Hi,

I am having trouble getting my wireless card working. I have a Compaq R4000 laptop and I've gotten the wireless to work in Ubuntu 5.10 just fine with ndiswrapper. I followed a guide from http://fedoramobile.org/fc-wireless/...g-ndiswrapper/ and everything worked until the last step. The card doesn't seem to be in the list as there is only one Broadcom card listed there. FYI the last step is going into System > Administration > Network and clicking New and setting up a new card. I am getting kind of frustrated as I at least know it works but don't know what to do next.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

**Edit**
Ok, I tried a different thing, bcm43xx-fwcutter, and it worked! I was connected through wireless! However, after I reboot, the card changes to being called eth1 (bcm43xx) to being called just plain eth1. This f**ks everything up because it thinks it's a totally different card. It says, no, the new card isn't there, so fail networking. It's the gayest thing. How do I get it to "stick" after reboot?

Hope someone can help!

Shaun

Ok come on people someone has at least have some ideas after 38 views of this thing and no reply.

I had similar issues with the bcm43xx driver in debian, when you booted the system you never knew if it was eth1 or eth2. I am using ndiswrapper without problems.

You may need to remove the bcm43xx driver before trying the following

In a terminal enter "lsmod" as root if ndiswrapper is not listed enter "modprobe ndiswrapper"
try "lsmod" again if ndiswrapper is listed try "iwconfig" and see if there is wlan0.

If wlan0 is listed you will next need to enter your encryption key if any
"iwconfig wlan0 key XXXXXXXXX" the enter "dhclient wlan0" at that point the wireless indicator should start flashing, that is if you are using the 64bit Fedora

fedora is poo with wireless and ndiswrapper, from what i can tell!! Basically, you have to make sure that fedora lists you device as wlan0 and not eth1. To do this, make sure that you have no drivers installed in ndiswrapper (ndiswrapper as root will tell you how to delete the drivers). Then reinstall the driver but after you have done type
ndiswrapper -m. This will but an alias wlan0 (your driver) in /etc/modprobe.conf so it doesn't list it as eth1. This might help hopefully!!

Thanks for the info! All I did was reinstall the driver with ndiswrapper and the wireless light came on after I did modprobe. Whatever, I guess that's sweet anyway that it works now lol. However, now my problem is I have to 'modprobe ndiswrapper' after every reboot to get it working again. Not a big deal, but kind of annoying. Where can I tell it to do that at each boot? By the way I am using 64-bit...but I have another question as well: At boot sometimes I experience this thing where the screen just has a bunch of lines flickering across the screen. I can see the login window come up, and if I type in my stuff, it logs in, but the screen is still weirding out. Usually it occurs when I choose restart through the menu. If I shut if off for a few seconds and then back on it's fine. I don't know what it is. The weird thing is that the boot screen before login shows up perfectly, it's just when it gets to the login that it starts fritzin' out. Anyway I'm on wireless now so...cool.

Glad to here you got it working. Did you try doing depmod -a (as root) then modprobe ndiswrapper. This should make it stick, but i know that there has been some issues with ndiswrapper in FC5 so have a google around. Also in your wireless network connections, there will be a setting for start device on startup, did you check this box??

I didn't have that box checked. However, when I did check it, it didn't start up properly during boot. Then when I went into the System > Administration > Network thing and pressed activate, it started up, so something is fishy about it, but whatever.

Thanks for the help. I should be able to get it from here.

I did some stuff with the broadcom driver using ndiswrapper.
You could propably use it, just replace the 64-bit stuff with 32 bit stuff

To all whom it might be usefull to:

Sources (Webpages that where usefull)
Many thanks to Matthew Rogers. His page was very helpfull, but i needed some more
http://www.runithard.com/HOWTO-BCOM64WIRELESS/

Another page i visited to get info regarding the installation and configuration:
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/m.../index.php/WPA

Some history:
On this laptop Fedora Core 4 has been running for while using the ndiswrapper and the 64-bit driver for windows.
My access point was using WEP encryption.This worked flawlessly.

Then i decided it was time to upgrade to Fedora Code 5, and: Bye Bye Wireless network.
Also i decided that it was time for some WPA-PSK configuration on my AP.

The present:
So after some long evenings trying to get the bcm43xx driver ( it is in the FC5 distro) to work,
a couple (of thousand) of total laptop freezes later, i decided to go back to the ndiswrapper.
Here's how i got it to work.

