mhmyum

Good morning!
I have had some luck with wireless in the past, then it stopped working. I've gone through a number of tutorials, and was referred to this board. Here is information that might be helpful - thank you so much in advance for your help. I am running Ubuntu 8.10

Running lspci -nn
from lsmod
From dmesg | grep firmware
On uname -r:
Thanks! Feel free to let me know if any other information might be helpful.

Charles4809

The firmware for your Broadcom chipset seems not to be installed to the chip, so it won't work.
As was adviced by Ubuntu itself (see outcome from dmesg) you should go to Linux Wireless, more specific to this page
There you can find instructions how to install this firmware.
After installing your wireless should work.
If it does you can mark this thread as solved, if not, come back with the next question..

waterhead

Yes, you do need to install firmware to use the Linux b43 driver.

First, I see that both the b43 and ndiswrapper driver modules are loading. Since they both want to control the same device, they will conflict. I suggest uninstalling NDISwrapper completely from the system. Then use the b43 driver for the wireless.

You should be able to install the firmware in Ubuntu, using the "Hardware Drivers" GUI. It can be found in the menu:
System-->Administration-->Hardware Drivers

There should be the option to install the Broadcom or b43 driver. Just enable it, and it will download and install it. If this option isn't available, I found that it will also install it if you use apt to install the firmware cutter application (fwcutter).
You do need a wired internet connection to do this. It is very difficult to do this without a wired internet connection, but not impossible. The link that charles4809 provided was close, but referred to the wrong section. here is the correct section:

b43 - Linux Wireless

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Paul

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mhmyum

Thank you so much for your help and advice. I'm still new to Linux and your explanations and links are very thorough. Here are the steps I have taken thus far.

- Installed b43-fwcutter in Synaptic Package Manger
- Uninstalled ndiswrapper with the complete uninstallation option
- Re-installed (mark for reinstall) b43-fwcutter, just to be safe.

At this point, wireless did not work, so I then moved on to the Broadcom step outlined in the link posted in the second post to this thread.

Here are the steps for adding a broadcom driver, as outlined in the guide:
On this line:
I received the following in the command line.
I am guessing this means that b43-fwcutter was not installed properly, so I should uninstall from synaptic and reinstall by hand, perhaps? I do not want to mess up something entirely so some guidance on the next step would be great.

Thank you again for your help!
- Eugenia

waterhead

I never said to use Synaptics to install the firmware. Here are the options I gave, in the order of easier-->harder.

1) Install using the Hardware Drivers GUI
2) Install (b43-fwcutter) using apt
3) Manual install by compiling the firmware extractor.

You seem to have jumped to the last and hardest method. Those instructions are hard to follow, even for an experienced Linux user. I could explain it to you, but there is usually no need to. You can use the first two methods, and that link also pointed out another method that I missed. Since you already installed the b43-fwcutter application, you should be able to use a script to install the firmware. Try this command:
If is doesn't work, try it without the sh at the beginning.

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Paul

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mhmyum

Ah sorry! I must have misunderstood, no wonder I was having difficulties. Thanks for clarifying and offering a new solution, and for your patience. I ran the command you suggested. At this time, my wireless does not read the wireless signal that we have in our apartment. Here are the outputs from the original commands.

lspci -nn
From lsmod
From dmesg | grep firmware

waterhead

It looks like the ndiswrapper module is still loading. This will continue to cause problems until it is removed. You can manually remove it with this command.
The b43 driver should now work. You may need to remove it an reload it first.
And now reload it:
You need to add ndiswrapper to the blacklist file, in order to prevent it from loading at boot.Add this to the bottom of the page:

blacklist ndiswrapper

Save it and reboot. Ndiswrapper should no longer be loading, and interfering with the b43 driver.

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Paul

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mhmyum

Quick note: I used
Instead of the command listed above. Rebooting at this time.

mhmyum

Reboot completed - unfortunately it still doesn't see my wireless.
- Using Wicd for wireless manager - if it would be helpful I can uninstall it and switch to network manager, to see if that works.
- I don't see ndiswrapper in the module list, hooray
- the dmesg has a cleaner result

Thanks again for your help.

sudo iwlist scanning
lspci -nn
lsmod
dmesg | grep firmware

waterhead

Sorry for the incorrect command. You got it corrected, I see.

Everything now looks as it should. I think that it is not finding your network, is because something is wrong with your wireless router or access point. Wicd should work OK for wireless connections. If iwlist doesn't find a wireless network, neither will Wicd. You can always try NetworkManager, but I think that the problem is in your network.

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Paul

Please do not PM me with requests for help. I will not reply.