Broadcom wireless troubles

[barronmo]

I'm brand new to Linux.

I installed Etch today on my Dell Inspiron 5100 which has a Broadcom BCM4309 internal wireless controller, eth2 on my system. Eth1 works fine with network cable run to the LAN port on my wireless router (D-Link DI-624). However, the wireless card doesn't seem to be working. I keep putting in the info for my home wireless network but nothing is detected. IWCONFIG says:

ESSID: off/any
Nickname: Broadcom 4306
Mode: Managed
Access Point: Invalid
RTS thr: off
Fragment thr: off
Encryption key: off
Link Quality: 0
Signal level: 0

I have a copy of the Broadcom b44 Linux driver, and I think I have extracted some files into a directory. However, the instructions that came with the driver say I need to "build the driver as a loadable module for the running kernel." I am supposed to do the following:

cd src Typing this at command line resulted in NO SUCH FILE
make

Am I on the right track? How do I build a driver? Thanks in advance for any help.

MB

[Vergil83]

You might take a look at http://www.larsen-b.com/Article/256.html

[barronmo]

Per the article I did find the BCM43xx-fwcutter as a .deb file which I have loaded on a cd. However, I can't get any of the package management programs to find it on the cdrom0. I keep getting "can't find package" messages using apt-get, aptitude and Synaptic.

The command I am using is
aptitude install /media/cdrom0/bcm43xx-fwcutter_006-1_i386.deb

Is this syntax wrong? Thanks.

MB

[antidrugue]

The command I am using is
aptitude install /media/cdrom0/bcm43xx-fwcutter_006-1_i386.deb

Is this syntax wrong?

More like:

dpkg -i bcm43xx-fwcutter_006-1_i386.deb

Or

aptitude install bcm43xx-fwcutter

[barronmo]

Thanks. The following worked:

dpkg -i /media/cdrom0/bcm43xx-fwcutter_006-1_i386.deb

The radio is now turned on and I can see my access point's SSID. However, despite entering the WEP key and checking to make sure the settings matched, the connection still isn't established.

I've tried:

dhclient eth2

but it won't give me an IP address. Any other ideas. I have other computers working on the network so I think the router is OK. Thanks,

Mike

[bryansmith]

Have you tried using NetworkManager? The default install of Etch comes included with it pre-configured. Next to the time somewhere, you should see an icon that resembles two computers for lack of a better description. If you have successfully installed your firmware using bcm43xx-fwcutter, your SSID should show up when you click the NM applet. Click your SSID and you should be good to go.

[Vergil83]

try

iwconfig interface essid "essid_name" key "wepkey"

[barronmo]

I do have the Network Manager applet but it isn't mentioning anything about my wireless access point. However, if I try

iwlist eth2 scanning

It sees mine home network and the neighbors. Neither shows up in Network Manager unfortunately. Any ideas why? Thanks.

[barronmo]

iwconfig interface essed "dlink" key "*********"

returned this error:

Error for wireless request "Set ESSID" (8B1A) :
Set failed on device interface ; No such device.

[barronmo]

Is my interface "eth2"? I tried it that way and didn't get an error. Still not working however.

Mike