Broadcom 4318 Wireless Help

CrEsPo · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 3:22 am Post subject: Broadcom 4318 Wireless Help

I'm looking for support for the Broadcom 4318 wireless card. I just bought an HP Pavilion dv8000 laptop and I'm doing some reserch before installing Linux onto the laptop. After looking into it the only thing I'm not sure about how to install is the wireless card listed above. I did some searching around the forum and found this old HOWTO. That HOWTO says it is outdated, so I'm wondering if I would install the drivers the same way or is their a newer way to install them?

My second concern is with WPA encryption. I'm using WPA as my encryption for my wireless connection, and I've been reading about some wpa_supplement that is needed. Does anyone have any insight on this? I tried Googling, but couldn't find up with a homepage. I'm not totally lost when it comes to Linux, but I am when it comes to wireless connections. I just recently got my first wireless connection so I'm not that good with getting around it yet, even in Windows. Wireless is my only concern before installing Gentoo on my system.

One more thing, does anyone know where I could get the 64-bit drivers for the Broadcom 4318 wireless card? I've looked everywhere with no luck, Broadcom's homepage only has the 44xx and the 57xx drivers and the HP website has the 32-bit drivers bundled with what ever HP included so those probably wont work good with the ndiswrapper method.

Any help is greatly appreciated. If things go to plan I tend to start installing Gentoo tomorrow night.

jpl888 · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 3:24 pm Post subject:

Hi CrEsPo,

There is an in-kernel driver for the bcm4318, but it is only in kernel 2.6.17 and above. If you use that and your using Gentoo 64 bit you will get a 64 bit version of the driver.

As to how to configure it depends largely on what you want to do. Personally I am using ad-hoc mode and that isn't supported in the kernel driver so I ended up using ndis-wrapper and managed to get a 64bit version of the Windows driver from some web page (think it was Dell).

The other thing you were talking about is actually "wpa_supplicant" and I haven't used it so somebody else would be a better bet there.

You probably have more questions now than when you started, but at least I have got you going eh?

Monkeh · Veteran Joined: 06 Aug 2005 Posts: 1656 Location: England

And if, for whatever reason, the in-kernel driver fails, this should work with ndiswrapper: ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/ferrari_4000/driver/winxp64bit/80211g.zip

CrEsPo · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 6:55 pm Post subject:

Thanks for the replies guys.

jpl888, is the following what you're talking about: Native Airport Extreme Drivers?

Thanks for the information on wpa_supplicant, searching for the proper name I found this in the Wiki. Helps to search for the correct term, don't know where I got wpa_supplement from.

Thanks for the link Monkeh, downloaded that driver in case the in-kernel driver fails. I appreciate the link, hopefully I wont have to use it

.

jpl888 · Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2006 7:22 pm Post subject:

Well that is MAC specific but it will certainly help you and most of it will be the same. I certainly looked at it a few times before arriving at the ndiswrapper solution.

TenPin · Guru Joined: 26 Aug 2002 Posts: 500 Location: Kansas City

I'm trying to get ny broadcom 4318 minipci card working.

I tried using kernel 2.6.17 with the built in driver but it just couldn't connect to anything.

If I use the bcm43xx-20060329 driver in portage and kernel 2.16.25 then it works perfectly with non secure networks.

Has anyone managed to get their 4318 working with a WPA network using wpa_supplicant because wpa_supplicant 0.48 and 0.54 fail for me.

Thanks.
_________________
For since in the wisdom of God the world by its wisdom did not know God, God was pleased to save those who believe by the foolishness of preaching.

CrEsPo · Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 7:28 pm Post subject:

Ok, I finally upgraded to 2.6.17.6 and I'm having some problems.

eth0 is a wired connection
eth1 is the wireless connection

When I boot up the system eth0 works, I then connect to the wireless device using the following method:

ifconfig eth# up
iwlist eth# scan
iwconfig eth# channel #
iwconfig eth# essid "AP_ESSID"

Once I do that I use ifconfig eth0 down to close eth0 so I can see if eth1 works with a ping. When I ping I get an unknown host error. Once this happens, if I try another iwlist eth1 scan it tells me there are no results.

Any ideas on what's going on?

wynn · Advocate Joined: 01 Apr 2005 Posts: 2421 Location: UK

CrEsPo · Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 7:49 pm Post subject:

You're right, I have setup eth0 to be setup by dhcp. Here is the route with eth0 up and running fine:

wynn · Advocate Joined: 01 Apr 2005 Posts: 2421 Location: UK

I don't know your setup and whether this is possible but if you can run dhcp on eth1 (and it works) you should get an IP for it and a corresponding route.

I think you will have to chose one or the other as your connection to the great wide world, I don't think (no guru here) that you can have both setup at the same time. I'd be very happy to be corrected on this one

(Pinched from a developer's post:)

CrEsPo · Posted: Wed Jul 19, 2006 8:38 pm Post subject:

How do I take off DHCP for eth0 if that's the problem?

I tried dhcpcd eth1 and it gets stuck in an infinite loop.

Do you need any more information? I'm totally lost with this, I could always get wired connections to work, but this is my first time using wireless so I'm so clueless right now.

wynn · Advocate Joined: 01 Apr 2005 Posts: 2421 Location: UK

CrEsPo · Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 1:03 pm Post subject:

This is my /etc/conf.d/net file:

wynn · Advocate Joined: 01 Apr 2005 Posts: 2421 Location: UK

I hadn't realized you were using net-misc/dhcp, I'd assumed net-misc/dhcpcd (because that's what's here

)

In this case, to find out what's going on, you need to run

CrEsPo · Posted: Thu Jul 20, 2006 4:07 pm Post subject:

Sorry, I am using dhcpcd, but I probably didn't do the right settings in the configuration file.

I now have the wireless working. I knew there were two methods, one with the native bcm43xx driver and one using the ndiswrapper. I tried using the ndiswrapper and using the exact same method to connect as I did with the bcm43xx driver it works. Even the WEP works as when I tried with the bcm43xx it told me it was broken.

I appreciate all the help, it looks like we were right from the beginning, just that the driver was broken.

pldg · Posted: Thu Jul 27, 2006 6:50 pm Post subject: