Wireless card not recognized? just enabled NetworkManager

ccfc1986 · 02-08-2008, 11:51 PM

Hi All. I just got my installation of Fedora 8 installed and working successfully on my laptop.

The laptop is a HP Pavillion DV6000 Series (6449 to be exact).
I am running dual boot with Windows Vista if this makes a difference.

I originally did not have any connectivity until i search google and found the following:

Code:

su -c '/sbin/chkconfig --level 345 NetworkManager start; /sbin/service NetworkManagerDispatcher start'
su -c '/sbin/chkconfig --level 345 NetworkManagerDispatcher on'
su -c '/sbin/chkconfig --level 345 NetworkManager on'

This got my wired connection working. I am currently downloading all the updates available and hope this might help my problem. But in the meantime, how can i activate my wireless card in this system to work. I know it must be possible and thought doing parts of the above would also get the wireless card working - but no luck.

During google searches i found this:
/sbin/lspci | grep - ether
Which gave me:
00:14.0 Bridge nVidia Corporation MCP51 Ethernet Controller (rev a3)

Which i assume is my wired connection as im pretty sure the wireless card is a BroadCom device...

Im a linux newbie when it comes to the OS - i have taken 2 classes in scripting in different shells and thats about it. So if you can help, please give me THE IDIOTS GUIDE how to get things going.

Thanks in advance

Junior Hacker · 02-09-2008, 12:11 AM

This place may be a good bookmark. The lspci command may tell you which wireless card you have.

ccfc1986 · 02-09-2008, 12:37 AM

Using /sbin/lspci

I got a whole list of stuff that i guess is installed on my machine. Under that is this line:

03:00.0 Network Controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 03)

I took a look at your link - after i have completed the updates, rebooted, and checked to see if the card mysteriously works - i will repost what happens etc. I will go through the steps in the wireless guide in the link you gave.

Thanks for the help.

Will let you know how i get on.

ccfc1986 · 02-09-2008, 09:44 AM

I have attempted to follow the instructions on this page:

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Dr...reinstallation

But the instructions are kind of in a foreign language to me. I was able to download the two needed files - at least thats what i think i have done. I extracted one of them - and i have multipe bcm43xx ******* files on my desktop and i cannot seem to copy files into the lib/firmware folder - i do not have permission!

Should i log in as root? Im unsure.

I just have no idea folks - if anyone could help me understand the instructions on the above link and but them in IDIOTS terms, i might be able to get my wireless working.

Please help again please.

Thanks

frndrfoe · 02-09-2008, 10:53 AM

Here are the steps I took to get the bcm43xx working under Redhat, should be very similar to fedora 8. It has been very stable.
Link

bbfuller · 02-09-2008, 11:11 AM

Hello ccfc1986

Although Fedora 8 still has the bcm43xx-fwcutter in place, it no longer uses the bcm43xx driver.

In its place it uses the newer b43 driver which has its own b43-fwcutter package.

However, if you look in the top part of the page of the link you posted you will see that your card, the BCM4328 is not supported by this driver yet.

Always a problem with Linux and new equipment.

At this stage it would appear that your only chance is to use ndiswrapper with your windows driver. Whether that will work is also an open question.

This page:

http://www.fedoraguide.info/index.ph..._drivers_howto

has a decent howto on installing and configuring it.

Note that for Fedora you should install ndiswrapper from the livna repository as specified and not try to compile it yourself.

Post back if you would like to talk about any of that.

ccfc1986 · 02-09-2008, 11:48 AM

Okay thank you for the help. If i need some help with teh link you gave me, would you mind if i post it here for you to take a look at? Thanks again an i hope i can get this running shortly!

Cheers again

bbfuller · 02-09-2008, 12:05 PM

It's 18:04 here and I shall be checking until a reasonable bed time. Also tomorrow morning.

I'm sure there are others who can help as well though.

Lantzvillian · 02-18-2008, 03:44 PM

yeah, I would say stick to ndiswrapper from livna. You should have good luck with the broadcom wireless in that laptop.

I have a similar lappy dv2662ca. One note: Fedora 7 no problems with ndiswrapper, Fedora 8 was a no show and i did all the steps teh same from teh clean install including blacking out the 43xx drivers.