Wireless driver help

ONEEYEMAN · Advocate Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 3674

Hi, ALL,
I don't know if this topic falls here or "Installing Gentoo", but it looks more closely here...

I am trying to pick the following to work:

Big Jim Slade · Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 6:59 pm Post subject:

For the 4401 device, which is the ethernet controller, you need to enable the b44 driver in the kernel like so:

ONEEYEMAN · Advocate Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 3674

Thank you for reply, Big Jim.
I do have a wired Internet. I need a wireless one...
I found this thread, however it talks on the different card...

Thank you.

Big Jim Slade · Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 7:15 pm Post subject:

Yeah, that thread is for the Airport Extreme which is more complicated to get working. It definitely appears that your Mini-PCI wireless card is of the 43xx variety, so all you should have to do is enable the bcm43xx module in the kernel and you should be good to go.

J3N7iL · Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 7:18 pm Post subject:

I was under the impression that Broadcom Wireless can only be supported through NDISWrapper,
I love the NDISWrapper, follow this wiki and you'll be fine.
(Keep in mind that for laptops, the FN key or wireless button that turns on the wireless nick still turns it on and off, if your running into probs try trying the hardware power option on the laptop)

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/Installation
_________________
For Sale: Parachute. Only used once, never opened, small stain.

Big Jim Slade · Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 7:27 pm Post subject:

No, the kernel now has support for the 43xx, although as I failed to mention above, even on x86 you might need to do the whole fw-cutter thing. I know fw-cutter is required on ppc, which is kind of a pain but it works. I'm not sure if it is required on x86, but I'm guessing it is.

Ndiswrapper is a valid (and possibly simpler) option as well. I've used it in the past with no problems and it was easy enough to set up, but given the option to use native linux drivers I'd opt for the latter as long as it works.

ONEEYEMAN · Advocate Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 3674

Yes, I would also opt for the native driver.
One more question: do I need to turn on all those options that thread was talking about, or just the bcm43xx
Also, I'm guessing that if it won't work I will have to try with the firmware and fwcutter, correct?

Thank you.

Big Jim Slade · Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 7:59 pm Post subject:

Yeah, you'll need to turn on all the 802.11 options in the kernel also, as the WLAN drivers depends on them.

Try it without doing the fw-cutter stuff first, but what will likely happen is that the card will show up and appear to work but it won't be able to get an IP address or authenticate to an access point. If that happens, you'll need to get the firmware loaded via fw-cutter.

ONEEYEMAN · Advocate Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 3674

Big Jim,
I turned on all IEEE options as described in that thread, but when compiling the kernel, got:

Big Jim Slade · Posted: Fri Sep 15, 2006 8:36 pm Post subject:

Okay, what kernel version are you using, and just in case, what version of gcc?

ONEEYEMAN · Advocate Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 3674

gentoo-sources-2.6.17-r4, and gcc-3.4.6-r1.

Thank you.

Big Jim Slade · Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 6:57 am Post subject:

Okay, this may have something to do with the SoftMAC source, although I'm that's a best guess at this point. Check this thread for a similar, although not the same sort of error. This is also PPC related, not x86.

At this point, going the ndiswrapper route looks to be a lot easier. I'm not sure about this softmac issue. I'll look into it some more and see what I can find out.

ONEEYEMAN · Advocate Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 3674

Thank you, Big Jim.
I actually re-emerged the kernel, and after that everything was fine. I had the configuration saved in the alternative file, so...

I guess I just cleaned up incorrectly after removing the ipw3945, since I thought I have this card in.

The kernel built, and I re-booted in the newly compiled kernel.
But when I tried to do:

modprobe bcm43xx

nothing hapened. It did load, since I can see it through the "lsmod", but that's it. It just went straight to the OS prompt, didn't say anything.

I am assuming I need a firmware for it work, right?

Thank you.

Big Jim Slade · Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 3:38 am Post subject:

Okay, it should just return to the prompt if it loads correctly. If it outputs anything it's usually and error... like can't load module. You should be good there.

And, yes, you may need firmware, but before doing let's see if the card is working.

Run the following:

ONEEYEMAN · Advocate Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 3674

Big Jim,
Following you instruction, I did this (output from the terminal):

Big Jim Slade · Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 6:53 am Post subject:

Yeah, that's really odd output on the bcm43xx...

Run lspci -v and paste the output that begins with 0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-PCI Card (rev 01). That should be the header of one of the blocks and there should be a bunch of information that goes with it. You should have lspci already, but if you don't then you'll need to emerge pciutils.

ONEEYEMAN · Advocate Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 3674

OK, here we go:

Big Jim Slade · Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 7:14 am Post subject:

Well that lspci output doesn't help out at all... nuts.

That patch information may help, although I don't think so as it simply provide PCI-Express support. I don't believe that card is PCIE, though. Either way, it won't hurt anything so you might give it a try... should only take ten minutes or so. Enough time to recompile the kernel.

If that doesn't work, go ahead and follow the Airport Extreme thread from step 4 on (the fwcutter stuff), although the response from dmesg does not make me hopeful. Let me know what happens.

Oh... when you reboot the machine, does the bcm43xx module get automatically loaded, or do you have to modprobe it?

ONEEYEMAN · Advocate Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 3674

Big Jim,
Do I need to manually patch the files or...?
And it didn't load, I had to moprobe it. But I didn't put it in the "autoload" file either...
Should I try that first?
Or maybe I should try the Portage veersion?

Thank you.

Big Jim Slade · Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2006 5:58 pm Post subject:

Don't put in autoload yet... not until it works. I was wondering if it was being automatically loaded because if that card is indeed a bcm43xx, coldplug should detect it and load the module. The fact that the dmesg outputs essentially nothing, and coldplug isn't loading it is leading me to believe this card might not be a bcm43xx.

Before you go any further with the bcm43xx kernel driver, I think I'd like you to try the ndiswrapper as it is very easy to setup and will tell you whether or not that is in fact a bcm43xx card. But first, do you have a Windows installation on that machine or is it just Gentoo? And, what model Dell is that?

ONEEYEMAN · Advocate Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 3674

Big Jim Slade · Posted: Mon Sep 18, 2006 6:28 am Post subject:

What's the Windows driver for that card? If it's a Broadcom card, it should be something like bcmwl5.sys or similar...

ONEEYEMAN · Advocate Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 3674

Big Jim Slade · Posted: Sun Sep 24, 2006 5:30 pm Post subject:

Sorry for the long delay... have you gotten it working yet?

That card is definitely a Broadcom... try using the Windows driver and ndiswrapper to set that up (if you haven't already) and see what happens.

ONEEYEMAN · Advocate Joined: 01 Mar 2005 Posts: 3674

Big Jim,
No, not yet.
I was thinking of applying the 10 patchset to the driver, but I wanted someone to look at it this and confirm.
Also, I don't know how to do that. Should I just create a one big .patch file, and put it along with the ebuild in an overlay? Or I can put this file in the /var/tmp and it will be picked up automatically during the recompilation?

Thank you.