net access with kubuntu

[WILT]

Hi ,

I am a complete tyro to linux and have been trying to get on line without success
so far. Anyway I have decided to try again and have put Kubuntu onto a partition on my drive.

I am currently posting this using the windows partition so the equipment works on windows and consists of a Belkin FD7000 (BC4306 chip) wireless net card talking to a modified BT home hub (it now thinks its a Thomson Speedtouch 7g)

Will I have to use the windows drivers and Ndiswrapper and if so ,How so ?

Sorry if your fed up going through this but I did do a forum search using the Belkin card name etc and nothing showed.

WILT

[elija]

Is that the broadcom?

if so have a look at this

[WILT]

Whoa tiger,

First things first,How do I find out which version of Kubuntu I am running and once I know that do the instructions from the same edition of Ubuntu apply to Kubuntu.

I gathered the following info regarding the belkin when I was finding the windows drivers :-

F5D7000 543 VERSION. 1134 bROADCOM 4306KFB

WILT

[reed9]

cat /etc/*-release

Should give you info on which release you're running.

Read the sticky on wireless setup and post the requested info, just to be sure of your chipset and what modules are loading.

[WILT]

essentially, the request returned the following

release 8.10 and intrepid.

if further diagnosis is required I need guidance on how to save the result in a form that can be accessed by windows and then pasted here.
I copied and saved the result from the console into office and saved it as a text file but couldn't find it when back in windows !

[WILT]

I have just managed to cut and paste the script in the tutorial and the results were not very helpful

lo no wireless connection

eth0 ditto

wmaster0 ditto

pan0 ditto


WILT

[reed9]

You can redirect the output to a text file as so

lspci -v > lspci.txt

This will create a text file of the output, named in this case lspci.txt, in your current working directory.

As for accessing it from windows...well, windows doesn't generally play nicely with linux partition formats. Do you have an external drive or usb stick you can stick it on?

But, let's set that aside for a moment. Since in all likelihood you do have a Broadcom 4306 chipset, and most likely the correct b43 driver is loading, what you need is the firmware for the card.

For that, first you need the package b43-fwcutter. You can download that from here:
http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/poo...untu1_i386.deb

Am I correct in assuming you are able to access your windows partition from Ubuntu, or again, have a usb stick you can plop the file onto? Download the above, get it into Ubuntu, and double click the file to install.

Next you need these two files.
http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources...a-3.130.20.0.o
http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources...0.53.0.tar.bz2

Copy the above into your home directory from your windows partition or USB stick, open a terminal, and do

sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o
tar xfvj broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2
sudo b43-fwcutter --unsupported -w /lib/firmware broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod/wl_apsta_mimo.o

That should get you going.

[WILT]

Well I tried all that and it got me no-where.

I have to say that anyone who thinks linux can knock windows off its perch with such arcane methods for getting things to work is fooling themselves .I go back to the old DOS days ,and before that a Texas instruments Ti994a and believe me programming in extended basic was an absolute breeze compared to this crap.

I know loading drivers for Win 98 (I still use it because I use Elements 1 to edit my art work and print it) can be a pain but its not in the same league as Linux.

Puppy Linux does manage to connect with a reasonable GUI ,why cant the other varieties?

WILT

[coopstah13]

there are legal issues with distributing firmware, i'm not sure how some distros get around it

other distros do not contain it purely because it is not free software

[reed9]

And open source drivers are progressing, but it can be slow progress, if the manufacturer doesn't provide documentation for the hardware.

I have a Broadcom card that now works out of the box on Fedora 12, thanks to the open firmware project.
OpenFWWF - Open FirmWare for WiFi networks

But, even so, I still think linux is easier to use than Windows.

Were there any error message when you used b43-fwcutter? Does iwconfig entered in the terminal show a wireless interface now?

Does

lsmod | grep b43

return a result?

Does

dmesg | grep firmware

return a result?