wireless not activating

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Appzmaster
Posts: 10
Joined: 2007/01/17 03:25:47
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wireless not activating

Post by Appzmaster » 2007/05/24 18:35:02

i had this older HP pavilion 5730 laying around maybe 4 years old and i decided to put centos 5 on it. all goes well and when i go the the network manager it shows my card there which is a broadcom card but never can get an ip. If i put it in staticly it gives this weird error saying file / directory does not exsist i cant remember it exactly cause im at work but ill post it when i get home other than that all works fine but i really want the wireless to go

Appzmaster
Posts: 10
Joined: 2007/01/17 03:25:47
Contact:

Re: wireless not activating

Post by Appzmaster » 2007/05/24 22:13:46

this is the error i get when i try to staticly assign an IP

[quote][root@laptop ~]# ifconfig eth1 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory[/quote]

The card is a Broadcom BCM94306MP i also have a pc card wireless card i might try that soon.

mearturo
Posts: 35
Joined: 2007/04/22 11:11:05

Re: wireless not activating

Post by mearturo » 2007/05/25 13:24:26

Hi,

I had the same problem.

You need:

1. download fwcutter in some directory, for instance 'fw' (get it from http://developer.berlios.de/project/showfiles.php?group_id=4547)
2. uncompress the file in fw
3. cd fw
4. make
5. make install
6. copy the .sys and .inf files (yes, the files of the windows driver) of your nic into fw
7. get information about your card using lscpi -v
8. verify that the information you goy in '7' is listed in the README of fwcutter
9. extract the firmware with bcm43xx-fwcutter [your sys file name here].sys,
a. for instance 'bcm43xx-fwcutter bcmwl5.sys'
10. put the files (bcm43xx*) in the firmware directory /lib/firmware/ (I'll verify this later)

I hope this helps

Appzmaster
Posts: 10
Joined: 2007/01/17 03:25:47
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Re: wireless not activating

Post by Appzmaster » 2007/05/25 16:17:24

i have done this but i got the fwcutter with yum i dont kno if that makes any difference but i got the driver from HP's website and took the 2 files you said put the firmware where you said and all it would do is make the laptop lock up. Im thinking of trying my belkin pc card next if only i could find it... lol

ak825989
Posts: 14
Joined: 2007/06/30 19:14:07
Location: Scottish Borders

Re: wireless not activating

Post by ak825989 » 2007/06/30 19:49:03

Hallo, I'm a Linux returnee (RedHat 8 four years ago, now CentOS 5), trying to get wireless networking going, a new experience.

Have the same problem with Acer TravelMate 2403WXCi with Broadcom BCM4318 54g card. Installed firmware using fwcutter, machine locks up when try to bring up relevant interface.

Any ideas what the problem can be?

Lenard
Posts: 2283
Joined: 2005/11/29 02:35:25
Location: Indiana

Re: wireless not activating

Post by Lenard » 2007/07/01 11:30:38

[quote]
ak825989 wrote:
Hallo, I'm a Linux returnee (RedHat 8 four years ago, now CentOS 5), trying to get wireless networking going, a new experience.

Have the same problem with Acer TravelMate 2403WXCi with Broadcom BCM4318 54g card. Installed firmware using fwcutter, machine locks up when try to bring up relevant interface.

Any ideas what the problem can be?[/quote]

Do not use the built-in bcm43xx kernel module, it is not a good choice with the BCM4318 Broadcom chipset. Blacklist the driver by adding to the /etc/modprobe.d/blackist file something like:

# wireless
blacklist bcm43xx

Install the rpmforge-release package by the instructions here: http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/FAQ.php#B

When done type something like: yum install dkms dkms-ndiswrapper

Install the Windows driver from Acer for ndiswrapper: ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5a.inf
(the 32-bit driver: ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/travelmate_2400/driver/802bg.zip )
(the 64-bit driver: ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/ferrari_4000/driver/winxp64bit/80211g.zip )

Edit the /etc/modprobe.conf file and comment out the 'alias ethX bcm43xx' line and add in it's place: alias wlan0 ndiswrapper
Example:

alias wlan0 ndiswrapper
# alias eth1 bcm43xx

Edit and rename the /etc/sysconfig/network-srcipts/ifcfg-ethX file to match the change above, sample ifcfg-wlan0 (the rename part) file below;

TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=wlan0
#notice the device is renamed above
HWADDR=
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
IPADDR=
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=
DOMAIN=
ONBOOT=yes
ONHOTPLUG=yes
USERCTL=yes
IPV6INIT=no
PEERDNS=yes
ESSID=
CHANNEL=
MODE=
RATE=

Reboot the system when done.

I have an Acer Aspire5100 laptop which also has the same wireless device;

[code]
06:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
Subsystem: AMBIT Microsystem Corp. TravelMate 2410
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 22
Memory at b0200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
[/code]

[code]
$ ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4318) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx)
[/code]

ak825989
Posts: 14
Joined: 2007/06/30 19:14:07
Location: Scottish Borders

Re: wireless not activating

Post by ak825989 » 2007/07/04 14:31:53

Hi Lenard

Thanks for your help with this. You're a star!

Decided to do a fresh install, then followed your steps, and wireless card now works OK.

However, card won't associate with my wireless router, despite playing around with wpa_supplicant every which way.

My Acer laptop is set up to dual boot WinXP Pro and CentOS 5; needless to say, I have no trouble wired or wireless networking under the former, and wired networking under the latter.

Recent experiences remind me why I gave upon RedHat four years ago. I went into it in a big way, just to learn/for interest, pretty well got to the point where I could make the thing do anything I wanted to, but, boy, was it a helluva lot of work!

I'm committed to open source now, it's the future, at least for me, but what a learning curve! Spent most of my waking hours over the last two weeks trying to get this thing working, searching on the internet, finding totally contradictory advice and 'magic bullets' ie the one thing you apparently either must do/mustn't do. (I suppose it depends on your distro/particular NIC.)

This wpa_supplicant thing is a case in point. Found about that early on (also trying to get a MSI PCI Wlan card going in a desktop), followed instructions to download and install etc. Imagine my surprise when after my clean re-install of CentOS on my Acer, I discovered there was already a version of wpa_supplicant provided via the basic install (well, I had not been aware of selecting it as one of the options).

Or is that the problem - do I need another version?

ak825989
Posts: 14
Joined: 2007/06/30 19:14:07
Location: Scottish Borders

Re: wireless not activating

Post by ak825989 » 2007/07/04 22:08:05

Hallelujah! I compose this on my laptop, happily connected to my router wirelessly using WPA.

More internet searching, more totally contradictory advice, however the odd clue as to things to try emerged.

The solution appears to be that the main wpa_supplicant configuration file (NOT wpa_supplicant.conf), ie (in my case) /etc/sysconfig/wpa_supplicant needed to have the line DRIVERS="-Dwext" (and not DRIVERS="-Dndiswrapper", as one might expect, and had been stated elsewhere).

I will try to document this more fully, pour encourager les autres, in due course, but at present the set up is:

Router running MAC filtering, WPA-PSK TKIP, broadcasting SSID (want to try to disable the latter)

Configration files:

01. /etc/sysconfig/wpa_supplicant

INTERFACES="-iwlan0"
DRIVERS="-Dwext"

02. /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf (or possibly /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplcant.conf - it's duplicted there)

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ap_scan=2

network={
ssid="myssid"
scan_ssid=1
proto=WPA
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
pairwise=TKIP
group=TKIP
psk=mypskexpressedinhexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
}

Need to know what parameters will enable finding non-broadcast ssid - will tinker further. Off to bed for some well deserved kip!

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