Disclaimer: it has been 6 years since I've worked with linux, so I would be rightfully called a n00b, if not an entirely clueless one.

I have a Dell Inspiron 1100 that I recently installed SuSE 9.1 Personal on. I have a Linksys wpc54g wireless NIC, and a Linksys wrt54g router. I downloaded drivers for the NIC from ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/supported_chipsets.html. It's the one for the Broadcm 94306 (driver 2). The 2nd one is the only one I could get to say it was actually present when doing ndiswrapper -l. For now I'm not using WEP and I turned off MAC filtering on the router. I have broadcast enabled for now, as well. As far as I can tell, everything is working properly with the minor exception of not actually working.

During bootup I get this:

ndiswrapper version 0.6+CVS loaded
ndiswrapper adding bcmwl5.sys

but a bit later I get this:

coldplughwup: Loading module 'bcwml5' for device 'static-0'
FATAL: Module bcwml5 not found.

After booting, this is the information I get back:


mort:/ # ndiswrapper -l
Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5 present

mort:/ # iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"" Nickname:"mort"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.442GHz Access Point: FF:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
Bit Rate=54Mb/s Tx-Power:17 dBm
RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:100/100 Signal level:-10 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0


mort:/ # ifconfig wlan0
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:41:A9:98:FE
inet6 addr: fe80::20c:41ff:fea9:98fe/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:31 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:15210 (14.8 Kb)
Interrupt:11 Memory:28800000-28801fff

mort:/ # dmesg |grep wlan0
wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:0c:41:a9:98:fe using driver bcmwl5.sys
wlan0: no IPv6 routers present


When I run 'iwconfig wlan0 essid discworld' it looks like its accepting it, but it never shows up in the 'iwconfig wlan0'. I'm stumped at this point. I've tried using the other drivers available, but they never come back with a present when doing the ndiswrapper -l.

Any assistance at this point would be appreciated.

Instead of using the driver from sourcefourge, try using the one for XP. If one came with the card (possibly in the form of a .cab) extract it and use the .sys and .inf from there. I think you might have better luck this way.

That worked. Well, it got me to the point where it was finding the router. DHCP was not working, but I think this is a problem with my router, because as soon as I gave it a static IP, I got connected. I also figured out that the

coldplughwup: Loading module 'bcwml5' for device 'static-0'
FATAL: Module bcwml5 not found.

was something I did. I told it to load that module in Yast, and apparently it doesn't need it.

Thanks muchas!

Although I haven't used SuSe at all, the command for me to get a DHCP address is;
dhcpcd wlan0

I'm guessing that in slackware there is a dhcp client daemon package that gives me this command. If you want to test your routers ability to give out DHCP addresses, you could try using a wired connection or even a Microsoft OS to help isolate the problem and find if it's the router or the client that's misconfigured.