Native Airport Extreme Drivers

Jimmers · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 02 Feb 2005 Posts: 145

Havin_It

Yeah, I have a similar problem. I can get stuff over the ad-hoc network sometimes, but then I get AP_DEAUTH from the AP. I think my problem is an incompetent sys-ad though; We have 4 networks with the same SSID, on different channels. It makes writing an automatic script hard.

javichunow · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 7:29 am Post subject:

Hi!

I've followed the new guide on top and before

Akaihiryuu · l33t Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 794 Location: Columbus, OH

I just got done installing vanilla-sources-2.6.15.1, softmac, and bcm43xx (using a Compaq Athlon XP-M laptop). It detects my wireless, it shows up as eth1, but sadly it's not in a state where I can use it yet (as least not at home), for 2 reasons. 1) the driver doesn't yet support scanning, which is annoying, but I could deal with it except for 2) it doesn't seem to work with WEP yet. Since my home network is WEP-encrypted, I'm still stuck with ndiswrapper for the time being. I hope these issues are resolved soon.

ndansmith · n00b Joined: 01 Aug 2005 Posts: 60

I successfully used the ebuild method to build and install both the ieee80211softmac and the bcm43xx drivers. When I try to bring the interface up, I get an error.

blue.sca · Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 4:39 pm Post subject:

ndansmith: have you tried this as root?
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ndansmith · n00b Joined: 01 Aug 2005 Posts: 60

blue.sca: Yes I was running as root for the entire process.

JoseJX · Retired Dev Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2774

ndansmith:
Make sure that you have hotplug installed and that the firmware is installed to the place that hotplug expects it.

javichunow:
Thanks for pointing that out, it's fixed now. :)

Akaihiryuu:
Scanning and WEP are already supported.
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ndansmith · n00b Joined: 01 Aug 2005 Posts: 60

JoseJX: Haha, hotplug was it. Thanks!

EDIT: BTW, it may be helpful to add hotplug to the list of deps for the bcm43xx ebuild. I know it seems like a no-brainer, but it would have saved me a step. Thanks.

Akaihiryuu · l33t Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 794 Location: Columbus, OH

Strange...I must be doing something wrong then. I'm using 0.0.1-20060105, last sync was Tuesday morning. Do I just need a newer version or something? I tried iwconfig eth1 scan and it said that it doesn't support scanning.

JoseJX · Retired Dev Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2774

Akaihiryuu:
You probably didn't bring up the device first, do ifconfig eth1 up first, so the firmware loads.
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Akaihiryuu · l33t Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 794 Location: Columbus, OH

Boy I feel stupid! I assumed my wireless was eth1. I didn't pay attention to the fact that my wireless comes up as eth0. Anyway, I changed the necessary things in my config file. I had forgotten to install the firmware also (eth0 would not go up), but I corrected this also. Now I can bring the interface up and scan. It connects to my access point, but DHCP does not work. Any ideas?

Here's my access point:

JoseJX · Retired Dev Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2774

You'll have to try with a newer driver, but dhcp has been problematic for a number of people. Try it with a static connection for now.
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Akaihiryuu · l33t Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 794 Location: Columbus, OH

I checked my kernel logs and see some errors, probably why DHCP isn't working. Static connection is not a possibility...so if DHCP won't work I'll have to go back to ndiswrapper for a bit.

JoseJX · Retired Dev Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2774

It never authenticated, DHCP won't work unless you authenticate.
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Akaihiryuu · l33t Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 794 Location: Columbus, OH

Strange...it did tell me I connected to the access point. The WEP key and everything is right, because ndiswrapper can connect with it. I have everything in the /etc/conf.d/wireless file. The WEP key, preferred access points, etc, are not listed with any specific interface, so that's not it. Any idea what I can do to get it to authenticate properly?

Akaihiryuu · l33t Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 794 Location: Columbus, OH

New note: It's definitely not a WEP issue...my neighbors have an unsecured network, and I can't connect to it either. Both networks (mine and theirs) work fine with ndiswrapper. I'm not sure what else I can do, it doesn't seem to be associating with any access points properly.

