I had some problems also with FC6 ( and Sabayon 3.2 ) for that matter with my internal bcm4318 wireless. I ran though "darkmage's" fwcutter procedure at:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/...m43xx+fwcutter , and was getting a connection, but I was losing packets and getting duplicate pings when I pinged any address, default router, dns,etc... I ripped that put and tried the ndiswrapper method. Same. tried re-installing. Same. WTF! I can't tell you how frustrating this was.. If you go over to the fedoraforums site and do a search for "duplicate pings" you will see my posts (and no replies). I could not believe that no-one was having the trouble I was having, the broadcom chipset is fairly common. I could switch back to my FC5 drive and wireless worked perfectly. Normally I do use ndiswrapper, and I dannot tell you how many times I have set up wireless on different distributions using the same method. I got it fixed now and here is what I think is the root problem.
First, there are many different versions of the broadcom chipset... do an "lspci", mine shows:
Quote:
02:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
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Take this chip/firmware and the 2.6.18 kernel and the bcm43xx kernel module and I think you are going to have a problem. My laptop and chip/card are > 3 years old now, many people have newer hardware <THEORY AND CONJECTURE> and that is the reason they are not having trouble with this procedure <THEORY AND CONJECTURE>. Fine go with ndiswrapper, only, I was having the same problem.
Just so happens I have made a couple of linux converts here at work. And as I was surfing for distros for them to try I found Sabayon 3.2. Looks cool, loaded it up. Going with ndiswrapper, had the same issue. OK. This is definitely a 2.6.18 issue. Hmmmmm... Searching far and wide I decided to look at the driver I was using. Going to Broadcom they will advise you to shuffle off to your pc/laptop manufacture (HP for me) and get the latest driver from them. Turns out the driver I was using (w/o and issues to this point) was from 2004, and an updated driver was available from May,2005.
SO.
the bcm43xx kernel module does not my broadcom hw/fw revision on kernel 2.6.18
kernel 2.6.18 does not like my OLD driver.
Why the long winded explaination? Because this was PAIN and it took several weeks to figure out. I just looked, 149 views and NO replies. Hell, I could even be wrong, but you would have to prove it to me.
OK.
#1 -- go get your latest windows driver from your hw reseller(HP for me).
Put the file in it's own folder, not just on your desktop unless you want a pile of miscellaneous windows files on your desktop.
#2 if you do not have "cabextract", go get it too
Quote:
yum -y install cabextract
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#3 get rid of that bcm43xx kernel module. I have not used the "modprobe -r" method used above, that might not hurt, But also add the following line:
blacklist bcm43xx
the "/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist" file. here is mine...
Quote:
[stephen@macbeth modprobe.d]$ cat blacklist
#
# Listing a module here prevents the hotplug scripts from loading it.
# Usually that'd be so that some other driver will bind it instead,
# no matter which driver happens to get probed first. Sometimes user
# mode tools can also control driver binding.
#
# Syntax: driver name alone (without any spaces) on a line. Other
# lines are ignored.
#
# 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 bcm43xx
# ISDN - see bugs 154799, 159068
blacklist hisax
blacklist hisax_fcpcipnp
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#4 Go to the folder where you have stuck your windows driver. In a console, run:
cabextract <your_file_here>
what you are looking for is the bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys files you can delete all the rest if you want. Those are the only two that you need. Move that folder to your home directory.
#5 Load the driver with ndiswrapper, giving the appropriate path to the bcmwl5.inf file.
ndiswrapper -i /path/to/your/driver/bcmwl5.inf
#6 Verify the driver is loaded.
ndiswrapper -l
#7 Add the line to modprobe.conf, you may already have it but if you run this again, can't hurt.
ndiswrapper -m
#8 Run the following commands to generate your module dependencies for hotplug
depmod -a
modprobe ndiswrapper
Now you should be all set. Do a reboot for good measure. When you come back up do a
iwconfig eth1 essid <your_accesspoint_essid_here>
If you are using encryption, run this command.. If you don't know what this is, skip it.
iwconfig eth1 key <your_key_here>
Now grab your ip for the interface...
dhclient eth1
Now, you should be good to go... A couple more commands you may want to be familiar with, run these and look at the output
ifconfig -a ----- lists all available network interfaces and their settings. here is mine...
[root@macbeth ~]# ifconfig -a
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:9F:2B:14:67
inet addr:192.168.1.33 Bcast:255.255.255.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:12867 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:6247 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:4433361 (4.2 MiB) TX bytes:799249 (780.5 KiB)
Interrupt:225 Base address:0xc800
eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:90:4B:44:99:3C
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:d2004000-d2006000
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:1747 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1747 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:3470352 (3.3 MiB) TX bytes:3470352 (3.3 MiB)
netstat -rn ----- lists your kernel routing table. Here is mine
[root@macbeth ~]# netstat -rn
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface
192.168.1.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
169.254.0.0 0.0.0.0 255.255.0.0 U 0 0 0 eth0
0.0.0.0 192.168.1.254 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 eth0
the 0.0.0.0 destination is your default router, if you do not have an entry here, you will not be able to connect
also take a look at /etc/resolv.conf, this is the file that holds your DNS servers...
Quote:
[stephen@macbeth ~]$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
; generated by /sbin/dhclient-script
nameserver 205.152.37.23
nameserver 205.152.132.23
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One last tip. Konquerer will display man pages in a format MUCH easier to read than just typing "man" at a terminal. Just type "man:depmod" and you will get the man page displayed for you.
That should do it..
Good Luck.