Hi all,

I've just started using Linux (Mandriva 2006) after a friend recommended I give it a try. I found a couple of old PCs and installed Mandriva 2006 and a couple of Linksys Wireless G cards (WMP54G - Broadcom based).

I've got a wireless network in my house that is entirely Linksys based. My wireless router attached to my cable modem is a WRT54G router which has recently had its firmware updated. My Windows PCs use WMP54G PCI cards bought about a year ago so I thought I would buy the same for the Linux boxes.

Mandriva went on no problem, detected the wireless cards but that's where the progress stopped. I've tried installing all sorts of drivers using ndiswrapper etc but still get no connection. The wlan0 interface is up but the signal strength is non-existent. When I got the network monitoring application and choose connect wifi, the connection fails. I'm no wireless guru so I'm not sure what the settings need to be. I set the wireless connection to be auto. It defaulted to ad-hoc so I guess everything is ok. I never had to do any major work with the Windows boxes except for set my SSID (I've currently got no security on the network) so I'm not sure what to set on the Linux machines. I don't know what to do next. I don't want to give up because Linux looks quite cool and I want to know more about it but at this rate, I'm spending more time on my Windows box looking for Linux information than doing anything with Linux.

Anyway, this is what I've got:

ndiswrapper-1.2.3

Wireless card drivers installed on my Linux box:
lsbcmnds
wmp54gs.sys
wmp54gsa.sys

The closest I got to the thing working was with lsbcmnds (installed from the CD that came with the card). At one point, I managed to get a wireless connection configured but it kept failing when I attempted to start it. What am I doing wrong?

Has anybody got this card to work properly with Mandriva?

Any help help would be greatly appreciated.

Kind Regards,
Charles.

Welcome to LQ!

We need to figure out what ndiswrapper is up to here. If you could post the output of ndiswrapper -l, it would be helpful. Also the outputs of ifconfig and iwconfig. I'm guessing that your SSID isn't set, but we need a bit more info to really diagnose what is happening.

Ok. I've put together as much information I can to get an idea what is going on. At the moment, the machine shows wlan0 as up but I still can't get on to the internet. I can't even ping my other machines. Something is still wrong but I have no clue what it is.

Network is up on wlan0 but cannot connect to the Internet. I've set the IP address to static because dhcplient failed the discovery process (my wireless router is configured to be the DHCP server). Thanks for the help so far.

Charles.

[root@conrod ~]# ifconfig
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:376 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:376 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:25121 (24.5 KiB) TX bytes:25121 (24.5 KiB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:12:17:94:46:F8
inet addr:192.168.1.105 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::212:17ff:fe94:46f8/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING 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)
Memory:e6000000-e6001fff

[root@conrod ~]# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"home" Nickname:"conrod"
Mode:Auto Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: BA:7C:5C:A2D:A3
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power:14 dBm
RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-57 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:347 Missed beacon:0

sit0 no wireless extensions.

[root@conrod ~]#

[root@conrod bcmwl5]# 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 wlan0
0.0.0.0 192.168.1.1 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 wlan0
[root@conrod bcmwl5]#

[root@conrod bcmwl5]# traceroute 192.168.1.1
traceroute to 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1), 30 hops max, 38 byte packets
1 192.168.1.105 (192.168.1.105) 3000.710 ms !H 3000.524 ms !H 3000.492 ms !H
[root@conrod bcmwl5]#


[root@conrod ~]# lspci -n
00:00.0 Class 0600: 1106:3099
00:01.0 Class 0604: 1106:b099
00:09.0 Class 0280: 14e4:4320 (rev 03)
00:11.0 Class 0601: 1106:3147
00:11.1 Class 0101: 1106:0571 (rev 06)
00:11.2 Class 0c03: 1106:3038 (rev 23)
00:11.3 Class 0c03: 1106:3038 (rev 23)
00:11.5 Class 0401: 1106:3059 (rev 40)
01:00.0 Class 0300: 10de:0253 (rev a3)
[root@conrod ~]#

[root@conrod ~]# ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5 driver present, hardware present
bcmwl5a.sys invalid driver!
lsbcmnds driver present, hardware present
wlan.ini invalid driver!
wmp54gs driver present, hardware present
wmp54gsa driver present, hardware present
[root@conrod ~]#

[root@conrod network-scripts]# cat ifcfg-wlan0
DEVICE=wlan0
BOOTPROTO=static
IPADDR=192.168.1.105
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
NETWORK=192.168.1.0
BROADCAST=192.168.1.255
ONBOOT=yes
METRIC=10
MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=no
USERCTL=yes
WIRELESS_MODE=auto
WIRELESS_ESSID=home
IPV6INIT=no
IPV6TO4INIT=no
PEERDNS=yes
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
IPADDR=192.168.1.105
[root@conrod network-scripts]#

[root@conrod etc]# cat modprobe.conf
remove snd-via82xx /sbin/modprobe -r snd-pcm-oss; /sbin/modprobe --first-time -r --ignore-remove snd-via82xx
install snd-via82xx /sbin/modprobe --first-time --ignore-install snd-via82xx && { /sbin/modprobe snd-pcm-oss; /bin/true; }
alias sound-slot-0 snd-via82xx
install usb-interface /sbin/modprobe uhci-hcd; /bin/true
alias wlan0 ndiswrapper
install ndiswrapper /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install ndiswrapper && { loadndisdriver 14e4:4320 /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5/bcmwl5.sys; /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5/bcmwl5.inf; }
[root@conrod etc]#

[root@conrod bcmwl5]# ls -al
total 300
drwxrwxr-x 2 root root 4096 Jan 24 22:29 ./
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 Jan 24 22:29 ../
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 560 Jan 24 22:29 14E4:4320:14E4:0417.5.conf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 560 Jan 24 22:29 14E4:4320:14E4:0418.5.conf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 560 Jan 24 22:29 14E4:4320:1737:0013.5.conf
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root root 560 Jan 24 22:29 14E4:4320:1737:0014.5.conf
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 50 Jan 24 22:29 14E4:4320.5.conf -> /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5/14E4:4320:14E4:0417.5.conf
-r-xr-xr-x 1 root root 12243 Jan 24 22:29 bcmwl5.inf*
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 265728 Jan 24 22:29 bcmwl5.sys
[root@conrod bcmwl5]#

If you are going to do that you also have to do two other things:
1) set the default gateway with the route command:
route add default gw xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (where xxx is the IP address of your router)
Once you've done that, the output of route -n should show your router as the gateway.

2) Add at least your router's IP address to your /etc/resolv.conf file:

nameserver xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx

If you know your ISPs nameserver IP addresses (you can frequently get them from your router) you could add those as well, one per line.

All the invalid driver statements bother me. Are you sure this is the correct Windows driver for your card?

Hi Hangdog,

I've tried your suggestions and still nothing. Both Linux boxes are identical (hardware and software) and niether connect to each other or the Internet. The interface wlan0 is up, but the system tray icon in the KDE desktop sits with one tiny red bar. If I try pinging the other network nodes, I get destination host unreachable and that's with the deafult route in place. I've done a ping to the loopback address to make sure the card is functioning and that was fine.

Is there a log somewhere that will show exactly what is going on with the card / network? I've been working on this for a couple of weeks now and am completely stumped.

Thanks for your help so far.

Charles.

Hm. You could check your system logs (/var/log/syslog and /var/log/messages) and see if there is much there. If the card was complaining, that is where it would be. I also suppose your firewall could be an issue, if you have one. Have a look at the output of iptables -L -n and see if that may be blocking network traffic.