OK. Here's the deal.
I just bought a Buffalo Air Station WLI-CB-G54HP card.
According to lspcio, it's the good ol' bcm43xx chip.

OK. bcm43xx loads as a module, plus it's attendant 80211 stuff, according to lsmod.
I have run bcm43xx-fwcutter to get the firmware files.

The card starts, lights come on, but thats about it.

I have to manually "iwconfig eth1 essid on", "iwlist scan", then it connects to a WAP.

But does not get dhcp
Ideas ?
(Except ndiswrapper. I'm still getting errors from a previous attempt at ndiswrapper.There is a conf file somewhere thats trying to load it)

You've probably already done these, but:

You say that ndiswrapper is trying to load. Have you verified that it is unsuccessful?

Have you tried requesting the dhcp address manually with dhcpcd?

Brian

I was going to ask the same thing about dhcpcd. Did you, after installation update /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf and /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf to reflect the wireless informatin (essid, WEP key if needed, etc) and tell the startup process to run dhcpcd against that particular interface?

He's not using NdisWrapper, he's using the bcm43xx kernel module.

OK...I did not give enough info.
I roam. ALOT. Never same essid, so that way is out. No WEP. And why should I tell it? Shouldn't rc.inet1 do it? using rc.inet1.conf?

If you don't have a WEP listed for a particular network it is not going to connect without manual intervention. You say that you roam frequently-if the scanning is detecting several networks that require keys it is not going to connect until you choose a network and give it the wep key.

First, try to connect at one particular WAP without WEP and preferably right next to it physically. It has to at least be able to do that.

Wrong. I connect all the time without specifying a network using my rt2500 card

And where did I say I was using WEP or WPA?
As a matter of fact:The issue is that it won't connect/get dns addy.

Ideas on resolving this? Except telling me that I have to specify my WAP?

My sincerest condolences.

Have you tried running wpa_supplicant? Yeah, I know you're going after open APs, but my experience with roaming is that if wpa_supplicant doesn't pick up one of the APs in its config file, it will pick up the strongest AP, regardless of whether it is encrypted or not. What it doesn't do is request an IP address, but that should be easily dealt with in a script.

I think...

Check the RT2500 configuration and imitate all the configuration to the BCM43xx.
It is not hard actually.

1. IP Address == ifconfig eth1 192.168.1.2 note: replace eth1 with your wlan
2. Gateway == route add default gw 192.168.1.1
3. DNS Server == edit /etc/resolv.conf, add
nameserver 192.168.1.1

replace all ip address with the appropriate ip address.

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This is since I have the same problem with my BCMWL5. Sometimes, dhcpcd don't work, although it work in windows.

Thanks

Relevant areazs of rc.inet1.conf are identical.

wpa_supplicant not even installed on this box

Picking am AP is no issue, truckstops usually only have one essid in the lot

This is specific to the bcm43xx chip, so what gives?