I've found lots of helpful information on the web for setting up the 4318 on similar systems using ndiswraper and I got a fair start. Ndiswrapper reports driver and hardware present, but ifconfig and iwconfig can't seem to find the card..No wlan0 or eth1. (system has a wired net card at eth0)

Can anyone suggest where to look from here?

Sorry, I know the information in this post is extremely vague, but I'm pretty new to linux and not sure what information is needed or useful.

Welcome to LQ!

A couple of questions:

- Are you running Knoppix off a CD or have you installed it?
- What Windows driver are you using?
- Is ndiswrapper listed in the output of lsmod?
- Is bcm43xx listed in the output of lsmod?

hangdog:

I'm running knoppix from a cd with a 2gb home directory on a usb drive.

lsmod does report ndiswrapper but doesn't list bcm43xx. locate doesn't turn up a bcm43xx on my system either. The windows driver I'm using is bcmwl5.inf and bmcwl5.sys which appear to be provided from dell. I heard that the dell driver had problems and followed a link in a forum to another bmcwl5 driver, downloaded it and tried it with no apparent difference in results.

Also, there is a gui ndiswrapper configuration utility on the desktop under start - knoppix - network/internet - ndiswrapper configuration. I tried that utility but when I pointed it to the windows .inf file it said "bcmwl5.inf is no inf file."

OK, with bcm43xx not in the picture we can concentrate on ndiswrapper (the two will conflict if they are both present).

If you can, I would visit the ndiswrapper wiki and download the bcmwl5.inf and .sys that they suggest. The 4318 is used a lot, so it shouldn't be too hard to find. The bit about the .inf file not being an inf file worries me. You may have a bad download.

I would also look in the logs (/var/log/syslog, /var/log/messages and dmesg) after ndiswrapper and the Windows drivers are loaded and see if ndiswrapper is complaining about anything.

Finally, you might consider trying Knoppix 5. It will have a more recent version of ndiswrapper, and that might help. One of the unfortunate realities of ndiswrapper is sometimes you have to do a little trial and error matching of ndiswrapper version and windows driver.

hangdog

"ifconfig wlan0 up" says :
wlan0: ERROR while getting device flags: no such device

interesting: this morning when I booted iwconfig reported a sit0, and the light for the built in wlan card was off. Now the led is on and iwconfig does not contain sit0.

also: the log files you mentioned are empty -- 0 bytes. Possibly the system is set to not make log files because it's a live cd version??

I will try to find a ndiswrapper approved version of bcmwl5... ndiswrapper seemed to accept it from the command line, but not the script. (did I post the output here?)

Thanks for all your help. I really want to get a live cd os going with the wireless so I can drop my landline,isp, and windows

I'll see if i can download a copy of knoppix 5. I've been thinking about that anyway. (not sure if I know how to burn it as a bootable cd though, I'll be asking I'm sure

You check lan card driver is installed or not using command lsmod to show all the installed modules and again check own link using command mii-tools


Thanks

Be aware that ndiswrapper appears to be broken on 5.0.1, check here for more http://www.knoppix.net/forum/

Maybe Knoppix isn't the way to go here if ndiswrapper is broken in 5.0.1. I know that most of the *buntu distros are also distributed as a live CD, it might be worth a look.

From what you're describing, it sounds like Knoppix just isn't doing the trick here. The log files shouldn't be empty (although they may not be logging in order to save on RAM) and without some additional info, we're really shooting in the dark here.

As far as burning a bootable CD, you just need to download the .iso file and burn it as an iso to a CD. If you burn it as a file, you won't get a functional CD. Most decent CD burning programs should have an option to burn an .iso, so be sure to look for it.

Thanks for the heads up about knoppix 5.0.1. I was just about to buy a dvd version. heh. Adding a broken ndiswrapper into the mix would have really been frustrating. I'll look into a ubuntu distribution. Thanks.

Re: logfiles. Yup. It looks like log files were turned off. I found a script to turn on logging and now there's stuff in the log files. dmesg had some relevant things to say:

ndiswrapper version 1.1rc3 loaded (preempt=yes,smp=yes)
ndiswrapper (import:238): unknown symbol: ntoskrnl.exe:strrchr
ndiswrapper (import:238): unknown symbol: ntoskrnl.exe:MmFreeContiguousMemorySpecifyCache
ndiswrapper (import:238): unknown symbol: ntoskrnl.exe:MmAllocateContiguousMemorySpecifyCache
ndiswrapper (import:238): unknown symbol: ntoskrnl.exe:MmGetPhysicalAddress
ndiswrapper (load_sys_files:455): unable to prepare driver 'bcmwl5'
ndiswrapper (ndiswrapper_load_driver:92): loadndiswrapper failed (11); check system log for messages from 'loadndisdriver'

syslog didn't contain anything from 'loadndisdriver' at the time I grabbed this.

so ndiswrapper is finding things in bcmwl5.inf that it doesn't like. so I guess questions now are...

• Am I doing something wrong with the installation?
• Do I have the wrong kind of file (.inf)
• are these troublesome symbols windows only and may be deleted?
• is ndiswrapper not processing the file correctly?
• what's the deal with fw_cutter - is it needed for the broadcom 4318???

...And sorry, but it looks like I accidently started a second thread on this. I posted the details of the outputs of ndiswrapper, lscpi, ifconfig, and iwconfig in a new thread titled "help with Broadcom 4318 under knoppix 4.0.2 on dell laptop" I could cut and paste it here, but duplicating it seems like a waste of space.

