Need help with wireless please...

[verto]

I am on an Acer Apire 5000 series laptop. lspci returns the following for my wireless card:

00:0b.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

and I have been reading tutorials on this for about an hour. I think I have been having trouble because I am on the testing distribution, installed through the net-install disk. When going through the server directories to find the firmware I need I get completely lost. Please help, I am not very good with linux yet, I just transfered over from windows about a week ago so I am still learning my way around. I tried gnome, but the file manager I wanted wouldn't work on it, so I had to transfer to KDE and now I am having a ton of networking issues along with my wireless card which never worked.
EDIT:
According to "http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/" the driver is installed on systems >2.6.17-rc2 and I am on version 3.1.17(1)-release (i486-pc-linux-gnu).
When I run "apt-get install bcm43xx-fwcutter" I get the following:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
E: Couldn't find package bcm43xx-fwcutter

So I'm guessing I missed a step. I keep reading about "Building the Kernel" which I have no idea how to do....

[aliov]

What do you mean by 3.1.17(1)-release (i486-pc-linux-gnu).

Yes this driver is included know inside the linux kernel >=2.6.17-rc2. so you should know the version of your kernel do uname -r, i think you have a recent version of the kernel so you should install the firmware if apt gives you package not found go to Index of /debian/pool/contrib/b/bcm43xx-fwcutter and download the corresponding firmware for your CPU and install it.

hope this help

[verto]

Ya, that was my Bash version or something >_> I didn't know how to get my kernel version and thought that was it.
I'm running kernel version 2.6.18-4-486 as reported by uname -r. Which of the files on that page do I get? Are the different debian i386 files just like an old version and the new one?

EDIT:
Ok, so now my wireless light is on, the box detects it and all. But when I type in my wireless network ESSID and password/encryption type I can't get in. What should I do?

[aliov]

Try this from the command line as a root.

iwconfig (run this command just to see the name of your wireless card probably it'll be eth1)

iwlist eth1 scan (to see the wireless connection in range)

To connect to your Wifi do the following:
iwconfig eth1 essid (the name of your network) mode managed
iwconfig eth1 key (.........)
dhcpcd eth1 .


As an example :

iwconfig eth1 essid Alice-7cd mode managed
iwconfig eth1 key AEF3462FG346H467
dhcpcd eth1

and that should work

tell me about any news.

hope this help

[verto]

Ok, so I'm having some problems with this.

iwconfig eth1 essid andy's mode managed
results in a line break and instead of having : debian-laptop:/home/andy# at the beginning of the line, I just get a >


iwconfig eth1 key MyWepPass....
returns:
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
invalid argument MyWepPass.... .

And the dhcpcd command doesn't exist according to my system.

EDIT:
Ok, I got all working. I switched from KDE to GNOME, for some reason the network tools (though I think they are the same, maybe its something else) worked in gnome, but not KDE. It networks easier also. I think the MyWepPass.... wasn't working cause it wasn't a passphrase, it was a ASCII password. I configured it properly through the GUI. Thank you for your help. =]

[aliov]

I think what you are saying it true, but for the command line that's will not work if and only if your wireless is not configured. when you got > the command it's no finishing.

[verto]

Ya I figured the command was stalled cause I could hit CTRL+C to break it. Idk if there is a command line way to tell it that the password is ASCII rather then passphrase, but the GUI had an option for this so the command line should. (Just a matter of figuring it out). But in any case, it works now. =]
This thread can safely be closed/locked or whatever.