Laptop wireless problem - broadcom
 

Hi ..
Am attempting to get Knoppix 4.02 up and running on my laptop with my wireless network .. I have a broadcom card and during setup it says that it has found my card .. After startup I loaded the neccessary files [bcmwl5a.inf,bcmwl5.sys] .. went thru the ndiswrapper procedure .. but when I then went to either the lan card config or net card config there was no sign of the system acknowlegding the wireless card .. I then did a pci check and sure enough it said 'yes' you have a broadcom card .. BUT I cannot get the system to allow it to work ????

I have run out of ideas ... any help would be greatly appreciated

system is an HP pavillon ze2311US with 1gb of ram, running an AMD sempron, xp pro with SP2. broadcom 4318 wireless card, Dlink Di 524 router and wireless works fine under normal windows conditions

TIA
Wolf

p.s. I posted this in another area but I realized this was where it should be

Hi,

So I suppose you tried a "lspci -v" to list your wireless card and you could see it there, right? Then you did a "modprobe ndiswrapper" to load ndiswrapper (supposing the driver is correctly there) and then you configured your wireless card as "iwconfig wlan0 essid your_essid" and then "iwconfig wlan0 enc your_key" and you finished the setup with a "dhcpcd wlan0". Is that right?

Can you check your dmesg to see if there are any errors when you try to load ndiswrapper? Also, assuming your driver is ok could you try a "iwlist wlan0 scanning" to see if your card can scan for networks? notice that i am assuming you have wlan0 and not eth0 or eth1 or sit0 please change it to the name you use there.

Make sure you have the correct driver. A few references:
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...d.php?t=410460
http://www.phys.uu.nl/~beijeman/ASUS...mitsample.html

I use a broadcom card too and my laptop is from DELL. I had some problems in the begining because the windows driver supplied by DELL didnt work under Linux so I had to use Acer's. Check on that too.

Good luck.

Hi ..
Thanks for your quicl reply .. have tried some but not all of your suggestions .. BUT never fear I will do so ASAP ... it's nice to know that we are not alone in the wireless world !! :)

rgds
wolf

Now it seems that ndiwrapper claims the .inf files I got from HP are "NOT' .inf files and refuses to deal with them ... I have also forgotten the command to check to see if ndiswrapper actually has loaded the driver ... I had download another .inf file earlier from the web that the system seemed to accept but now I cant find it [of course] and dont remember exactly where I found it .. but I will keep on looking !

wolf

Try this thread, it might help you w/ ndiswrapper usage:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=125627

Regarding the inf file the only solution is to google for a new one :)

Maybe this one is even better:
http://fedoranews.org/mediawiki/inde...ng_Ndiswrapper

Good luck.

Once again thanks for info .. I finally found the original disks [they had been filed away for 'safety' and could not remember I had them ! :) } and got the proper .inf files .. fot the stuff loaded and the card 'basically working in that Kwifi goes green ! BUT [it seems there is always a 'but'] the laptop flatly refuses to see the router or any other pc in the net ..
Did an iwconfig and the main things that I see are different from the pc that is working is as follows ..

There is no idication of Access Point .. ie it shows 00:00:00:00...
RTS thru : 2347B fragment thru 2346B
Essid : off/any ....[note: I have repeatidly tried to set this but even though wcardconfig accepts the name I give it, it does not seem to stick .. i have even tried to do it thru a cmd line in root ...]

My Knoppix PC shows what I assume is the Mac address for the router and it also shows RTS & Fragment as 'off' ..
I have tried pump -i wlan0 with no success, the laptop card configurations all seem ok ..

The laptop wireless works perfectly fine under windows xp pro


What do you think ??

TIA
Wolf

I strongly advise you to search for different drivers on the net. Listen, I had a similar problem w/ my DELL here and the only way to get my wireless to work on linux was to use ACER drivers. I spent about 2 weeks trying the DELL drivers, downloading it over and over again and I had a similar problem as yours. The card seems to work (it works under windows fine) but it doenst store the configuration data at all. Once I replaced the driver it worked. Please try that. And always check your "dmesg" output after you run ndiswrapper because if the driver is broken (for linux use) it may leave some messages there. Once more, good luck.

Thanks again ...
I am going crazy with all these drivers ..I now have about 20 that I am sorting thru but I will keep you apprised of what happens ... It's just so nutso..
:)

wolf

Well all is finally working ... the final 'dagger in the back' was WEP .. for some reason yet to be deifned .. as soon as I disabled WEP everything seemed to work [after of course fixing all of the above] .. Of course I do not want to operate the system without WEP enabled so ... if you have any thoughts on this I will be all 'eyes !'
Once again thanks for your contued assistance and support it has really been a great help !
rgds
wolf :) and still :study:

Ok. if WEP doesnt work it means you have only 2 problems to figure:
1) driver (it might seem to work but it has some issues)
2) configuration (unlikely)

You check if you can "iwlist" networks using your cards, ok? if so then maybe you might have a driver problem, In that case look for other drivers and just experiment. If not,l then we both need help :)

good luck!

have tried about 10 diff drivers, of them about 3 worked tot he extent that the wireless system came up and i could use it PROVIDING I did not use WEP .. I am beginning to think it may be a problem between Knoppix and DLink and not neccarily the Broadcom card .. but I will be checking ,,
thanks
Wolf