I did a clean reinstall of ubuntu moving up to 10.4 (I wanted the gnu interface not the one that comes with 11.10.)

I got some vague message about wifi that I could not make sense of during the install.

I did a reinstallation of my data files, preference, bookmarks, etc.etc.etc. and have been getting everything working just right using the laptop at home very successfully for a couple of weeks now.

Today I took it to the public library and tested the wi-fi.
!!!!! NO WIFI !!!!!!

I think what happened is that I had the hardware switch that shuts off wi-fi in the off positon during the install and the install could probably not find any wifi on the computer, and did not set it up.

---------- question ----------
How can I get the wifi up and running WITHOUT redoing all the install work I have already done.
------------------------------
I only use wi-fi on this machine when I am traveling but I do need it then.

Hardware:
Dell Studio 1535 laptop.

Did you try installing the wireless related packages? Eg wireless-tools, wpasupplicant etc?

Evo2.

-- What are those packages?
-- Where does one find them?
-- What sort of install process is required?
-- What is required to identify the right version of the packages?

I just used the live CD and told it to install the new version of Ubuntu. However, the hardware switch for WiFi was probably off at the time which may have prevented something that was supposed to be automatic from happening.

Hmm, seems you are not familiar with package management on your system. Might be time to read the documentation provided for your OS. For example: https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/add-ap...s/C/index.html

However, I suspect that these packages are already installed, so you may do well to look here:
https://help.ubuntu.com/10.04/intern...-wireless.html

If you are still stuck please have a look at the output of the commands

This lists the devices on your system, so we can identify what wireless hardware you have

This will list wireless devices and other information

This will list network (including wirless) devices



Please read the man pages for each command. If you are unable to understand the output of these commands, please post them here.

HTH,

Evo2.

Your diagnosis of my ignorance is correct.

Thank you for directing me to these I see I have much to study.

Thank you again, in the interest of getting to the bottom of the problem as promptly as possible, the output of the commands is as follows:

user1@darius:~$ lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)

00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)

00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)

00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)

00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)

00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 03)


00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)

00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)

03:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)

03:01.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)

03:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 12)
03:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
03:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev ff)


09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5784M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10)

0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)

user1@darius:~$

###########################################

user1@darius:~$ /sbin/iwconfig

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:off/any

Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=0 dBm

Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off

Power Management:off

pan0 no wireless extensions.

user1@darius:~$

############################################

user1@darius:~$ /sbin/ifconfig -a

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:21:70:73:c9:7d

inet addr:192.168.0.2 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0

inet6 addr: fe80::221:70ff:fe73:c97d/64 Scope:Link

UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:9622 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:5966 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:13659099 (13.6 MB) TX bytes:517366 (517.3 KB)

Interrupt:17

lo Link encap:Local Loopback

inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0

inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host

UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1

RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

RX bytes:480 (480.0 B) TX bytes:480 (480.0 B)


pan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 7e:09:65:01:85:68

BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)


wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1f:e1:a0:fb:26

BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1

RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)



user1@darius:~$

Hi,

ok from lspci I see that you have one of the somewhat troublesome broadcom wireless devices:
However, from iwconfig and ifconfig it seems that it is at least partially working. I suspect that perhaps you are missing the (binary only) firmware that is required to use this device. Googling "Ubuntu 10.04 BCM4312" provides interesting reading. It seems the best resource may be:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...Driver/bcm43xx

Please read through it and see if you can workout what to do. Please post back if you get stuck.

Cheers,

Evo2.

1 members found this post helpful.

evo2,
First of all, Thank you very much that link took me to where I could install via the internet just the software that I needed to get the WiFi working again.

Now perhaps you could help me just one bit more. I find that
-- I can possess a Live CD on which I have the operating system so i can reinstall it.
-- On a couple of USB "flash drives" I can possess my data files so that I can restore my previous work

BUT WHAT I DO NOT POSSESS IS THE SOFTWARE THAT WILL ALLOW ME TO RESTORE THE FUNCTIONALITY OF MY WiFi LINK TO THE INTERNET.

Should I have to restore my computer in a situation where the only internet link that is available is WiFi I am screwed!
-- Is there some way to get an installable version of the software that in necessary for the WiFi hardware to work?
Barring that
-- Is there some way to back up the current configuration of my software so that I can bring back full functionality of the computer should I suffer a hard drive failure etc.

Again, thanks, I can now travel again since most motels only offer WiFi (although a few have some rooms with a hard wire connection).

evo2

As I studied further at the web page:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...Driver/bcm43xx
I found what appears to be an alternate way to deal with the problem, rather than installing the driver over the internet.

I was able to find all 4 of the files noted in step#1 on the Ubuntu Live CD.

If I am reading this correctly,
-- All I would need to do is to complete steps 1 and 2
-- It appears to met that step 3 is only necessary If I am trying to operate from the Live CD, but I am not sure if I am correct in my understanding.



---------Begin quote from the above web site ------------

STA - No Internet access

If you do not have any other means of Internet access on your computer, you will have to install the bcmwl-kernel-source package from the restricted folder under ../pool/restricted/b/bcmwl on the Ubuntu install media.

Note: Systems installed from CDROM can simply add the install CD as a package source and install bcmwl-kernel-source, automatically installing the required dependencies.

Note: The following instructions are for a stock Ubuntu 10.04 LTS Edition via USB install. Netbook edition, other variations and matured systems may require more/less packages be installed to satisfy dependencies of bcmwl-kernel-source.

Note: The GUI front end for dpkg will automatically display required packages that need to be installed to satisfy the bcmwl-kernel-source dependencies. To use the front end, navigate the file system using the file manager and double click on the packages to install/list required dependencies.

Step 1.

Navigate the install media and install the packages listed below by double clicking or navigate the install media and install these packages consecutively in a terminal (under the desktop menu Applications > Accessories > Terminal):

../pool/main/d/dkms

:/dkms/$ sudo dpkg -i dkms*

../pool/main/p/patch

:/patch/$ sudo dpkg -i patch*

../pool/main/f/fakeroot

:/fakeroot/$ sudo dpkg -i fakeroot*

../pool/restricted/b/bcmwl

:/bcmwl/$ sudo dpkg -i bcmwl-kernel-source*

Step 2.

Under the desktop menu System > Administration > Hardware/Additional Drivers, the STA drivers can be activated for use.

Note: A computer restart may be required before using the wifi card.

LiveCD/LiveUSB

Note: The install media contents are mounted under /cdrom of the filesystem.

Step 3.

For temporary use with the LiveCD and LiveUSB environments, instead of a computer restart, in a terminal issue the following commands:

~$ sudo modprobe -r b43 ssb wl
~$ sudo modprobe wl

Note: Allow several seconds for the network manager to scan for available networks before attempting a connection.
------------- End quote from above web site ---------------------