsystem Enabling Device etc... but that's the last thing that happens. It hangs with no further messages, nothing in dmesg (well, nothing that I can see...).

Could the fokls that got this working on a paviallion perhaps post their driver .inf file here?

Thanks for any help,

Tom