I'm setting up Ubuntu Linux 6.10 on an Acer Aspire 5003 laptop. I tried Suse Linux about three years ago and found it cumbersome and difficult to update anything (there were always missing lib files). Now Synaptic seems to handle everything very smoothly, packages and updates. Problems are with the hardware - I rewrote part of the etc/X11/xorg.conf file to get Ubuntu to display 1280x800 resolution but I am having no success with the wireless broadband connection. Two questions. Does anyone know why wireless appears on eth1 rather than wlan0? Second question has anyone got the Broadcom BCM 4318 Air Force 1 to work recently? My router is a Netgear DG834G which works fine on a wired connection.

I got a 4318 to work just a week ago (finally). I use a 64 bit kernel, so I'd use different drivers, but you shouldn't have a problem getting them. My suggestion is to completely give up on any thoughts of using the native bcm43xx driver on this chipset. Go for ndiswrapper.

You can find the .inf and .sys drivers at these places

http://biginoz.free.fr/linux/bcmwl5a.inf
http://biginoz.free.fr/linux/bcmwl5.sys

first, blacklist the 43xx driver with the following command
sudo echo "blacklist bmm43xx" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

then follow any ndiswrapper tutorial. Here's one to get you started:
http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/m...dex.php/Ubuntu

Yes, I have the Broadcom BCM 4318 Air Force 1 working just fine (I using it to make this reply possible). Depending on your kernel you may want to blacklist the bcm43xx kernel module and use the latest version ndiswrapper. Two things to watch out for with the kernel, which may require a rebuild. The first is the 4k_stack problem, disable this option in the kernel hacking section. The other is with some of the newer kernels the kernel source ~/kernel/module.c file needs a small modification, open the file with any text editor and search for ndiswrapper and remove the two lines that looks like;

Also remember if your running a 64-bit kernel you need the 64-bit Windows driver, the same holds true for a 32-bit kernel you need the 32-bit Windows driver.

BTW, did
System -> Preferences -> Screen Resolution fail to detect your hardware, or did you just not see it?

--Edit--
After typing this, I realized that it sounded hostile, which I didn't intend for it to. I'm sorry, just bad with words.

Had the same problem with a Dell Inspiron 1300 which also uses the Broadcom BCM 4318 Air Force 1.

I use openSuse 10.1. I installed ndiswrapper with YaST, and went though their instructions to set up the card and it made it eth1 and it wouldn't work. Uninstalled ndiswrapper, downloaded the lates version from SourcForge, installed it from the command line and used a downloaded bcmwl5 driver. That all worked fine, and it starts up and automatically logs on to the network without any problems.

This laptop belongs to my Mum, and I wanted a Linux distro rather than use the XP it came with. Suse found all the hardware, including the widescreen 12800x800 display. It even setup the Fn keys for brightness, volume and speaker mute, and the battery monitors work correctly.

Apart from installing the latest versions of Firefox & Thunderbird, everything is just as it came "out of the box", except for the wireless card driver.

I'm positive you could change that if you wanted to, but it shouldn't matter what the device is called; it's an ethernet device afterall, and actually your Linux doesn't know if it works wired or wireless, it just needs to know how to work with the physical card. I'm not sure if the name is up to which distribution or a version of a certain package you have, but nevertheless it certainly is not a problem if it's not wlan0 or eth1. On the contrary, I'd see it so that it's better when it's ethN, since it tells it's an ethernet device; for many scripts it would be a bit easier to understand ethN devices rather than both ethN and wlanN along with other possibilities.

Replying to PatrickNew's very useful comments - I have added a line to the end of the etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file to blacklist the BCM43xx driver. Then I installed ndiswrapper using Synaptic packege manager, got the bcmwl5a.inf and bcmwl5.sys files downloaded and installed so now ndiswrapper -l shows 'bcmwl5a driver istalled, hardware present'. Progress! Unfortunately this is a stopping point. No sign of the wireless network eth1 actually doing anything although, in Networking, choosing eth1 I've ticked the enable box and told it the name of my Netgear router and that it's address is 192.168.0.1. Just to recap, it is finding the router and connecting with no problem on the wired connection.

