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I'm new to Linux and right now, more than slightly confused. After several days of reading documentation information, how-to's and posts on various Linux forums (noob's; general; networking; laptops) I can honestly say that I'm totally confused – and I must now start at square one again.
Here's what I have and what I'm trying to accomplish:
Dell, Inspiron 600m
Dual booting between XP Pro and Mandrake 9.1 (2.4.21)
Broadcom integrated ethernet adapter (bmc 5700)
Dell 1450 integrated wireless adapter (which I believe is a Broadcom chipset - bmc 4500)
Install went smoothly and everything (except the wireless) seems to be working properly. Linux recognized the bmc 5700 on install but not the wireless bmc 4500. I would like to have this operational and I'm reading where others are having success accomplishing this, in various ways (ndiswrapper; driverloader; kernel upgrade; changing distro's; etc,etc).
I wish to start at the beginning and would appreciate any assistance you may wish to offer.
1 - Exactly which (log) file/s would I need to check to see if the 4500 was noticed or ignored.
2 – If Linux failed to notice it, what must I do to make Linux aware of its presence and the process to accomplish this ?
From past readings I'm aware that there's some commands that need to be run to acquire some specific information. Please be patient with me as I come from the MS “point & click” environment and I'm currently in a confused and fragile state of mind over all the material I've consumed and tried to comprehend in addressing this problem myself.
The Broadcom wireless is there, just unknown. The CardBus bridge is also unknown. Would the cardbus issue be related to the broadcom issue or am I dealing with 2 separate issues? Any assistance is greatly appreciated.
If the card you are using is a broadcom you will be very disappointed to hear that broadcom doesnt like us linux folk and they are unwilling to release any drivers to the linux community. I have a broadcom on my compaq and used Ndiswrapper along with the Windows XP drivers to get the wireless up and running. There are several posts out there that will give you how to's on the installation. Sorry I cant give you more details but check for Nidswrapper and make sure your card is compatible, then download it and the drivers (make sure you get a zipped version cause the .exe will give you more issues than you want to deal with right now) follow the instructions in the install file in ndiswrapper. I do know some people have had issues with different kernel versions, I would recommend getting the newest kernel and ndiswrapper out there and make sure you keep the kernel source code handy cause you will need it for ndiswrapper. Also be ready for some issues with your touchpad if you have one (there is a flaw in the newest kernel that causes scrolling and touchclicking to not work) there are work arounds for that though just check.
go look in the HCL under network, then broadcom. after you install the drivers using ndiswrapper, you need to add these two lines to your modprobe.conf file:
Thank you for your assistance. I had tried "driverloader" several days ago and when I tried to access the browser I received an error, so I started thinking the system was unaware of the wireless card. Yesterday I tried driverloader (free trial) again and it seemed to work. I did - eht0 down / eth1 up and tried to connect - no luck - yet. Then I remembered that wep must be turned off. I'll be trying later today to see if it will work. If indeed it does do the trick, I'll then attempt (?) installing ndiswrapper (I need the practice).
It was a lot of hit and miss and I'm still wondering about a few things;
the IP dhcp sends to the NIC (wired - w/less) is binding only to the MAC ??
is it necessary for me to do a dhcp - release / dhcp - renew when I switch from wired to w/less ??
how must (and what must) I configure it to bring "up" the w/less (eth1) as the default ??
can a script be created to check first for a wired connection and if found bring "up" eth0 and if not leave eth1 "up" ??
if you follow the directions listed in the HCL, ndiswrapper will configure your wlan card as wlan0. also in the HCL are the contents of a script file you will need to create in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ called "ifcfg-wlan0". mine looks like this:
this means it will turn on when i start FC2. if you don't want eth0 to start, then you can edit the script called "ifcfg-eth0", as root, to say "onBOOT=no". your first question is something that i can't answer for you. later today i will post detailed instructions of what i did to get mine to work, and hopefully, it'll work for you.
Initially setup the AP for WEP & MAC access only. Reset the AP to factory default and I am now connected to the network. Unfortunately, I'll need to change the settings again to secure the AP - but that's another day.
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