WLAN in pendrive Linux 08

[jimmyakaspanky]

Ok, I am completely new to this so please forgive my ignorance. I have a dell inspiron 2200 with a Dell Wireless 1370 WLAN mini-PCI card. I have successfully booted Linux from the USB drive, but I have no wireless internet. What to do?

[waterhead]

I'm not sure exactly what is install for pendrive linux. It looks to be a version of MCNLive, which is itself a version of Mandriva.

I guess that we should start by determining exactly what wireless you have. Enter this command into a terminal and copy and post the output. You can save it as a text file and open it in widows with notepad.

lspci -nn

[jimmyakaspanky]

Ok, I did that and this is what I recieved:

00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller [8086:2590] (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller [8086:2592] (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller [8086:2792] (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 [8086:2658] (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 [8086:2659] (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 [8086:265a] (rev 03)
00:1d.3 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 [8086:265b] (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller [8086:265c] (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev d3)
00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Audio Controller [8086:266e] (rev 03)
00:1e.3 Modem [0703]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Modem Controller [8086:266d] (rev 03)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge [8086:2641] (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface [0101]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller [8086:266f] (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) SMBus Controller [8086:266a] (rev 03)
02:01.0 CardBus bridge [0607]: Texas Instruments PCI1510 PC card Cardbus Controller [104c:ac56]
02:03.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4318] (rev 02)
02:08.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82562ET/EZ/GT/GZ - PRO/100 VE (LOM) Ethernet Controller Mobile [8086:1068] (rev 03)

[waterhead]

Ok, this is your wireless:

02:03.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4318] (rev 02)

There are two ways to activate this in Linux. There is a native driver called b43 (or the older version bcm43xx). Then there is NDISwrapper, which actually uses the Windows driver to make the card work.

I don't know what is available in your system. Some distros will automatically load the native b43/bcm43xx driver module, although it won't work without more configuring. To see if this module is loaded, post the output of this command.

lsmod

[jimmyakaspanky]

This is what came out:

[guest@localhost guest]$ lsmod
bash: lsmod: command not found

[waterhead]

On some distros you have to give the path to the command's file. Do a search for lsmod to see where it is located. In Fedora it is in the /sbin folder, so my command would look like this:

/sbin/lsmod

Yours may be different. Another possibility is that you may need to be root. To become root, enter this command, and then the password (when prompted to):

su
Password: <enter password here>

[jimmyakaspanky]

On some distros you have to give the path to the command's file. Do a search for lsmod to see where it is located. In Fedora it is in the /sbin folder, so my command would look like this:

/sbin/lsmod

Yours may be different. Another possibility is that you may need to be root. To become root, enter this command, and then the password (when prompted to):

su
Password: <enter password here>

Ok, I just logged in under root, and this is what came out from the lsmod:

Module Size Used by
e100 31140 0
mii 5568 1 e100
i915 17664 3
drm 62420 4 i915
snd_seq_dummy 3492 0
snd_seq_oss 31168 0
snd_seq_midi_event 6944 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 49232 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 7052 3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss 40192 0
snd_mixer_oss 15904 1 snd_pcm_oss
bcm43xx 434240 0
ieee80211softmac 27232 1 bcm43xx
ieee80211 30216 2 bcm43xx,ieee80211softmac
ieee80211_crypt 5344 1 ieee80211
snd_intel8x0 29212 1
rfcomm 33236 0
l2cap 21088 5 rfcomm
snd_ac97_codec 96708 1 snd_intel8x0
snd_ac97_bus 2720 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm 69892 3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec
snd_timer 19396 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 8552 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm
af_packet 17768 2
bluetooth 43108 4 rfcomm,l2cap
snd 46276 11 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd _mixer_oss,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd _timer
soundcore 7936 1 snd
ipv6 237088 8
usbhid 50272 0
binfmt_misc 9704 1
ide_generic 1824 0 [permanent]
pcmcia 31756 0
yenta_socket 24076 1
rsrc_nonstatic 11616 1 yenta_socket
pcmcia_core 34388 3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic
cpufreq_ondemand 6956 1
cpufreq_conservative 6920 0
cpufreq_powersave 2272 0
p4_clockmod 5476 0
speedstep_lib 4388 1 p4_clockmod
freq_table 4704 1 p4_clockmod
intel_agp 22684 1
agpgart 27048 3 drm,intel_agp
nvram 7944 0
i8k 5976 0
evdev 8672 2
joydev 8800 0
tsdev 6880 0
dm_mirror 18960 0
dm_mod 49560 1 dm_mirror
unionfs 300776 1
squashfs 43044 1
3w_xxxx 24960 0
sx8 16172 0
tmscsim 21120 0
sata_vsc 6468 0
sata_via 6500 0
sata_uli 5348 0
sata_sx4 11972 0
sata_svw 6180 0
sata_sis 7204 0
sata_sil 7624 0
sata_qstor 7908 0
sata_promise 9604 0
sata_nv 7812 0
BusLogic 69716 0
aic7xxx 176276 0
ahci 16100 0
usb_storage 88612 1
ehci_hcd 28904 0
ohci_hcd 18820 0
uhci_hcd 20912 0
usbcore 112960 6 usbhid,usb_storage,ehci_hcd,ohci_hcd,uhci_hcd
mptbase 47168 0
scsi_transport_spi 22368 1 aic7xxx
sd_mod 18432 2
sg 30584 0
ata_piix 10884 0
libata 60748 12 sata_vsc,sata_via,sata_uli,sata_sx4,sata_svw,sata_ sis,sata_sil,sata_qstor,sata_promise,sata_nv,ahci, ata_piix
sr_mod 15332 0
scsi_mod 118824 11 3w_xxxx,tmscsim,BusLogic,aic7xxx,ahci,usb_storage, scsi_transport_spi,sd_mod,sg,libata,sr_mod
loop 15208 4
ide_cd 35616 0
isofs 32284 0
nls_utf8 2496 3
ntfs 267228 1
vfat 10944 3
msdos 8480 0
fat 47356 2 vfat,msdos
reiserfs 255492 0
ext3 125928 0
jbd 51220 1 ext3
nls_cp437 6304 3
nls_iso8859_2 5216 0
nls_iso8859_1 4672 1

[waterhead]

OK, this driver is loading for your wireless card:

 bcm43xx               434240  0

This driver will work, but it usually will need firmware loaded first. Check the output of this command for any errors about the wireless and firmware:

dmesg

Here is a link to a site with all the info you need. Let me know if you need more help.
b43 - Linux Wireless