tryin to get broadcom wireless card working

[Diabolic Preacher]

this is what i did
1. su 'ed to root.
2. ndiswrapper -i /path/to/bcmwl5.inf
--> installing bcmwl5 ...
3. ndiswrapper -l | grep -i bcm
-->bcmwl5: driver installed
                  device (14E4:4311) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx)

/*first of all the most confusing thing about broadcom howto's is that they leave it upto the user to choose between ndiswrapper...what's the difference? what works better? which is faster? which has wep/wpa support?
secondly some articles show the ndiswrapper way n some show the bcm43xx-fwcutter way. which one to use and when?*/

anyways output of iwconfig eth1 is : -
eth1      IEEE 802.11b/g  ESSID:"homehub"  Nickname:"Broadcom 4311"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency=2.484 GHz  Access Point: Invalid   
          Bit Rate=1 Mb/s   Tx-Power=18 dBm   
          RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality=0/100  Signal level=-256 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

as you see there's a lot of invalid values. the only one i found a fix for but which didn't help was to set the ap as any
$iwconfig eth1 ap any
but still it shows as Invalid.

[M0E-lnx]

I wouldn't recomend you using the ndiswrapper for that chip.

You should be able to get native support from the Kernel.
See here --> http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/?go=devices

I have the 4318, and it works out of the box...

You may have to do a little research, find you a howto or something... but that chip should work with the bcm43xx module

I tried ndiswrapper with mine a long time ago, with no luck... so I tried the native support... works great

This might be a good starting point for ya
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-547687.html
although, you may need to de-gentoo-nize a  lot of that.

[Diabolic Preacher]

you got the 4318 too!
i'd seen a howto specifically for that...but no proper ones for 4311.

anyways i am using the kernel and kernel module vector packages for linux-2.6.20.6 and it does have the bcm43xx. but the reason i was confused was that more howto's were about fwcutter and ndiswrapper (on ubuntuforums...is that ideal or are gentoo docs more ideally suited) however i knew that native drivers like bcm43xx in this case should be a better choice.

bcmwl5: driver installed
                  device (14E4:4311) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx)

doesn't this mean that the device is already bound to the bcm43xx driver? also i noticed from lsmod output that the bcm43xx was loaded. i am thinkin of creating an entry in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules.
i didn't do the $ndiswrapper -a 14E4:4311 bcmwl5 command yet, so i hope the hardware's being controlled by bcm43xx.

all that remains to be solved is the variety of values in the iwconfig output that are showing as invalid.

[M0E-lnx]

you should have an eth0 and an eth1

do ifconfig and make sure they're both up
if not, you can bring each one up by issuing ifconfig ethX up

[Diabolic Preacher]

forgot to include that.
i brought up the interface eth1 (wireless) using ifconfig before i did all that. i never thought iwconfig returns statistics for interfaces...esp. wireless interfaces that are not brought up. does it? 

[M0E-lnx]

NO... You should bring it up using ifconfig.. then use iwconfig by itself to display which interface is the actual wireless

one of them will say "No wireless Extensions"
the other will say "broadcom XXXXX" and give you (invalid ATM) AP details

If you see that, you should be able to run wifi-radar and connect.

[Diabolic Preacher]

d'oh! its just hard pretending to be a newbie. i am new to vector linux...not dumb!

i brought up the interface eth1 (wireless) using ifconfig before i did all that.

                                                                          ^ 
does that look like an 'f' or a 'w' to you? between     'i'  and 'config'?

[M0E-lnx]

That looks like an 'f'

but if you were following an ndiswrapper howto, you probably blacklisted the bcm43xx module and installed some windows driver for it... You'd need to revert all that before you can use the native linux drivers

[Diabolic Preacher]

i should write a howto on getting in a mess with ease.
what might seemed to have happened is that i followed the ndiswrapper howto and blacklisted the bcm43xx module and i read elsewhere that the bcm43xx is native driver and added to rc.modules and stopped using ndiswrapper but bcm43xx was blacklisted already. hmm.. but that's not the only mess i got into...
today when i did a ifconfig -a and saw the wireless interface had changed to wlan0. i hadn't been using GUI tools yet. also i had followed the article on fixing the eth values of lan and wlan, so ethernet NIC _is_ eth0 and the wireless interface is _eth1_ .
//this part is not for hurried readers--> begins
the configuration of interface esp. the values to put in /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf is confusing as there are 2 different configurations at college and home (both fixed but both have different gateway addresses) also there are 2 different wlan configurations. no dhcp at home n dhcp at college and i've never had the dhcpcd working correctly yet. besides the university admins tell they w.i..ll register my MAC address of wlan so that i can access the net thru university wifi. gotta ask again.
//this part is not for hurried readers --> ends
the only thing i am confused about is how did the interface name change to wlan0. i had written the wlan MAC elsewhere so i knew that wlan0 was the device. i had done nothing beyond the steps i told you. only CLI stuff. another strange thing was everytime before when i used "ifconfig eth1(which is now wlan0) up" the wifi led on the dell inspiron would glow up, but now even that does not happen. i guess its tired of pretending to show the wifi is working.

[M0E-lnx]

I had that happen once... apparently it happens when you run the ndiswrapper... as it does not follow the standard interface names I guess..

I found out that *buntu howto for broadcom I was following messed me up so bad, I had to do a complete re-install just to reset everything and use the native drivers...

I had jacked it all up...

[Diabolic Preacher]

does vector by default try to load any drivers for broadcom. is ndiswrapper enabled and bound to bcmwl5 by default?

will try with native drivers and let you know...

[M0E-lnx]

I can't speak for ndiswrapper, but my bcn43xx loads up on its own..

try lsmod | grep bcm43xx

[Diabolic Preacher]

i thought you could speak for vector defaults and you could speak for your broadcom 4318.

lsmod | grep bcm43xx shows that its loaded. i think i mentioned it previously...hmm gotta see if i already whitelisted it and still getting all these invalid this n invalid that troubles...

[Diabolic Preacher]

just wanted to show you something from http://www.linux.com/feature/118555

The firmware cutter is for use specifically with Broadcom wireless cards. It uses a driver that is part of recent Linux kernels, but extracts the firmware it needs from files provided for Windows or the Mac (if the driver is for Windows, it is a file called bcm43xx

so even after loading the bcm43xx module we still need to cut out the firmware from the windows drivers? did you have to?

[M0E-lnx]

No I did not...
There is a firmware upgrade in the repos that you might need though

Code:

root:# slapt-get --search broadcom
bcm43xx_firmware-0.1-noarch-4vl58 [inst=yes]: bcm43xx_firmware (Broadcom 43xx firmware for Linux)