/var/run contains a list of running processes. If wpa_supplicant isn't running, it won't be in the PID list.

Your wpa_supplicant call is incomplete. No driver is specified. Try adding Dwext to the call.

ioctl errors are usually caused by the absence of a correct module for your wireless card. Make sure the appropriate module is loaded and that you can connect with no WEP or WPA before trying wpa_supplicant.

Enable the SSID broadcast if it's set to disabled.

If none of that works, start a new thread with specifics on your configuration, distro, etc.

I've finally gotten that damned card to work! The secret was modifying Pappy's instructions by replacing wlan0 by eth1 wherever it appears. (That's for Kubuntu Gutsy Gibbon.) I also had to change the path of wpa_supplicant in rc.local to /sbin/wpa_supplicant. One final note: the name of the inf file for my card is LSBCMNDS.inf, not bcmwl5.inf (though the other file in the driver file from Linksys is bcmwl5.sys, which is probably useful if anyone gets the kernel driver to work).

So the instructions should be generalized to account for the variations in the interface name (revealed by iwconfig), the path to wpa_supplicant (revealed by which wpa_supplicant in a root shell), and the varying names of the .inf file (whatever you get by downloading the latest driver file from your card's manufacturer and unzipping it).

Thanks to Pappy (and 2Gnu) for making this possible.

Yes, the idea is to use whatever files are given to you by either the manufacturer of the computer (as in the case of this computer), or the manufacturer of the interface card (like the linksys PCMCIA card in my Toshiba laptop). Both are Broadcom, but they use different drivers.

I am sorry that isn't more clear in the article.

Unfortunately, to take all of the possibilities into account when writing a how-to would make said article unreasonably long. The article was written specifically for Slackware, but it will work with any flavor of Linux, as your experience shows.

If you would like to go through the article and re-write it for use with the Ubuntu family (which will also require commands such as su or sudo to be used), please do so and post it. As long as you make sure that you give me credit for the original article, I will be more than happy.

And you are most welcome. I am glad that I could offer my experience up here to help others. After all, that's part and parcel to the Linux experience. It's something that no offering from Redmond could ever match.

Blessed be!
Pappy

Since people will be looking at the instructions at the head of this thread, I think it would be more useful for me to suggest a set of modifications to those instructions that can be edited in:

Add to Step II-1: Alternatively, go to the website of the manufacturer of your wireless card and download the drivers, probably as a zipped file. Unzip the file and save the ".inf" file that you'll find there. It may have some other name such as "LSBCMNDS.inf". You won't need the ".sys" file.

As far as I can tell ndiswrapper doesn't use the ".sys" file so you can remove the references to it. It's used by the native bc43xx driver, though.

Add following the code in Step III-12: Note carefully in this output the name of the ethernet device. If it is not "wlan0", substitute the correct name for "wlan0" in all the following steps. You can also get the device name by typing "iwconfig" or "ifconfig".

Replace Step V-1 by: Open the file that contains the code executed at the end of system initialization. On Slackware it is "/etc/rc.d/rc.local"; on Ubuntu and Kubuntu it is "/etc/rc.local"; and on OpenSuSE it is "/etc/init.d/after.local". For other systems you may be able to find it with "find /etc -name rc.local" if it's none of these.

Add Step V-1.5: Find the path to wpa_supplicant with "which wpa_supplicant" and modify the sixth line of the script below to use it if necessary. Just "wpa_supplicant" without a path name will probably work also. You might need to change the call on dhcpcd similarly.

I hope these changes will make your instructions adaptable to almost any distribution. Again, thanks for all your hard work.

I did make some of the changes, but not all. My suggestion is that you modify the file more, and add it to a thread in the Ubuntu forums.

While I agree that perhaps in this particular forum, the file should be a bit more generalized, and I took some steps to make that happen, worrying about paths is a bit picayune. The paths that were given are the paths that the source code uses for installation. As long as one does the standard "make && make install" required to compile ndiswrapper and wpa_supplicant, those are the paths where the files will be installed. Remember, I said: It is also assumed you know enough about Slackware Linux to be able to compile a kernel, expand a .tar.gz file, and compile those files contained in the .tar.gz package. Part of knowing how to compile source is knowing where things go when you type "make install".

Also, I make it clear at the very beginning what it's all about:

...Many of these steps will cross over into other Linux distributions. However, some steps and file names are exclusive to Slackware. If you find a file or a directory that isn't in your particular distribution, you will have to know which files in your distribution are analogous to the files named herein. Perhaps an enterprising person (or persons) out there can re-write this document specifically for their particular distribution. As far as I am concerned, the GNU ideal applies even to this document. All I ask is if you do rewrite this document for your distribution, please list me, Pappy McFae, as the original author. Thanks in advance.

I can't possibly consider all contingencies. There has to be a point where the user accepts responsibility to adapt things to suit their situation. I had to do a bit of it myself to create the original document. Obviously, you did it as well. If not, you would still be struggling with making your wireless network work.

I wrote the original article in the first place taking responsibility to get my wireless networking functional. Everything else I could find on setting up wireless networking was cryptic, to say the least. I had to weed through a lot of bad, cryptic, or incomplete information to distill that original posting...and a week plus of research and experimentation to boot! I don't know how my system survived that experience without blowing up on me.

Please know you are more than welcome to take the article, adapt it for Ubuntu, and add it to a thread of your own. As long as you give me credit, I'm fine as frog hair with the idea. The more people who can get their wireless networking right, the more people come one step closer to saying "good-bye" to the demon Billy G, and his evil, hellish empire of ones and zeros.

I do invite you recheck the original posting in this thread, you will note a couple changes.

I thank you for your feedback, and I still invite you to revamp the original posting to fit Ubuntu, or any other distro with which you are familiar, and post it in threads specifically for those distros.

Thanks

Blessed be!
Pappy

Just a note to say thanks for your instructions. They worked well for me.
I have a Gateway laptop with BCM 4318 and Slackware 12. I had tried to use bcm43xx and got as far as being able to scan the network but never able to connect (I use wpa on my wireless router).

With your instructions, I was up and running fairly quickly.
One difference from your instructions: I used the wpa_supplicant that came with slackware 12, which is in /usr/sbin. If doing it this way, one must edit rc.local with this path instead of /usr/local/bin.

It worked well! I'm using it right now.