how do I connect to a wireless network on fedora 8? I have BCM43xx.
 

I have problems in connecting to a wireless network. The thing is, I have the wireless card BCM43xx on my acer Laptop. What tools are there on F8 in order to connect to a WiFi network? Or else, how do I use the terminal to connect? Plese help me.

You will need to install ndiswrapper from the livna repository, http://rpm.livna.org/rlowiki/ once you get ndiswrapper to install the drivers you can use the system-config-network program to configure it. If you get stuck making ndiswrapper work then post back here with your problem.

After installing ndiswrapper i got this message while activating wlan0"Determining IP information for lan0...SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory failed."

Fedora has started using the b43 driver for Broadcom chipsets and it is almost certainly present. However it doesn't work equally well with all of the chipsets Broadcom makes. One thing to keep in mind is that b43 and ndiswrapper are likely to interfere with each other if they are loaded at the same time. Have a look here for how to get b43 up and running and you might also do some searching here. B43 on Fedora caused quite a bit of confusion when they first started using it and there are a number of threads on how to get it going.

thedonkdonk gave you extremely bad advice.

ndiswrapper in incompatible with b43, and the b43 driver is "built in" to Fedora 8, so you must remove ndiswrapper. If you installed it from the livna repository, do a yum erase ndiswrapper to get rid of it.

Once that's done, you need to run sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware/b43/ <driver.sys> to get the copyrighted Broadcom firmware installed on your hard drive. (Note that "<driver.sys>" refers to the .sys file distributed by Acer for use with Windows operating systems on your laptop. If it's on a CD, you need to mount it and enter the full path to it in place of the "<driver.sys>" tag. If you're dual-booting and have the ntfs-3g driver installed, just mount your Windows file system and point to the sys file on that partition.)

When you installed ndiswrapper, you had to extract the firmware to use with it (although the format used by ndiswrapper is incompatible with that used by b43), so you should know where the sys file is located.

Once you have the copyrighted firmware installed, Fedora should display a "connection" applet on which you can right-click and select the network to which you wish to connect.

I am also having trouble connecting wirelessly with fedora 8. I have a atheros AR5006EG wireless card in my toshiba laptop. The card was detected in the network configuration utility, but i don't see a way to connect to a wireless network. If I try to activate the device, it immediately looks for an ip address without asking me which network. Do I still need the madwifi driver?

Thanks

Hello deepumnit

You are getting all sorts of very strongly worded advice here.

Let me just say that both the b43 driver and the ndiswrapper approach are possible for broadcom cards, I run a 4318 myself. But whichever method you set out upon should be the only one you choose to use or you can end up with both trying to control the card and neither succeeding.

If you use the ndiswrapper approach you should blacklist the b43 driver and it's associated parts.

If you use b43 then don't install, or uninstall, ndiswrapper.

Before making any firm decision I would suggest that you run the command:

/sbin/lspci -v

from a terminal window on your machine and copy and paste back the part that relates to your broadcom card so that we know just what it is we are dealing with.

By the way, I tried to enable my wifi (didn't work) and saved the configuration. I then enabled my eth0 then restarted because i didn't have an internet connection.

Now, when booting, It hangs at the line
"Bringing up interface wlan0: SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not supported
./ifp-wireless: line 60: 2033 Killed iwconfig $DEVICE channel $CHANNEL"

I am planning on running the recovery disc to fix this.

Thanks

Thank you all very much. I shall get back to this in around 3 hours of time.

Since you have an Atheros card, why don't you start a new thread. To be honest, your problem doesn't have anything to do with the one from the original poster and hijacking a thread is considered bad manners.

Re New thread.
 

Actually it does, as I am running fedora 8 and having problems connecting to a wireless network. I was taking advantage of the previous discussion, not hijacking the thread. Sorry.

Hey guys I am new to Fedora and pretty amateur at Linux in general. I am able to view "b43" in my network manager but the status says "system." when viewing the hardware tab. However my wired lan connection started up with little to no effort.

So I am guessing I have the above problem and am needing to update the firmware but when I try I get the following returned in the terminal.

Sorry, the input file is either wrong or not supported by b43-fwcutter.
This file has an unknown MD5sum cb8d70972b885b1f8883b943c0261a3c.

This is the command I entered " b43-fwcutter wl_apsta_mimo.o
"

So I am stumped I am normally a Windows user so when you give me terminal instructions please make them simple

Thanks
Geoff Moore

Hello betterthanyou

I think that what you are seeing is a result of the updating of information relating to the b43 driver and b43-fwcutter.

Certainly, the site I use to obtain information about firmware from:

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Dr...devicefirmware

has changes in the last couple of days.

There is a new version of the b43-fwcutter and new firmware.

I think the problem you are facing is that the b43-fwcutter in Fedora hasn't caught up with the changes yet.

It looks like you have three choices:

1. Wait and see if Fedora updates its b43-fwcutter.

2. Find out how to uninstall the existing b43-fwcutter and install the one from the site. Its not clear from my quick reading if you would need to update the b43 driver module as well.

3. Get hold of the earlier firmware that matches the fwcutter in Fedora.

The firmware you would be looking for is something called:

and the command to use it is modified to:

That command issued from within the folder that contains the wl_apsta.o file.

There is a wl_apsta.o file in the new driver package but the instructions on the link page above say that it won't work with the new fwcutter.

You may find that earlier firmware on the internet somewhere, alternatively, if you post back I have it stored here and we could work out a way to get it to you.


EDIT: A further thought is that the old fwcutter "may" work with the wl_apsta.o file in the new package. It's worth a try.

If you have the Windows .inf file for installing the driver on your Windows system, I think you can use it instead of the .o file from the site mentioned by bbfuller. (You'll also need the .sys file referenced in the .inf file.)

My laptop is set for dual booting, so I just pointed b43-fwcutter at the Windows drive and directory (after mounting the ntfs-3g file system) where the install had put the Broadcom drivers. But that was several months ago, so things (as bbfuller said) may have changed.

Hello PTrenholme

Yes, I agree and should have added it in my answer. In many instances you can use a functioning Windows XP driver as well. I've never actually done it, but I think you just need the .sys file, not the .inf. The two in combination is required when using ndiswrapper.

Still, if it doesn't work one way betterthanyou, you can always try the other. It will cause no harm.