I kind of doubt it. As long as you have bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys in the same directory when you run ndiswrapper -i /path/to/bcmwl5.inf, there really isn't much to go wrong.
I suppose that this is possible, but if you are using the one suggested by the ndiswrapper wiki, the only other option would be to try one from the Dell site. However, you've already done that, so I'm not optimistic that trying a different one will do much better. I'll explain this a bit more below.

The short answer to both of these is no. The symbols errors you're seeing are a problem with the way ndiswrapper was compilied. And as for ndiswrapper processing the file, well this bothers me:

My experience is that ndiswrapper rc versions are really unsuitable for general use. Not all of them are bad, but enough of them have serious bugs that I avoid rc versions like the plague. They are just not worth the trouble.

Another possibility is that the kernel is SMP enabled. For a long time, ndiswrapper didn't work on an SMP kernel. I thought they had that fixed by 1.1, but maybe not. Are you using the default Knoppix kernel?

So that, combined with all the "unkown symbol" errors suggest to me that ndiswrapper is broken in this version of Knoppix as well. Given how easy ndiswrapper is to compile, I'm really surprised, but that could have happened if there was a last minute change of kernel in Knoppix. Ndiswrapper absolutely MUST be compiled against the running kernel, otherwise it doesn't work. I suspect that is what is going on here.

You only need to worry about fw_cutter if you are using the bcm43xx driver. All Broadcom chipsets need firmware in order to operate. With ndiswrapper, the Windows drivers themselves are the source of that firmware. However, bcm43xx doesn't use the Windows drivers (at least not directly) so you need to use fw_cutter to cut the firmware out of the Windows driver and put it where bcm43xx can use it.

I'd use the Report button on the other thread and ask the mods to either close that one or merge it with this one.

rc version?? could it be replaced with a newer version? With unionfs I'm supposed to be able to add things...I'm not sure how unionfs would handle a second copy of something though. I could also replace ndiswrapper and burn a new live cd.

I am using the default kernel in knoppix 4. I believe it is 2.6.12 is there a way to check if smp is enabled?
also... is there a command that reports the kernel version similar to the old DOS 'ver' command?

I did get ahold of a copy of ubuntu and I'll try to get going with it this week, but I still like some of the features of knoppix that ubuntu does't seem to have, like the encrypted home dir merged with the knoppix file system.

The issue is going to be the writability of /lib/modules/since that is where a replacement ndiswrapper module would go. If that direcotry and kernel subdirectory can be written to, compiling a new ndiswrapper might work. However, you'd have to do that every time you boot unless you replace the version that came with Knoppix and burned a CD.
You'd probably have to check the .config file used to compile the kernel, although the output of uname -a or uname -p might give you a clue.

Woohoo! Partial success I think!

I picked up a copy of knoppix 5.0.1 dvd, downloaded and recompiled ndiswrapper, removed the bcm43xx drivers and installed ndiswrapper. Now the system can see the wireless card. I went to a location where I've gotten good wireless reception with windoze and scanned for the network with linux. It found the network and listed it's name, but said signal strength was zero. "Out of range"
I've found questions like this on google, and replies that suggest that the problem was solved, but the solutions aren't there. Any new suggestions?

A note about knoppix's ability to write to system directories. Knoppix lets you create a disk image on a usb disk which it merges with the CD and Ramdisk filesystems when it boots using unionfs. I can make changes to files in /etc, for example. but it appears that that merge may take place >AFTER< alot of things are already done. Blacklisting the bcm43xx driver did no good, I suspect because the driver gets loaded before the filesystem merge and therefore before my changes to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist. sound sensible?

Did you try to connect? Remember, with ndiswrapper, you're running a Windows driver under Linux. My experience is that some information doesn't translate well between the two. On my home network, I always get a signal strength of 100, even when I'm at the extremem edge of the range, so I've pretty much just assumed that number was completely unreliable and ignored it.

However, if you can't get an IP address, you might have a look at a different Windows driver. Sometimes with ndiswrapper you have to do a little trial and error with the driver in order to get one that works. Check the ndiswrapper wiki and make sure you have the suggested driver for your card.

That actually does make a lot of sense to me. There certainly isn't an issue removing bcm43xx after booting, its just one more thing to remember to do.

Hmmm. could it be that I just don't know how to connect to a wireless network?

Using the kwifi manager I scanned for networks in the area. It found one labled "FMWireless" I recognized and can connect to with windows. In the scan report box it listed "FMWIRELESS" mode (empty) quality "0" and Wep 'on'. I discovered that I could select the wep setting and change it to off, and when I did that, the button at the bottom left of the scan report window (Switch to network) became clickable (no longer grayed out) I clicked on it and nothing happened. I loaded a browser to see if it had connected and forgot to tell me, but nope, no server found.

I remembered seeing a few commands listed for manually connecting to a network but don't really know when or how to use them. I am also not sure about some of the configuration settings. For example I've seen:

iwconfig eth1 key xxxxxxxxxxxx

It also looked like it might be necessary to set the ssid with (in my above example...)

iwconfig eth1 ssid "FMWireless"

is that correct?

and then pump -i ???


a reference to key in my wlan configuration script says 'not recomended to leave blank' but I am not sure what to put here for key if I'm trying to connect to public hotspots.

ssid and essid

are they the same, and do they refer to the name my network scan returns? often this looks like the brandname of a wireless router, such as adaptec, or linksys... other times a business name such as RedLionNetwork"

Is there a how-to that walks through the basic steps to connect to a wireless network? I've tried to google the subject but haven't found quite what I need.

The fact that the scan reports the names of networks I know are nearby is encouraging...The card's talkin to the outside world.