Hello, hopefully someone can help me understand where I went off the rails, or if I should just try installing a different card. I'm running Debian Linux Kernel 2.6.18-5-686 that I just installed on a Dell laptop. I have a Linksys (Broadcom chipset) WPC54G wireless adapter PCMCIA card, which I verified works on a Windows laptop, and which, according to all the documentation I could find, is supported by this kernel version.

I followed the wonderfully detailed How To writen by farslayer (thank you!) called HOW_TO_install_the_Broadcom_bcm43xx_Driver_in_Debian_Linux_and_enable_WPA_Encryption

found on this site, and feel I'm on the brink of success, but I still can't get an IP address from my AP. I can't even ping it. I have it configured for DHCP and when I boot up it looks like it's requesting an IP address (DHCPDISCOVER)but eventually times out with the message No DHCPOFFERS. I'm guessing there's still a problem with the driver somehow, but I've run out of ideas on this one.

I should also mention that when I activate my ethernet port (eth0 in this case) I get an error message that I can't decipher so i don't know how significant it is:

bcm43xx: TODO: Incomplete code in keymac_write() at drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx_main.c:1128

Here is some pertinent info that may hopefully lead to some resolution here.

lspci
06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)


cat /etc/network/interfaces
iface lo inet loopback
address 127.0.0.1
netmask 255.0.0.0

# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

iwlist eth0 scan

eth0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:14:BF:A7:28:78
ESSID:"HomeNet"
Protocol:IEEE 802.11bg
Mode:Master
Channel:6
Encryption keyn
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
11 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Quality=100/100 Signal level=-162 dBm
Extra: Last beacon: 80ms ago

lsmod | grep bcm43xx
bcm43xx 405920 0
ieee80211softmac 26304 1 bcm43xx
ieee80211 29416 2 bcm43xx,ieee80211softmac
firmware_class 9600 2 bcm43xx,pcmcia

ls -l /lib/firmware
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3456 2008-01-16 10:22 bcm43xx_initval01.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3456 2008-01-16 10:22 bcm43xx_initval03.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2416 2008-01-16 10:22 bcm43xx_initval05.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 232 2008-01-16 10:22 bcm43xx_initval06.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 2416 2008-01-16 10:22 bcm43xx_initval07.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 232 2008-01-16 10:22 bcm43xx_initval09.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 232 2008-01-16 10:22 bcm43xx_initval10.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 15752 2008-01-16 10:22 bcm43xx_microcode2.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 17568 2008-01-16 10:22 bcm43xx_microcode4.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 20160 2008-01-16 10:22 bcm43xx_microcode5.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1144 2008-01-16 10:22 bcm43xx_pcm4.fw
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1144 2008-01-16 10:22 bcm43xx_pcm5.fw

What does iwconfig tell you?

looks like the card is being recognized. It says the encryption key is on, are you sure you have the WEP or WPA key configured properly? I just spent two grueling weeks getting my wireless card to work with WPA-PSK TKIP settings. check your iwconfig and see if the card is being shown there. also have you installed the correct driver for the broadcom chipset, Or are you using ndiswrapper? Post the output from your iwconfig, and if you're using WPA then make sure you have wpa_supplicant running before trying to connect to the router.

looks like the card is being recognized. It says the encryption key is on, are you sure you have the WEP or WPA key configured properly? I just spent two grueling weeks getting my wireless card to work with WPA-PSK TKIP settings. check your iwconfig and see if the card is being shown there. also have you installed the correct driver for the broadcom chipset, Or are you using ndiswrapper? Post the output from your iwconfig, and if you're using WPA then make sure you have wpa_supplicant running before trying to connect to the router.

try going to a terminal and typing "dhclient" without the qoutes

Sorry, I meant to include iwconfig. Here is the printout:


eth0 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"HomeNet" Nickname:"Broadcom 4306"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:08:21:30:C8:BE
Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=10 dBm
RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Encryption keyff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

Also, I'm including /sbin/ifconfig:



eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:06:25:3D:BA:02
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:1140 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:29 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:1374 (1.3 KiB)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x8000

According to the How To, I should see an IP address of the AP in the above printout. Of course, that means that DHCPDISCOVER would have worked, which it didn't.

I turned DHCP off and tried using static mode with the gateway ip address, but that didn't help. I would think that I could at least ping the gateway, but I get an immediate "Network is unreachable" message. It doesn't appear to even try to ping it. I tried turning WPA off as well, on both my wireless router and my network card, but that didn't get me anywhere either. I think I should at least be able to ping it.

I also just tried downloading a newer driver, wl_apsta.o, on some advice I had read on another thread, but I'm still not having any luck. It did, however, extract more firmware than the previous driver, bcmwl5.sys, but unfortunately, with the same result.

Any suggestions??