K, so I bought a laptop and moved into a new apartment for the summer. The system is a Dell Inspiron E1705 with the Dell 1390 b/g wireless. It's in a dual boot configuration running Vista and Slackware 12.0.
I've never used wireless in Linux before, and I can't seem to get it working in Slackware. After some Googling, I kinda got the impression that there are two main ways to go about it in my situation: get ndiswrapper and try to wrap around the driver I use in Windows, or use the bcm43xx driver that's already included in Slackware. I can't seem to get either to work successfully. =/
In Vista, the wireless works beautifully. Excellent signal strength to multiple networks, so that shouldn't be an issue.
Slackware seems to recognize the presence of the NIC, but just can't detect or connect to any networks. Using the bcm43xx driver, here's the output I get from some relevant commands:
iwconfig
Code:
eth1 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"" Nickname:"slackb0x"
Mode:Managed Access Point: Invalid
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Link Quality=0/100 Signal level=-256 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
lsmod
Code:
Module Size Used by
bcm43xx 428064 0
ieee80211softmac 30464 1 bcm43xx
ieee80211 34248 2 bcm43xx,ieee80211softmac
ieee80211_crypt 8576 1 ieee80211
snd_seq_dummy 6788 0
snd_seq_oss 32896 0
snd_seq_midi_event 10112 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 50640 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 10508 3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss 42784 0
snd_mixer_oss 18048 1 snd_pcm_oss
ipv6 254496 12
pcmcia 34988 0
pcmcia_core 36500 1 pcmcia
capability 7304 0
commoncap 9344 1 capability
lp 13736 0
parport_pc 27812 0
parport 34760 2 lp,parport_pc
pcspkr 6528 0
psmouse 39048 0
b44 26764 0
mii 8576 1 b44
sdhci 18828 0
nvidia 7243924 0
mmc_core 25988 1 sdhci
sg 30364 0
i2c_i801 11408 0
snd_hda_intel 20248 0
snd_hda_codec 209152 1 snd_hda_intel
intel_agp 25116 1
iTCO_wdt 12964 0
agpgart 31432 2 nvidia,intel_agp
snd_pcm 72068 3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
iTCO_vendor_support 7172 1 iTCO_wdt
serio_raw 9220 0
shpchp 33172 0
ata_generic 9220 0
evdev 11904 1
snd_timer 22532 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd 47204 9 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer
soundcore 9824 1 snd
snd_page_alloc 11528 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
iwlist scan
Code:
lo Interface doesn't support scanning.
eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning.
eth1 Interface doesn't support scanning : No such device
How exactly do you normally connect to a wireless network in Linux? Just scan using iwlist, and then a list of available networks should appear... right??
Anyway, if I try to go the ndiswrapper route, I can't even get it to recognize the NIC at all in iwconfig. Here are the steps I'm using
modprobe -r bcm43xx
ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5
modprobe ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper -l
Code:
bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4311) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx)
After performing those steps, eth1 doesn't even show up in iwconfig at all.
I know wireless/laptop situations have a bad rep in Linux, and I'm hoping I'm not just SOL on this one. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. If there's any other output I can post that would be helpful, just let me know.
Thanks!