Re: Lenards comment - at this stage in my Linux career I'm sorry but I couldn't face rebuilding a kernel. This seems to be going back to the black and white screen DOS days ie tinkering with the spark plug gap when I really just want a smooth-running vehicle with minimum time spent with my head in the engine. The Acer Aspire 5003 has an AMD Turion 64 Mobile ML-32 which I believe is 32-bit so the standard drivers should be okay?

Regarding the resolution issue, Ubuntu simply logged the screen and graphic card as Generic and the Resolution menu only offered me up to 1024x768 maximum. As I say I had to rewrite the file with the name of the screen 'Acer 15.4' and the card 'SISM760GX' and rplace 'vesa' with 'sis'.

I'm glad sadiqdm had a smooth ride with Suse. I will just have to keep slogging on.

Re: bOuncer's comment. I'm a simple soul. I thought that wlan0 is standard nomenclature (good word that) for a wireless network connection? In which case ubuntu is off on its own and I'm curious why?

Thanks to everyone for their support at this trying time.

I sent my last message twice by mistake. Sorry.

The Acer laptop CPU (AMD Turion 64 Mobile ML-32) is a 64-bit processor and in fact the laptop is the same as mine (5002) except for the CPU (AMD Turion 64 Mobile ML-30). The drivers matter only for the OS version anyhow not the CPU type, if your running a 32-bit OS use the 32-bit drivers, if the OS is 64-bit use the 64-bit drivers. Using the wrong driver (ie the 32-bit instead of the 64-bit driver) will not allow you use the wireless device.

Hints: uname -a and iwlist eth1 scan

I also said depending on which kernel your running you might have to rebuild your kernel. Aparentally the kernel you using does not need rebuilding. It does not matter what the device is called ethX works just as good as wlanX as long as you use the same naming thoughtout the wireless configuration. You might want to add the GATEWAY setting in your ifcfg-wlanX or ifcfg-ethX file (whichever one is being used), sample example below;

$ cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0
# Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
# for the documentation of these parameters.
ONBOOT=yes
USERCTL=yes
IPV6INIT=no
PEERDNS=no
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=wlan0 <----you might want to use eth1 here instead
HWADDR=
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
GATEWAY=192.168.0.1
DHCP_HOSTNAME=Asprie5003
DOMAIN=
ESSID=
CHANNEL=6
MODE=Managed
RATE=Auto

Thank you for your comments.
I ran uname -a and got the following:
computername then 2.6.17-10-generic #2 SMP Fri Oct 13 18:45:35 UTC 2006 i686 GNU/Linux

iwlist eth1 scan produced: eth1 no scan results

How can I check if the OS is 32 or 42-bit?

Ref: the etc/sysconfig file. This doesn't exist in my ubuntu file system. I would like to be able to access the init files but don't know their location.

Running the command ifconfig eth1 produces:
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWAddr 00:16:CE:87:81:CC
UP 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)
Interrupt:217 Memory:e20000000=e2002000

Which I guess is a very detailed way of simply saying that nothing is happening.

usr/share/doc/initscripts contains three files: changelog.Debian.gz, copyright and README.Debian.gz. The .gz files won't open with the text editor and the copyright notice is short and says the pasckage is used at start and shutdown of Debian systems.

Incidentally in Network Settings a Wireless connection is reported and ticked and in the Properties it describes it as eth1 and the 'Enable this connection' is ticked.

I will not be available for a few days but any ideas gratefully received - as much as anything its getting system info. out of ubuntu that I seem to be struggling with. I will look into the Broadcom drivers situation again in due course,

Have you tried just going to -system -administration -networking
and activating the wireless. Just wondered.

This may be a distro difference, but when I got my 4318 working on Fedora, if the bcm43xx driver found the wireless, it would name it eth1, and when ndiswrapper found it, it named it wlan0. Perhaps this means that the bcm43xx module is still murking about? Just an odd suspicion with absolutely nothing to back it up.