Config wireless

ajcns · 08-02-2006, 12:07 AM

Hello,
I am new to FC5. I just installed FC5 on Sony VAIO PCG-V505BX. I can not connect to the internet through wireless built in card. I have a dual boot, and my WinXP wireless works fine. But I want FC5 to work as well.
This is what I get:
[root@localhost ~]# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

wifi0 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"test" Nickname:"localhost.localdomain"
Mode:Master Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:02:8A:A6:9B:E7
Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Sensitivity=1/3
Retry min limit:8 RTS thr

ff Fragment thr

ff
Encryption key

ff
Power Management

ff

wlan0 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"test" Nickname:"localhost.localdomain"
Mode:Master Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:02:8A:A6:9B:E7
Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Sensitivity=1/3
Retry min limit:8 RTS thr

ff Fragment thr

ff
Encryption key

ff
Power Management

ff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:38 Invalid misc:19982 Missed beacon:0

eth0 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

[root@localhost ~]# iwlist scan
lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

wifi0 No scan results
wlan0 No scan results
eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

sit0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

Can someone help?
Thanks.
AJ

jschiwal · 08-02-2006, 02:13 AM

For one thing, you need a hostname for your computer. Don't use localhost.
How many wifi devices do you have? You have a wifi0 and wlan0 device. Did you load both a native driver and ndiswrapper? The iwlist scan command indicates a problem with your driver(s). You may need to delete one of the device configurations and rmmod the device driver and then restart the network.

ajcns · 08-02-2006, 09:20 PM

Actually, this is my secomd installation of FC5. The first time I installed it, even using localhost, wireless worked great. I needed a bigger hard drive... so I replaced it and re-installed FC5. The second time, it just doesn't work. I did not load any native drivers for the wireless card nor did I install ndwrapper? Should I?
Thanks for your help.
AJ

jschiwal · 08-04-2006, 09:56 AM

The first thing that you need to do is determine which controller chip your computer's wireless device uses:
lspci -v

On my machine:

Code:

[jschiwal@matrix ~]$ /sbin/lspci -v | sed -n '/Wireless/,/^$/p'
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Linksys Unknown device 0015
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
        Memory at feafc000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]

I highlighted the important items.
Now enter /sbin/lspci -n

Code:

[jschiwal@matrix ~]$ /sbin/lspci -n
00:00.0 0600: 8086:2560 (rev 02)
00:01.0 0604: 8086:2561 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 0c03: 8086:24c2 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 0c03: 8086:24c4 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 0c03: 8086:24c7 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 0c03: 8086:24cd (rev 02)
00:1e.0 0604: 8086:244e (rev 82)
00:1f.0 0601: 8086:24c0 (rev 02)
00:1f.1 0101: 8086:24cb (rev 02)
00:1f.3 0c05: 8086:24c3 (rev 02)
00:1f.5 0401: 8086:24c5 (rev 02)
01:00.0 0300: 10de:0341 (rev a1)
02:00.0 0280: 14e4:4320 (rev 03)
02:01.0 0180: 1095:0680 (rev 02)
02:03.0 0180: 1095:3112 (rev 02)
02:06.0 0104: 105a:4d30 (rev 02)
02:07.0 0c00: 11c1:5811 (rev 04)
02:08.0 0200: 8086:1039 (rev 82)

Look at the address for the device from the first list ( in this example 02:00:00 ) and look for the line in the lspci -n listing:
02:00.0 0280: 14e4:4320 (rev 03)
Now use google or this sites HCL to determine if you need to use the ndiswrapper or if a native driver is available.
If you need ndiswrapper, then go to the ndiswapper wike and look up your device.
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/m...index.php/List

Search for the driver name and the manufactures code ( the number like 14e4:4320 (rev 03) ).

You will also need to install ndiswrapper and the ndiswrapper kernel module for your kernel. You might try this ftp site of fedora core 5 extras:
ftp://rpm.livna.org/pub/rpm.livna.org/fedora/5/i386/

Install ndiswrapper and then load the windows ndis driver. Then follow the instructions from the README file or the "man ndiswrapper" man page to do it. ( Or enter ndiswrapper --help ).
Then as root run "ndiswrapper -m" and then "modprobe ndiswrapper".

Now check if the driver is working with: iwlist wlan0 scan. If it returns with a list of access points, the driver is working. The next steps are setting up wpa encryption and the network devices configuration.

Note: If your computer is an AMD64 computer, make sure that you download the x86_64 version of ndiswrapper and the 64bit windows driver. I found the driver for my Broadcom device on my HP laptop at the linuxant web site.

jschiwal · 08-04-2006, 10:48 PM

I found out that Red Hat 5 has a kernel driver for Broadcom bcm43xx drivers. Use the bcm43xx-fwcutter program to extract the firmware from a windows driver.
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pu...003-2.fc5.html

This is for Broadcom bcm43xx drivers, so use the lspci -v command to determine your wireless devices controller.