ndiswrapper works, but no radio?

Adrian Baker · 01-10-2007, 04:47 PM

Hi there

I recently upgraded Suse 10.0 to 10.2 on my laptop and after a little fiddling with ndiswrapper got the wireless working nicely.

However, after a major mess-up recently I had to do a fresh install of Suse 10,2 on the same laptop... but now I can't get the broadcom built in wireless working. Most frustrating!

For a start off there is no wlan0 interface, although this just seems to be a naming problem, but the LED on my wireless card won't light up and nothing works.

I installed ndiswrapper and by following the instructions on the ndiswrapper site I got the right drivers working:

Quote:

AHB-laptop:/home/adrian # ndiswrapper -l
installed drivers:
bcmwl5a driver installed, hardware (14E4:4320) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx)

If I then do an iwconfig I get:

Quote:

AHB-laptop:/home/adrian # iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth1 no wireless extensions.

eth0 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"" Nickname:"AHB-laptop"
Mode:Managed Access Point: Invalid
RTS thr

ff Fragment thr

ff
Encryption key

ff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

As you can see, wlan0 doesn't appear, but eth0 seems to be the wireless extension.

It won't start though:

Quote:

AHB-laptop:/home/adrian # /sbin/ifup eth0
eth0 device: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)
eth0 configuration: eth-id-00:90:4b:54:da:10
eth0 warning: using NO encryption
SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory
Starting DHCP Client Daemon on eth0... . . . . . no IP address yet... backgrounding.
SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory
Cannot enable interface eth0.
interface eth0 is not up

I did a dsmeg listing after doing the above(not that I understand it!) and got the following:

Quote:

AHB-laptop:/home/adrian # dmesg
SoftMAC: ASSERTION FAILED (0) at: net/ieee80211/softmac/ieee80211softmac_wx.c:306:ieee80211softmac_wx_get_rate()
bcm43xx: set security called, .level = 0, .enabled = 0, .encrypt = 0
SoftMAC: Unable to find matching network after scan!
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed.
bcm43xx: core_up for active 802.11 core failed (-2)
SoftMAC: ASSERTION FAILED (0) at: net/ieee80211/softmac/ieee80211softmac_wx.c:306:ieee80211softmac_wx_get_rate()
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed.
bcm43xx: core_up for active 802.11 core failed (-2)
bcm43xx: PHY connected
bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed.
bcm43xx: core_up for active 802.11 core failed (-2)
SoftMAC: ASSERTION FAILED (0) at: net/ieee80211/softmac/ieee80211softmac_wx.c:306:ieee80211softmac_wx_get_rate()
AHB-laptop:/home/adrian #

Any ideas? As I said above, this was working nicely until I had to do a fresh install.
Thanks for looking.

beagle2 · 01-10-2007, 05:33 PM

Check lsmod and see if native driver bcm43xx is loaded - may be conflicting with ndiswrapper and remove if there.
May be worth investing the native driver if you wish instead of ndiswrapper as in this case the 4306 chipset is fully supported - just add firmware and you're set.
Also check you have all the driver files needed by ndiswrapper in the same location ie *.inf, *.sys, *.bin.

amitvarde · 01-10-2007, 05:57 PM

Blacklist the bcm43xx drive in /etc/modprobe.d/blackilist

Then for the ndiswrapper you probably need to dothe following command (I dont think the order matters)
> ndiswrapper -mi
> ndiswrapper -ma
> ndiswrapper -m
Reboot - it will come up with the wifi light.
Make sure you have wifi option enabled in the bios
[I forgot which (1 or more )of the above commands make it work.]

For me, the ndiswrapper was installed as wlan0
i made a copy of /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1
and then had
DEVICE=wlan0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
ONBOOT=yes

I for encryption - i prefer wlassistant (kde) to set the WEP key

xjlittle · 01-10-2007, 06:11 PM

I kept getting this error:

Quote:

Mode:Managed Access Point: Invalid

Turned out I had the wrong version driver. It took some searching for various driver versions before I found the ones that would work.

Adrian Baker · 01-11-2007, 02:50 AM

Ok. Thanks for the advice.

I'll try the suggestions above, but I'm particularly interested in trying the Native driver rather than ndiswrapper one (just because I'm curious and haven't used it before). How do i do this? Where do I get the firmware from?

I'll try ndiswrapper solutions now, but would love to have a go at the native one.

amitvarde · 01-11-2007, 10:53 AM

Check out this website:
http://linux-wless.passys.nl

I have a dell 1501 - with a Dell 1390 mini pci card.
ndis works perfect for me.

beagle2 · 01-11-2007, 01:50 PM

Have a look at this - http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Broadcom_...ion_under_SUSE seems to cover both scenarios well.

Adrian Baker · 01-12-2007, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by beagle2

Have a look at this - http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Broadcom_...ion_under_SUSE seems to cover both scenarios well.

Thank you so much

I'm typing this on my Linux box WITHOUT using ndiswrapper. I'd searched all kinds of sites but didn't find that Suse one. I tried (again) with the native driver and its working lovely.

Thanks to all who contributed to helping me with this.

beagle2 · 01-12-2007, 02:45 PM

Great, glad you got it working