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-   -   how to enable wifi on Dell Studio 1555? (https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/how-to-enable-wifi-on-dell-studio-1555-a-934674/)

ellfire 03-15-2012 07:02 PM

how to enable wifi on Dell Studio 1555?
 
Hi everybody! here is my problem (it is my first time installing any linux myself, so please be kind to me).

I have installed Slack 13.37 on my Dell Studio 1555 Laptop.

The ethernet card is working fine, but the Wi-Fi is not.

In order to resolve the problem I have done the following. First of all I typed

% ifconfig -a

and got

Quote:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:26:b9:15:0f:8f
inet addr:192.168.2.103 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::226:b9ff:fe15:f8f/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:34187 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:24049 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:38130883 (36.3 MiB) TX bytes:3019569 (2.8 MiB)
Interrupt:17

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:768 (768.0 B) TX bytes:768 (768.0 B)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 70:1a:04:ca:47:c5
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
From this (correct me if I am wrong) I conclude that Slack is able to see that wifi card is present with the MAC address 70:1a:04:ca:47:c5.

Then I typed

% lspci -v

and got a lot of info including following

Quote:

04:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)
Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1397 WLAN Mini-Card
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
Memory at f8000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
Capabilities: [58] Vendor Specific Information: Len=78 <?>
Capabilities: [e8] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
Capabilities: [d0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel
Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 47-c5-04-ff-ff-ca-70-1a
Capabilities: [16c] Power Budgeting <?>
Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
Kernel modules: ssb
From this I concluded (correct me if I am wrong), that Slack recognizes the card as "Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g" and uses the driver named b43-pci-bridge. So, everything seems correct and as I understood the slackbook in the section about setting wifi all I have to do is open the file /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf and add the correct settings. So I open it and put

Quote:

70:1A:*)
INFO="Broadcom"
ESSID="WLAN-E61478"
# this is what is written on the back of my wifi device as "WLAN Name (SSID)", under this
# name the device is seen in MS Windows(c) list of wifi networks
;;
Then (as I understood the slackbook) I call

% /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless

so that it reads this newly edited file /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf and make wireless work. But it tells me

Quote:

WARNING: The script 'rc.wireless' must be executed by 'rc.inet1'!
You should run the command "/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 <your_interface>_start" yourself.
Well, OK, I follow this suggestion and type

% /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 wlan0_start

and get the response
Quote:

SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory
/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1: wlan0 information: 'Broadcom'
Error for wireless request "Set Nickname" (8B1C) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; Operation not supported.
I do not know what the first line of this response means, but the line "Error for wireless request "Set Nickname" (8B1C)" means that it does not recognize ESSID.

So, the question is do I use the correct ESSID name or doing some stipid mistake??

Thanks for reading this huge post.

frankbell 03-15-2012 07:39 PM

You need the Broadcom firmware and related stuff. I had similar thread regarding Slackware Current and got lots of useful replies. Rather than repeat a lot of stuff, I'll just point you to that.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...urrent-926077/

ellfire 03-15-2012 08:53 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frankbell (Post 4627875)
You need the Broadcom firmware and related stuff. I had similar thread regarding Slackware Current and got lots of useful replies.

Dear Frankbell, I have read your thread pretty carefully and am lost: to me it looks like your only problem was that button F3, which you forgot to press. Is it correct? In this case all "useful replies" were for nothing, because once you pressed that button everything started to work fine.

In my case the F3 button is not a problem (I can reproduce your "RF kill" if I want to). So my problem seems to be a little different: it looks like I am using a wrong ESSID name... or not?

How did you set up these values: ESSID? KEY? did you also copy them from the back of your wireless modem?

allend 03-15-2012 10:21 PM

Your device is supported by the broadcom-sta package that you can obtain at Slackbuilds.org. http://slackbuilds.org/repository/13.../broadcom-sta/

gabytf 03-16-2012 01:57 AM

Would install wicd solve your problem? i know if anything regarding wifi after fress install, wicd will solve it for you. that was what happened to me.

From the install CD, Extra folder look for wicd.copy the wicd txz file to root, then run installpkg.
Hope this can help.

frankbell 03-16-2012 08:28 PM

(grin) Well, I didn't point you there for my posts, but no, that wasn't the actual problem. That was the icing. I can assure that I had pounded the pulse out of the F3 before I posted here at LQ.

The actual problem was pointed out by this post. http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...7/#post4587736

I had installed broadcom-sta, then the b43-fwcutter, but I had not also installed b43-firmware. I needed all three. I had assumed that the broadcom-sta (or alternatively the broadcom-wl) included the firmware, but the firmware was in a separate package.

At least, that's how I reconstruct the crime. What I do know for sure it that it's been sound as a rock ever since.


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