Hi...

Awesome, glad you got it working! I'd be curious to know the answer to Shadow_7's question, too. :)

Regards...

ah... thankyou shadow7, I dare say I have inadvertently used b43-fwcutter without realizing in my scurry to fix this issue... now the downside here is after rebooting, the wireless network wlan disappeared again, just leaving the Ethernet available. I opened terminal again, re-pasted the code and ... wallah... wireless. How does one make sure the session and its changes are embedded for next boot? I have strolled around the standard access of settings etc, though haven't been able to save them.

... thanks again ardvark71, yes I am also a little curious as to the mend... by the way, it's happy wave day in aus... so... a huge wave to you all.!.!.!

You're welcome, a big wave to you, too! :)

Just out of curiosity, the next time you boot into PCLinuxOS, before doing anything else, navigate to "/lib/firmware/b43" using your file manager (whatever that is for your version of PCLinuxOS) and see if this folder exists in that location. If so, is the firmware file inside of it? Please let us know.

If you're using the KDE Desktop environment, the file manager might be called "Dolphin."

Regards...

In terms of custom kernel modules, every time the kernel updates, they go away. Otherwise I'm not sure why your thing is changing at reboot unless something is funky like read-only or a ram based distro like puppy. You might try removing the udev auto detected stuff and rebooting, one trick to get eth0 again when moving sticks across several machines.

$ sudo rm /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
$ sudo shutdown -r now

The firmware should remain, as long as you were root when you copied it to the firmware location. Just remember that you need new firmware when you do a fresh install. One other possibility is that you have the wifi module blacklisted in /etc/modprobe.d/ so you have to manually load it after booting.

$ egrep -r -i blacklist /etc/modprobe.d/* | grep -i b43

Also the b43 driver is odd since there's a b43-legacy variant. Most things should use the b43 driver though, the legacy one is REALLY REALLY legacy, AKA OLD. And the 4318 isn't "that" old.

there is a b43 folder with a load of files, and an empty b43 legacy folder. Not sure what I was looking for in the blacklist files, nothing looks familiar with any file-names, here's the list in-case my other post didn't pop up

blacklist snd-usb-audio
blacklist snd_pcm_oss
blacklist snd_mixer_oss
blacklist snd_seq_oss
blacklist pata_acpi
blacklist rivatv
blacklist i82875p_edac
blacklist usbkbd
blacklist usbmouse
blacklist pcspkr
blacklist snd-pcsp
blacklist ssb
blacklist ssb

the blacklist comp folder has this


# watchdog drivers
blacklist i8xx_tco

# framebuffer drivers
blacklist aty128fb
blacklist atyfb
blacklist radeonfb
blacklist i810fb
blacklist cirrusfb
blacklist intelfb
blacklist kyrofb
blacklist i2c-matroxfb
blacklist hgafb
blacklist nvidiafb
blacklist rivafb
blacklist savagefb
blacklist sstfb
blacklist neofb
blacklist tridentfb
blacklist tdfxfb
blacklist virgefb
blacklist vga16fb
blacklist viafb
blacklist matroxfb_base

# ISDN - see bugs 154799, 159068
blacklist hisax
blacklist hisax_fcpcipnp

observation:

upon startup I have wlan and an ethernet in the network centre window.
try to start wlan commection... connection failure.
open terminal issue commands - 'rmmod -f b43' and then 'modprobe b43'
try the wireless connection again and I have a successful connection.

restart after saving session and I get a connection failure again until I do the two commands in terminal window.

You might try:

$ sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

Before trying to use the interface. That should "load" the module and such. Also "modprobe -r" is the modern way of rmmod. When you have a quirky driver you'll need to unload and reload to regain device usability again. Finding / using different firmware can help with some hardware.

https://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/

For an old dell I have I have to use b43-fwcutter on:
broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2

Where the distro grabs:
broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2

by default when you install b43-fwcutter. Also in that case the fwcutter from debian wheezy and with the --unsupported flag to get the firmware. Which seems to be missing from the version that ships with jessie. Hopefully I'll get around to a stretch install soon. Most likely quirky drivers will always be quirky, so a dongle or ddwrt client_bridge setup might be a better option since you can join the N and AC generation of connection speeds. I like doing the bridge route since wifi can be quite a resource hog on low spec'd computers. Plus when the lease renews or other interruptions happen, you get more of a latency effect on your local machine, instead of a disconnect effect.

well you're certainly right about the 'quirky' drivers, hit and miss that's for sure. Ok... maybe this could throw a light on the issue. After numerous re-starts and log off/ons, in both root and user modes, I have broken the commands to one that lets me connect every time... rmmod -f b43. That's all I have to enter into the terminal.

I know when it won't connect (when the network name is highlighted when I open the Network Centre) as opposed to after running rmmod -f b43 in the terminal, then the NC opens without any highlighted network, and when I select mine... it connects fine.

seems like when I run the rmmod command and then open NCenter, it gives me a fresh choice of available networks. Is there some code I could use to make it carry out this function each start, I know that would be a workaround, though that seemed to let wlan work every time. At least the puter boots wlan-up now.

... naaa, I am going to do a full re-install of the latest PcLos, it works fine on my other machine, thanks all for your help.