Hi-I am having trouble getting the wireless network device working on a Compaq V2312US laptop. It is dual boot: WinXP SP2 and Kubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake. The wireless adapter properly connects to my wireless network (using WPA encryption) when the machine is booted into Windows. From information reported by the WinXP device manager I believe wireless network device is a Broadcom 4318. It is my impression from another thread that Dapper Drake has native support for the Broadcom 4318. (See posting by KellyChambers, 2-1-06.)Even so, when I go into the Kubuntu Network Settings dialog I see that the Wireless Network Device (eth1) is disabled. (The Ethernet Network Device eth0 works just fine.) I cannot enable the Wireless Network Device, even though I have switched into Administrator Mode. If I open the Configure Device eth1 dialog I can see that TCP/IP is set to automatic (DHCP), the box captioned “Activate when the computer starts” is checked, and I have been able to enter the ESSID for my wireless network. There is a field to enter the WEP key, but this would seem inapplicable since my wireless network employs WPA. There is no field for a WPA key. The Advanced Settings button is grayed out. The WLAN on/off switch on the keyboard does not light up or otherwise appear to have any effect upon the wireless network device. Bearing in mind that I am an absolute Linux newbie, having onlyintermediate level skills in Windows which I might transfer to Linux, can anyone help me solve this problem? Thanks in advance for any help.

In order to use wpa, you'll need to install and configure wpa_supplicant.

Well, thank you. But please let me stress again that I am a complete Linus newbie. I would not know how to install and configure a wpa_supplicant if my life depended upon it. Im not certain if the post at comphobby.org/archives/14-More-Ubuntu-WPA-PSK-From-A-Joe-Sixpack-Perspective.html tells me how to do this, but if it does I do not yet have the Linux background necessary to carry out these instructions. But I am analytical enough to question whether the lack of a wpa_supplicant is the only source of my problem. Even if I disable Wireless Security on my WAP (no WEP, no WPA) and disable MAC filtering, I cannot get the wireless network device to enable and I certainly cannot get it to connect to my WLAN. I think I need to solve that problem before I can go on to tackle installing and configuring a WPA_supplicant. So, come on, give this long-time Windows user a reason to love Linux.

I'm going to guess that Ubuntu isn't distributing firmware for the bcm43xx driver (the native Linux driver). Have a look in /lib/firmware, and if there isn't one, or if it is empty, you're going to need to create the firmware.

That you do in a few steps. First, download and compile fwcutter. Then you need to get a Windows driver to extract firmware from. The file wl_apsta.o is highly recommended. You then need to run fwcutter against the driver to extract the fimware and finally, you need to copy it to /lib/firmware. All of this is the README that comes wtih fwcutter as well.

If that was the problem, you should be able to remove and then reload the bcm43xx driver and hopefully that will get it functioning. You'll still have to configure it and set up wpa_supplicant, but firmware is the likely first step.

Have you looked at this thread from ubuntu: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...20&mode=linear ?