Havin_it · Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2006 12:25 pm Post subject:

@Akaihiryuu: I have been getting a lot of this myself. Iwconfig will show all the information as though you are connected, but the association is not made. Right now I'm usually having to repeat the whole process several times to get a reliable connection. For this reason I'm not using the normal initscript, but instead made a script to run through the ifconfig/iwlist/iwconfig commands. (You can find this a couple of pages back.*) I run it on the command-line followed by a ping to check success, like so:

./wlan-starter.sh; ping -c4 192.168.0.1
(I'm just pinging my router's address but you could use any host on LAN or Internet if connected.)

Usually for the first few attempts (sometimes a dozen times), 50%-75% of the pings will fail. When 0% fail, I'm connected and don't have any further connection problems.

This might be relevant to some folks if you are giving up too early. Do something like this to hammer the interface, do it a good couple dozen times in a row if necessary, in case it is just being 'reluctant'.

*Disclaimer: my script doesn't handle DHCP (could add it but I don't use it and I'm lazy!), but if you see how the other sections work, I guess you could add it easily enough. Why can you not use static IP addressing? I'd really recommend it at least for the testing phase, because it'll allow you to see if the TCP/IP connectivity works at all (if it doesn't, you'll never get your connection up). If you've not done it before there isn't much to it, but do ask if you need any help.

thedopefishlives · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 23 Nov 2005 Posts: 84

I have a problem with this driver and the ACPI interface on my laptop. See, my CPU frequency scaler uses the ACPI battery and ac modules to determine what state the system is in. If these are not found, it locks the CPU into max-performance mode no matter what. However, loading the ACPI battery module and the bcm43xx module causes a kernel panic. 1) Does anyone else experience anything even remotely similar? 2) Is there any kind of workaround? I'm sick of ndiswrapper and I desperately want this driver to work. Oh yeah, I'm using the softmac driver and have been trying daily snapshots since the beginning of the year, without any success in solving the problem.

JoseJX · Retired Dev Joined: 28 Apr 2002 Posts: 2774

Post the panic to the bcm43xx-dev mailing list, or look at the specs wiki and join the irc channel so we can look into it.
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Akaihiryuu · l33t Joined: 08 May 2003 Posts: 794 Location: Columbus, OH

Damn...any idea what's causing the association failures and if it's something that will be corrected soon? I'm SO close to being able to drop ndiswrapper and Windows drivers for good. I do want to wait until I am able to reliably connect before I drop ndiswrapper though. I really don't want to have to use custom scripts to connect, when the /etc/init.d/net.xxx has always worked with ndiswrapper.

thedopefishlives · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 23 Nov 2005 Posts: 84

My kernel panic has something to do with the Ethernet driver needing to be loaded before any of the ieee80211 modules. With that done, now the only trouble is some stupid stuff having to do with the ATI IXP driver "disabling IRQ #10" when it is loaded without an active network interface. But I digress.

Havin_it · Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2006 10:41 am Post subject:

@JoseJX, any plans to make more recent softmac/bcm43xx ebuilds available in Portage? Or is the progress since 20060105 not significant to warrant this?

sul3n3t · n00b Joined: 11 Jun 2003 Posts: 10

I have a Compaq V2424NR amd64 laptop with integrated broadcom BCM4318. I haven't been able to get the driver to work after spending some time on it. I get the common error of "SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory" and "...Microcode 'bcm43xx_microcode5.fw' not available..." from dmesg. From following this thread, the common fix given is to make sure hotplug or udev is setup properly.

I have then following packages installed with default configuration:
sys-apps/hotplug-20040923-r1
sys-apps/coldplug-20040920
sys-fs/udev-081-r1

The file "/etc/hotplug/firmware.agent" contains the line "FIRMWARE_DIR=/lib/firmware", which is where my firmware, extracted using fwcutter, is located.

So far, I haven't found any docs explaining how to test hotplug configuration. My question is how to I find out if hotplug is configured properly and are there any good resources for this.

atomik · Posted: Sat Jan 28, 2006 7:05 pm Post subject:

I'm trying wpa_supplicant, i'm installed it from portage.
This is the configuration file:

sul3n3t · n00b Joined: 11 Jun 2003 Posts: 10