System configuration:
- HP nx9105, AMD 64 3400+
- 2 Gb memory
- Dual boot ( Windows XP (yes, i know, need it for my work), Fedora Core 5)
- 80 Gb 7200rpm disk
- Fedora Core 5 ( kernel: 2.6.17-1.2145_FC5 ) (x86_64)
- bcm4303 onboard card

First of all:

Remove the bcm43xx driver from the startup modules.
When installing the ndiswrapper it is not usefull anymore, and it might get in the way.
I added a line to the file: /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

blacklist bcm43xx

I also added some &*##*((@&((# comments in this file about the driver, but thats purely for my own pleasure.
No offense: The guys at berlios are probably doing a great job, it just didn't work for me.

When i got this out of my system (double meaning ) i rebooted.

Second thing to do, download/install some stuff:

- 64 bit windows drivers
http://www.runithard.com/HOWTO-BCOM6...4g_Drivers.zip
- Source from ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net, i used 1.19
Source for wpa_supplicant. ( this is same version Fedora provided at the time i wrote this)
- http://atrpms.net/dist/fc5/wpa_suppl...t.src.rpm.html
- yum install kernel-devel ( you might need some more things like the gcc compiler)

Third thing to do:
Unzip the windows drivers
You will get two files: BCMWL564.SYS and netbc564.inf
Don't do anything with them, you will need them in the following step.

Fourth thing to do:
untar/gunzip the ndiswrapper sources ( tar xvfz ndiswrapper-1.19.tar.gz)
Install ndiswrapper.
See the file INSTALL in the directory "ndiswrapper-1.19". It is very clear and monkey proof.
You will need the windows drivers now.

Fifth thing to do:
Install the wpa_supplicant sources. Very straight forward: rpm -ivh wpa_supplicant-0.4.9-11.rhfc5.at.src.rpm
If the rpm installation complains it cannot find/create the directory /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES, then create it yourself and re-isssue the command.
Go to the directory: /usr/src/redhat/SOURCES.
untar/unzip the file wpa_supplicant-0.4.9.tar.gz (tar xvfz wpa_supplicant-0.4.9.tar.gz)
do into the directory wpa_supplicant-0.4.9 and create the file ".config" with the
following lines in there:

CONFIG_DRIVER_NDISWRAPPER=y
CONFIG_CTRL_IFACE=y

save the file and issue the command: "make"
If no errors, then issue the command: "make install"

You will now have a new wpa_supplicant installed on your system, one which includes support for the ndiswrapper
Fedora does not included this options, i think.
I could not get it to work with the standard fedora version.

The sixted (thats not good english, is it?) thing to do:
I made a backup of the file /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf and added some lines/changed it.
My configuration file now looks like this:
---------------------------------------------------
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=wheel

#network={
# ssid="any"
# key_mgmt=NONE
#}

network={
ssid="<my ssid>"
psk="< my secret>"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
proto=WPA
}

---------------------------------------------------

The seventh thing to do:

Put one hand before your eyes and peek through your fingers.
With the other hand type:

ifconfig wlan0 up
wpa_supplicant -Dwext -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -dd

And then you will see a lot of rubbish, uhh i mean debug info scrolling over your screen.
The last lines should look something like below:
---------------------------------------------------
State: GROUP_HANDSHAKE -> COMPLETED
CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to 00:11:d8:43:80:e2 completed (auth)
EAPOL: External notification - portValid=1
EAPOL: External notification - EAP success=1
EAPOL: SUPP_PAE entering state AUTHENTICATING
EAPOL: SUPP_BE entering state SUCCESS
EAP: EAP entering state DISABLED
EAPOL: SUPP_PAE entering state AUTHENTICATED
EAPOL: SUPP_BE entering state IDLE
EAPOL: startWhen --> 0
---------------------------------------------------

And then you give the command: "ifconfig"

AND YOU STILL DON'T HAVE A IP-ADDRESS

And thats quite logical, jim, because you have to start the dhclient to get one.
so: dhclient wlan0

And we have a ip-address.

So when i got this ip-address i unplugged my normal network cable and i could get to the internet.
This probably means i have a wireless connection......................

And now it is 03:05 AM and lets write something to document my journey.
Result: This document.

Lets see if i can post it somewhere............. via a wireless network connection.

PS: One warning though, when you update your kernel, you will have to re-install, relink, etc, etc the ndiswrapper.

PSS: You will have to demonize everything, putit in a script, hang it in your rc scripts, whatever, but now it is 03:29 AM and i want to go to sleep