ndiswrapper installed and can detect networks but cannot connect to any of them

scheidel21 · 08-17-2007, 01:49 PM

I am running a dv9000z with a broadcom 4310 UART wireless card, I am also running a custom compiled xen kernel 2.6.18 with xen 3.1 from xen source. the standard ndiswrapper module from the debian testing repositories won't compile with module assistant against the custom kernel so I downloaded the latest stable source of ndiswrapper and and installed the module. this got my wireless working, sort of. I can see networks using iwlist, network manager, or kwifi, but I cannot connect to any of them, I set my router to no encryption and I was still unable to connect. I have tries iwconfig, wpa_supplicant, kwifi, and network manager. If I run dhclient wlan0 I can see that the carrd is attempting to obtain an ip via dhcp, but it broadcasts thenm waits and broadcasts then waits until it finally gives up. In other words it gets no response from the dhcp server. I have spent many hours today unable to find a solution. Does anyone have any ideas. Some more info on system below.

dv9000z

turion x2 tl-56

nvidia geForce7600 with 256MB RAM (Using Vesa driver, because some of my videoRAM went bad, can't even boot into windows because the driver causes BSOD)

dual 100GB HD with Debian ETCH installed onto sdb dist-upgrade to testing

2GB RAM

Broadcom 4310 UART wireless card

Custom Xen-3.1.0 2.6.18 kernel compiled from source

GregLee · 08-19-2007, 01:24 AM

Look at the output of "iwconfig wlan0". Here's mine, for comparison:

Code:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"06B404868877"  Nickname:"hp.lee.net"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:12:0E:40:D6:11   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:25 dBm   
          RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr=2346 B   
          Encryption key:45DC-A98F-1E   Security mode:open
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:62/100  Signal level:-56 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

After "ifconfig wlan0 up", try using "iwconfig wlan0 ..." to give
information about the network you're trying to connect to, such as
essid, mode, and eventually key. (Look at "man iwconfig".) You want
iwconfig to tell you the access point has been recognized.

scheidel21 · 08-19-2007, 01:48 AM

I have tried supplying iwconfig with essid, key etc... as well as using wpa_supplicant an supplying it with the same, no luck on theat front. I am not at my laptop right now, but I believe I ran iwconfig wlan0 and got similar output to tours but no connection I'll try it when I get a chance and let you know what the output is.

Hangdog42 · 08-19-2007, 06:27 AM

When you compiled your kernel, did you enable bcm43xx? If you did, it is likely loading and conflicting with ndiswrapper.

scheidel21 · 08-19-2007, 06:55 AM

I tried the bcm43xx driver to no avail, apparently the driver only works for this card with 2.20 kernels and above. But the bcm43xx driver isn't loading.

Now the good news I fixed the problem! When I ran the iwconfig wlan0 I noticed something I didn'tnotice before, it was set to ad-hoc mode when I changed this to managed, as it should be I connected fine, now i have wpa_supplicant up and running with ndiswrapper, the only thing different from the windows setup is now I have to broadcast the ssid because wpa_supplicant won't work without it, I read that a while back, but it suits my needs thankyou all for the help.