Did 10.1 turn my wireless off?

1madstork · 05-15-2006, 09:14 AM

I have an hp/compaq nc6000 notebook with an Atheros 5212 card. The nc6000 has a button next to power that lets you turn on the card (or turn it off). You know wireless is on if a blue led is on.

10.1 didn't install it from the cd's so I downloaded madwifi. I had to install my kernel source from cd5 so make would work on madwifi but after that I did 'make', 'make install' and 'modprobe ath-pci' to load the driver. I then configured the card in Yast. It was on and it worked fine.

The problem is, after I restarted my system the blue led didn't come on indicating that my wireless wasn't on. Nothing happened when I pressed the wireless button next to the power button. Kinternet was showing no connection but when I typed 'lsmod' the ath-pci module showed up and nothing changed in my Yast configuration. I haven't run any updates yet.

Did 10.1 somehow turn off my wireless card? Does anyone know how to get it on again?

Thanks.

infamous_pb · 05-15-2006, 07:45 PM

I have the same problem and I have an HP L2000 laptop and a built-in Broadcom wireless. I've tried everything and I can't even get it to install. What gives?

jschiwal · 05-15-2006, 08:33 PM

Is there a file in /etc/modprobe.d/ that matches the name of your kernel module.
I have a broadcom wireless device that uses ndiswrapper. There is a file
/etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper

cat ndiswrapper
alias wlan0 ndiswrapper

I don't know if the madwifi installation was supposed to do this, or what alias it uses by default. Maybe wlan0, ath0 or eth1.

Also, do you have a /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-<interface> file. For <interface> would be the device name, such as wlan0 or eth1. This is the file that the network interface setup is a front end for.

You might try running the root commands "depmod -a" and "ldconfig". Sometimes an installation fails to run those, or they failed for some reason. The second is for libraries and might not be used. Also, make sure you have wireless-tools and wpa_supplicant installed.

Also look at "cat /proc/net/device". Is your wireless device included?

The fact that you can modprobe the kernel module is encouraging. Do you have a /proc/net/<wireless-kernel-module>/<device-name>/hw file. The last line may give what encryption is supported. For example on my laptop:
sudo cat /proc/net/ndiswrapper/wlan0/hw
beacon_period=100 msec
...
encryption_modes=WEP; TKIP with WPA; AES/CCMP with WPA

Did you try running YaST -> network interfaces setup after modprobing the kernel module?

Do you have a /etc/sysconfig/hardware> cat hwcfg-static-0 or similar file with contents that look similar to this:
MODULE='ath-pci'
MODULE_OPTIONS=''
STARTMODE='auto'

The name may look like "hwcfg-bus-pci-0000:02:01.0" instead.

If all else fails, and yast won't load the kernel module when booting, you might try adding the kernel module to the MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT variable in the /etc/sysconfig/kernel configuration script. However this may not be proper way of doing things.

Good Luck!

infamous_pb · 05-15-2006, 09:23 PM

I am very new to linux, so let me try to answer some of your questions:

In my /etc/modprobe.d/, the only files that I have are:
blacklist
ibm_acpi
ipw2100
ipw2200
nvidia
prism2
sound
tv

In my /usr/src/, there is a linux-2.6.16.13-4-obj directory. I assume that is my current kernel?

In my /etc/sysconfig/network/, anything that starts with “ifcfg” are:
ifcfg.template
ifcfg-eth-id-00:16:36:2c:de:9c
ifcfg-lo

I ran "depmod -a" and "ldconfig". Was something supposed to happen? After I entered each, it thought about it and returned to the command line.

How would I get “wireless-tools” and “wpa_supplicant” installed? Where are they located? Do I download them? Where?

I do not have a “device” dirctory in "/proc/net/", but I do have a “wireless” file there.

I just ran the “network interfaces setup” (it took me a while to find it in YaST – it was called NIS Server). No noticable differences after I installed it.

In my /etc/sysconfig/hardware directory, the only files that I have as you described are: hwcfg-bus-pci-0000:05:00.0 and hwcfg-vpid-1002-4370-103c-3091
I opened the hwcfg-bus-pci-0000:05:00.0 and it contains:
MODULE='8139too'
MODULE_OPTIONS=''
STARTMODE='auto'

In the kernel file from the /etc/sysconfig directory, the MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT just says – MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT=""

I've tried looking on HP's and Broadcom's website for Linux drivers for my built-in wireless card, but cannot seem to find any.

Any other ideas? I really appreciate your help! I'm a total noob.

jschiwal · 05-16-2006, 10:28 PM

infamous: This one is the NIC interface: hwcfg-bus-pci-0000:05:00.0
use the command "lspci-v" to get information on your wireless device. If you are dual booting, and both windows and linux are 32 bit (not amd64), then the driver that ndiswrapper needs ( the .inf and .sys files ) are in the windows partition.

I have an HP zv5000 laptop. It has an Amd64 chip, so I had to locate a 64 bit windows driver. I found a link to one at the www.linuxant.com website. My laptop also uses a broadcom wireless device:

Code:

~/Documents> /sbin/lspci -v | sed -n '/Broadcom/,/^$/p'
02:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company: Unknown device 12f4
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 201
        Memory at 00000000e0104000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]

> /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
netbc564                driver present, hardware present

If your system is 32 bit, you will be able to find the driver googling for it. Linksys uses the same ndis driver . Look for BCMWL5.INF and BCMWL5.SYS. Some people on this site have had better luck using the BCMWL5A.INF for some broadcom wireless devices, but I think that may be for PCI wireless cards.

If you dual boot, search for these files in your Windows partition. After you install the ndis driver ( or should I say wrap it ), the interface may show up in the YaST network interfaces dialog.