Kernel upgrade, ndiswraper, google, still no wireless
Hello Happy Linux Users. I'm going to say right off I've Googled my little heart out over this, been cracking on it since July. That said...
I'm running an HP Pavilion zd8215us laptop, with a built-in Broadcom driver. (Yes, I've read the thousands of threads out there that start like this.) I'm using openSUSE 10.1. lspci -vv spits out the following (including both eathernet and wireless card): Code:
0b:02.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10) I have tried everything to get that last [disabled] to enabled. I've tied ndiswrapper: Code:
ndiswrapper -l Upgraded the kernel. I am now using 2.6.19. Tried adding the card again, still nothing. (The output of lspci didn't change, either; not sure if it was supposed to. The wireless is the ONLY THING here I can't get to work period, and I'd really rather surf on strange foreign networks (coffee shops, libraries, etc.,) on Linux than Windows. The network I've been trying to get onto is the wireless in the campus library. I figured it'd be a good one since the network itself is unencrypted, so I can save WEP/WPA woes for another time. :scratch: I put this out there hoping someone with more Linux intelligence than myself (not that that takes much; I've read wikis and all this stuff, but nothing's helped, even after the line "reboot and everything should work fine,") can look at this output and tell me what I'm doing wrong, if I'm doing something wrong. I did search the forum here before I posted this, but found nothing by someone with my exact problem. Thanks for your time. :) ****** This post by a :Pengy: :newbie: :study: |
what's the output from "ifconfig" ?
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Ack! Ment to post that.
Code:
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:C0:9F:BC:AA:E3 Code:
lo no wireless extensions. |
Ugh, I'm afraid I can't help you after all. I just tried 2.6.19 myself. I've only messed with it for a few minutes, but I have at least 2 problems with it. 1) "hald" doesn't run so automounting doesn't work and 2) you guessed it, it doesn't see my wireless card (ath0) from madwifi either. Issuing modprobe ath_pci gives me an error. I'll probably play with it some more. If I figure it out, I'll repost.
ADDED: Madwifi works my Atheros chipped card with the 2.6.19 kernel, but I had to change the Makefile.inc to disable error on Warning: #COPTS+= -Werror I still don't have hald working. |
I only upgraded because I'd been told and heard that 2.6.17 onward supported Broadcom devices.
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"I only upgraded because I'd been told and heard that 2.6.17 onward supported Broadcom devices."
You may be in luck! I found this thread: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...native+support CORRECTION: Looks like it's more more than just setting something in the kernel config file. |
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One thing to keep in mind is that you can't have both bcm43xx and ndiswrapper loaded at the same time. Ugliness will result. One final point about your iwconfig output. That suggests that you haven't loaded a driver. Are you loading ndiswrapper (modprobe ndiswrapper)? |
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I enabled ndiswrapper, though it obviously didn't "take" or something, and I'd followed the wiki on their site to the letter. :scratch: Working on fwcutter at the moment, but when I tried to unpack it last night, the command line just hung there for over an hour (that long because I kind of forgot about it....) and nothing got done. If I try and unpack it gui-style, I get that I don't have permission to change ownership or something, and this is as root. (I don't recall the exact error, as I am booted in Windows at this exact moment.) How would I enable the kernel Broadcom module? |
Hangdog42, wish I would've saw your site before! Would've saved me some time!
I have an Inspiron 1000 with a Dell 1350 (Broadcomm 4306) and this is how I got it working: 1. I compiled a 2.6.29 kernel from scratch (the latest stable as of now) 2. made sure to enable the 802.11 stack stuff (modules) including the broadcomm module (don't remember the exact locations in the ui menu, but looking at my config file, seems like these are the relevant options): Code:
CONFIG_IEEE80211=m So after I got my kernel and bcm43xx module (and everything not-related to wireless works), you should be able to do a Code:
# modprobe bcm43xx Code:
# lsmod|grep bcm 3. So that's the kernel, now you have to do broadcomm-specific stuff. Like Hangdog42 mentioned, you need fwcutter and a driver file. I got fwcutter from: http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/. do a configure && make. I go the driver file from Hangdog42's site (wl_apsta.o). Now run ./bcm43xx_fwcutter wl_apsta.o assuming you have wl_apsta.o in the same dir as the fwcutter you just built. An ls now looks like: Code:
bcm43xx-fwcutter bcm43xx_initval05.fw bcm43xx_microcode11.fw COPYING md5.c 4. Then, make sure you're root, and do make installfw, which really just puts all those .fw files in /lib/firmware 5. I put bcm43xx inside of /etc/modules too so that it comes up on boot, but I've found that if the card is inserted in the slot, the module gets loaded automatically. That should be all you have to as far as drivers and modules are concerned. Then the rest is all network configuration. My network is just set up like this: 1. wireless router(ip of 192.168.1.1) with WEP enabled 2. laptop with dell 1350 wireless card 3. pc connected to router with wire I use static ips as I only have 2 things on the network. This is how I configured my wireless connection: (make sure you have wireless-tools. on debian a simple #apt-get install wireless-tools) One thing I haven't figure out is where eth0 gets its name from. eth0 is my LAN connection while eth1 is my wireless card...I would like to name it something like wlan0, but no biggie. If you are able to do #iwconfig and you see a device that doesn't say "no wireless extensions", that's your card and you have is usable. This is what I see (before I configure wireless) Code:
# iwconfig So now we must configure the wireless connection. For me, all I have to do is give the essid, usually specify a 54Mb/s rate just because, and give the wep key (I also specify Managed mode cause I'll sometime play around with Monitor mode and forget that I'm still in monitor mode). So if my essid was: "homerouter", my wep key was: "thisismywpkey" (13 ascii characters...or 26 hex digits), this is how I would configure mine: Code:
#iwconfig eth1 essid "homerouter" bitrate 54Mb/s key s:thisismywpkey Code:
SoftMAC: Sent Authentication Request to 00:0F:8f:a3:19:9f. Code:
# ifconfig eth1 192.168.1.2/24 Code:
# route (just to see what's already there) Code:
nameserver 192.168.1.1 Now, at this point that's all I have to do... Do a #ifconfig eth1 up and if the light on the card turns on and you can ping google.com, it worked. You may have to do a #iwconfig eth1 essid "homerouter" again (no need to specify the other parameters). Oh yeah, one other thing I forgot, you should probably add this stuff to /etc/network/interfaces so that it gets configured on boot. This is how my file looks (with regards to the wireless-related stuff): Code:
iface eth1 inet static This long post was mainly for me :) I just got this all working last night! Edit: and yes the numbers and keys are all fake |
There are a couple of places in the kernel config you need to enable bcm43xx. The first is in Networking, you need to enable Generic IEEE 802.11 Networking Stack and Software MAC add-on. I also enable all the encryption option and the debugging output. Note that if you don't enable this stuff, you don't see the bcm43xx driver in the Device Drivers section.
Then, in Device Drivers > Network device support > Wireless LAN you'll find the bcm43xx driver itself. I would strongly suggest compiling these all as modules as you are likely going to want to have the option to not use bmc43xx. Quote:
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