How to connect to wireless internet

Hello everyone. A while ago I posted about connecting to the internet on my laptop, which I was unable to do and thus uninstalled linux.

This afternoon I managed to partition my drive and successfully install Mac OS X and Fedora 10. Everything is working flawlessly, except that I am still unable to connect to the internet while using Linux.

I'm an advanced mac user but completely new to Linux. Can anyone just go through the basic procedure for connecting to my house's wireless internet?

The computer is an apple powerbook G4 12'' which has a Broadcom wireless card (the one that came with the computer)

So far I've tried creating my house's network and entered the WEP passcode but every time I try to connect I get a bubble that says the connection has been disconnected.

Sounds like you have a Macintosh. Can you get drivers for your Macintosh Hardware (Wireless Interface) from Apple?

Can you post the output of dmesg after trying to connect, or the end of your /var/log/messates (or your system log file)? It sounds like Linux is finding your Airport card, but there is some issue with actually communicating. There isn't an On/Off for your Airport on the actual machine is there (like some laptops with a Fn-Key combo to turn wireless on and off, switches, etc).

Also, what distro are you running?

I'm not very familiar with Mac hardware. On a typical "PC" laptop with a Broadcom wireless card, Linux needs the firmware blobs that have been extracted from a suitable Windows driver. If you try to load the driver, dmesg may show an error if it can't find the proper firmware. Check to see if you have the package "B43fwcutter" on your Linux system. You can run "info b43fwcutter" in a terminal, for basic instructions. My Acer Ferrari also uses Broadcom. It works flawlessly once it's set up. It just takes some reading.
Also, verify that any manual switch for the wireless is turned on, as mentioned by thewOOt. My laptop has a switch on the front of the unit that lights up when it is active. If your Mac has the same, it's a very easy way to see if the driver is correctly loaded.

Originally Posted by john test Sounds like you have a Macintosh. Can you get drivers for your Macintosh Hardware (Wireless Interface) from Apple?

Yes, it is a macintosh. To my knowledge, apple does not provide linux drivers for download.

Originally Posted by thew00t Can you post the output of dmesg after trying to connect, or the end of your /var/log/messates (or your system log file)? It sounds like Linux is finding your Airport card, but there is some issue with actually communicating. There isn't an On/Off for your Airport on the actual machine is there (like some laptops with a Fn-Key combo to turn wireless on and off, switches, etc). Also, what distro are you running?

I'm actually not using an airport. It's a thing called Freebox, which is an ISP here in france, but the thing is functionally identical to an airport. I am sure it is on and working because I am able to access the internet on all my other computers.

I'm running Fedora 10

Originally Posted by purevw I'm not very familiar with Mac hardware. On a typical "PC" laptop with a Broadcom wireless card, Linux needs the firmware blobs that have been extracted from a suitable Windows driver. If you try to load the driver, dmesg may show an error if it can't find the proper firmware. Check to see if you have the package "B43fwcutter" on your Linux system. You can run "info b43fwcutter" in a terminal, for basic instructions. My Acer Ferrari also uses Broadcom. It works flawlessly once it's set up. It just takes some reading. Also, verify that any manual switch for the wireless is turned on, as mentioned by thewOOt. My laptop has a switch on the front of the unit that lights up when it is active. If your Mac has the same, it's a very easy way to see if the driver is correctly loaded.

I entered the info b43fwcutter command but am not really sure what to do with it. It was helpful for using terminal but not solving the problem at hand.

So far what I've done is two things. I first found out I am using a Broadcom BCM4306 802.11b/g card, for whatever that's worth.

Then my efforts have been to open Network Connections where I tried creating my houses WiFi but that seems to be pretty useless. I also opened Network Configuration where under 'devices' i see wlan0 wireless which is marked inactive. Under 'hardware' i see my Broadcom card listed and marked wireless. When I try to activate the wlan0 wireless I am prompted with

Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument

you need a driver for your hardware to work. to find out exactly what you have use the lspci command. to find out what internet options you have type in ifconfig. I would recommend posting the output of those 2 commands xxxxxx'ing out your ip address of course. Once the hardware specifics are know we can start looking for your driver.

also post the output of nm-tool with your ip xxxx-ed out .


Another thing I would do is try the information here:
http://mactel-linux.sourceforge.net/...cBookSantaRosa

Good luck

If it is a Broadcom BCM4306, you could try downloading ndiswrapper from http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper/ - the community has up and moved to the project's forums at Sourceforge, and the wiki seems to have taken a hike, but there is plenty of other documentation on ndiswrapper on the web. You can use that with a Windows driver for your hardware and it might help you out. But yes, some output as mentioned by inoculos would be good to see what your system has and what it is(n't) doing.

Frenger,

Sounds like your on the correct path but you need to verify the exact chip you have. open a terminal and cut and paste the following.

Whether a PCI device is supported by the b43/b43legacy driver can be found out with the lspci command:

lspci -vnn | grep 14e4

The command will result in a string similiar to this example:

0001:01:01.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4318] (rev 02)

You should ignore anything, except the last part inside of the [ ] brackets.


you will need the b43fwcutter for instsll and either the b43 or b43 legacy driver.


these can be obtained at http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Dr...43andb43legacy


hope this helps

billairds

Using the lspci command I found out my PCI-ID is 4320. The link you provided says 'not supported?'

Originally Posted by Frenger Using the lspci command I found out my PCI-ID is 4320. The link you provided says 'not supported?'

You can use ndis wrapper and the windows driver for your card or try this link http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users

billairds