[Jelidar]

I just recently got into linux and i find that it is probably the coolest and most customizable OS around (just my newly formed opinion) anyways everything is great and im learning quickly... i just try things till i learn what it does or untill i mess it up and have to fix it... one problem im having is that i cant get my wireless network to connect to a known wireless network. for some reason i cant get my wireless card to activate... and when i try to connect with a wireless network it says "connection to DC Library is disconnected" or something like that... i wondering if im having the same problem ive read about in a few fourms about wireless cards... what is ndiswrapper and what can it do for me....

i have a Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN... Im very interested in learning how to fix my connection issues in fedora and would be greatfull for any help

remember Im a newbee lol

[waterhead]

Have you done anything to configure the card? Do you know what driver you are using? If not, don't worry, we'll help.

First, more info is needed. Since you posted in the Redhat/Fedora post, I will give you commands the way Fedora will accept them.

Post the output of these commands:

/sbin/lspci -nn

/sbin/lsmod

If it is a USB wireless:

/sbin/lsusb

You can also look for error codes about the wireless. Enter this command and look for anything about the wireless:

dmesg

This will output a lot. Please don't post the entire output! Look for something concerning firmware loading for wlan0. I bet this is your problem.

[Jelidar]

ok I have to write all those commands down and then boot to fedora... i will post my info as soon as i can... give me oh 20 minutes to mess around... maybe less... 10???? lol

[waterhead]

Copy and past the results to a text file and save it as a .txt file. Windows will open it with Notepad.

[Jelidar]

yeah one of the interesting things i foun is that you can make a txt file in linux and then save it to the windows partition and windows will open it in notepad... i just redirected the output of the commands into txt files and then saved them to windows

anyways

This is some of what i found

# Devicefirmware and download the correct firmware (version 4)

b43-phy0 Error: Firmware file "b43/ucode5.fw" not found or load failed
b43-phy0 Error: you must go to http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/drivers/bcm43xx

ima read throu the files again to see what else i can undestand of them... let me know what more you might need

[waterhead]

That's what I meant about the firmware error. Go to the site that it lists and get the firmware file that it says to get. You will also need the fwcutter program to extract the firmware.

[Jelidar]

here is a messy (sry) copy of what i found in dmesg

eth1: link is not ready
b43-phy0 debug: Adding Interface type 2
b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43/ucode5.fw" not found or load failed.
b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to b43 - Linux Wireless and download the correct firmware (version 4).
[drm] Setting GART location based on new memory map
[drm] Loading R300 Microcode
[drm] writeback test succeeded in 1 usecs
b43-phy0 debug: Adding Interface type 2
b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43/ucode5.fw" not found or load failed.
b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to b43 - Linux Wireless and download the correct firmware (version 4).
fuse init (API version 7.
SELinux: initialized (dev sda1, type fuseblk), uses genfs_contexts

[Jelidar]

Hummm what is fwcutter... and i thought that maybe that was what i was going to have to do when i say the output.... but how does fwcutter work

would it be easier to download the firmware file to a cd and load the cd in fedora?

[waterhead]

The correct link is this:
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

The firmware you need depends on the driver you are using

[waterhead]

I am not sure what is meant by version 4 firmware. The version of fwcutter you use to extract the firmware depends on the driver module that your system is loading. When you enter the command /sbin/lsmod, look for either b43 or bcm43xx.