Just as the title reads.

I can see the router, its mac, just never connect. Tried everything and the only fault I can see is on the log where my atheros on the laptop says "listening on device..." this bcm4306 never reads that. Just "listening on 255.255.255.255 port 67". Then just times out.


In iwconfig I see the router no problem and some times in manager. I've swapped firmware several times, tried wrapper. Nothing works. Also network manager seems flaky as at times it loses wireless menu altogether though its still the same under iwconfig.

Finally drug this box inside to connect, for a change, to update everything. No difference.

and

Thats with wep off. Same thing, never connects.

A couple of questions.....

- Is the firmware from the right file for the b43 driver? Check out the b43 site for the right starting file.

- How are you requesting an IP address? I believe Fedora uses ifup, but I'm not entirely sure.

Thats where I got original apsta_mimo from. Yes it uses ifup which does exactly as described.

Tried the bcm43xx old firmware but that didnt work either.



Ok I now see after some re-trys that the SSB backpane doesnt show a physical address just 000000:00. I get that after modprobing b43 which brings up the card and makes it viewable in the message/log.



GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! so close to working. Anyone gota a clue?

I wonder if you're not over thinking this. From your iwconfig output, the card is functioning and can recognize the AP. Can you give it a static address and have it function? That would suggest a DHCP problem. On the other hand, if a setting the IP, gateway and nameservers doesn't work, then maybe there is a problem with the driver.

For the sake of simplicity, leaving WEP out of it for now is probably a good idea. Also, posting the ifconfig output as well as any relevant log entries would be helpful.

Its not hardware, instead of doing what I wanted and stomping the box flat I reloaded 6 , threw the bcm43 code on it. Blam!@@ instant WEP enabled router connect with the same equipment.

It would seem to be all within the b43/ssb, netconfig mix.

Meh after reading some more it seems the kernel is broke for my setup. One claimed rawhide fixed it.

Anyone know where to get rawhide as a download as no torrents here?

Well with 2.6.24-rc2,? I think, from F9 its still broke. Not sure how to load a newer kernel without yum online.

Shows 0 for "keyidx" on b43-phy in dmesg and a MAC of ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff or so. Shows a MAC under network config for wlan0. Same as 23-107 and down on F8. What can I do to assign a mac there?


I have b43legacy loaded and it makes no difference.

Am I stuck with F6 as I have several boxes running the same 4306 rev3 card? I like how f8 feels snappier.

RC9 in rawhide-update, its still broke. Found a couple of links to mention that b43 is broke and that it needs some mac assignment fixed but no actual fix.

Updated kernel fixing the b43's lack of MAC address is a false rumor.




So now the question is how does one remove b43 and ssb? I've never been able to remove them rmmod /modprobe -r or anything and have it work. On the older bcm43 setup I would have to remove that every reboot but wrapper would then work. Not with b43, it seems to never go away.

Wow, that is some serious legwork on your part, thanks very much for posting it. I've been seeing some other Fedora8/Broadcom problems and this may be the reason.

The easy way would be to add both those modules to your /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file. In theory that should prevent them from loading. The hard way would be to reconfigure and recompile your kernel, leaving b43 and ssb out of the equation. The potentially even more painful solution would be to throw Fedora in the nearest circular file and pick another distro.

<rant>
Generally I think that there is very little difference between distros as far as wireless goes, but Fedora has been a pretty routine exception to that, and not in a good way. It seems that the Fedora team has managed to really screw up Broadcom wireless for the last several releases and are leaving a lot of their users slowly twisting in the wind. Of course the part I really don't understand is why anyone would subject themselves to the gigantic beta test that is Fedora. However, I'm a Slackware user, so maybe we're genetically incapable of understanding such things.....
</rant>

Oh how I agree but isn't b43 just part of the kernel? As in it wouldn't matter which distro I used if it had the same b43 driver because if the same kernel version, right? I dont know if they are different. Also blacklisting never worked with ssb, I had to remove it everytime I rebooted. Theres something loading it no matter whats in blacklist.

I know I've read in several places about several different distros with the exact same problem and its all down to the version more than who's on everything.

Boils down to-its been broke since b43 came out.

Theres a message on the kernel mail archives relating to this. I found it doing a google of "b43 phy mac". It seems to say thing.

Here:http://www.mail-archive.com/git-comm.../msg33606.html

Is that something I can copy and paste? At the bottom there it looks like a fix?

Yes, but b43 is a relatively new part of the kernel. In fact, it really just became mainstream in 2.6.24. However, the clowns at Fedora have been patching in b43 for a bit, so if you stick with Fedora, you might be stuck with b43. On my laptop that has a Broadcom wireless, I'm on 2.6.21, which is still bcm43xx and that works fine.
That does look like a patch to the kernel, but I'm not sure how you would apply it. If you are comfortable with git, it looks like this patch is in the latest kernel snapshot (at least according to the kernel changelog).



Have a look in lsmod. If something is using ssb, it should be listed there. Also do some searching here. I know one of the Fedora gurus here posted how to blacklist b43/ssb when b43 first came out in Fedora. I'll have a look as well and see if I can find the thread.

<edit>

Crud. I found the thread I was looking for, but it sounds like blacklisting should be working.

</edit>

Just a quick thought: Your first post mentioned that you'd tried ndiswrapper. Are you sure that it's no longer being loaded? If it and b43 are both in your kernel you may get strange results, and nothing will work correctly.

Multiple fresh fedora installs, so yea its not on there.

Been reading about git-that link is a patch. B43/ssb came out with f6 updates somewhere along the line. Fresh F6 works fine with wrapper but with updates it does not.