Can't get wireless to work on laptop. Please advice

[teknoratti]

Hello, I'm having grave trouble getting my wireless nic to work on my Gateway MX6450 laptop.
I have a 4318 broadcom nic.

I've been on several threads and websites and found a few articles to point me in the right direction but I still can't get it to work.

I have the correct drivers, as those are the same ones my windows xp os uses. I d'loaded and installed ndiswrapper .

the driver appears to be installed, as the result of the ndiswrapper -l command is:
bcmwl5 : driver installed device (14E4:431 present (alternate driver: ssb)

but i cannot activate the nic through network manager, nor can i go through the CLI and activate it. The results of iwconfig wlan0 up are:
SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory

I'm stumped.

results from lspci:
Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

results from uname -a:
Linux linuxmachine 2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686 #1 SMP Tue Nov 18 12:19:59 EST 2008 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux

results from system-release:
Fedora release 10 (Cambridge)

This is the error I received from dmseg:

b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43/ucode5.fw" not found
b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to b43 - Linux Wireless and download the latest firmware (version 4).

[reed9]

You probably are loading the b43 wireless driver as well as ndiswrapper, which I believe will cause conflicts. You need to either blacklist the b43 driver and just use ndiswrapper, or ditch ndiswrapper, and install the firmware so your b43 driver will work properly.

Post of the output of

lsmod

[teknoratti]

You probably are loading the b43 wireless driver as well as ndiswrapper, which I believe will cause conflicts. You need to either blacklist the b43 driver and just use ndiswrapper, or ditch ndiswrapper, and install the firmware so your b43 driver will work properly.

Post of the output of

lsmod

Here is the result of lsmod:

Module Size Used by
ip6table_filter 6400 1
ip6_tables 14736 1 ip6table_filter
fuse 49436 2
rfkill_input 8320 0
sco 12932 2
bridge 43668 0
stp 6148 1 bridge
bnep 14848 2
l2cap 21504 3 bnep
bluetooth 48608 5 sco,bnep,l2cap
sunrpc 155924 3
ip6t_REJECT 7296 2
nf_conntrack_ipv6 15864 2
ipv6 230132 26 ip6t_REJECT,nf_conntrack_ipv6
cpufreq_ondemand 9996 1
powernow_k8 18692 0
dm_multipath 17164 0
uinput 10624 0
arc4 5760 2
ecb 6528 2
crypto_blkcipher 18052 1 ecb
b43 131872 0
rfkill 11288 2 rfkill_input,b43
mac80211 173668 1 b43
cfg80211 23816 1 mac80211
input_polldev 7176 1 b43
snd_atiixp_modem 15496 0
snd_atiixp 18828 3
snd_ac97_codec 95264 2 snd_atiixp_modem,snd_atiixp
snd_seq_dummy 6660 0
ac97_bus 5504 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_seq_oss 30364 0
snd_seq_midi_event 9600 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 48576 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 10124 3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss 42496 0
snd_mixer_oss 16896 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 65924 4 snd_atiixp_modem,snd_atiixp,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm _oss
snd_timer 22024 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
tifm_7xx1 9216 0
snd 50616 17 snd_atiixp_modem,snd_atiixp,snd_ac97_codec,snd_seq _dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_pcm_ oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer
tifm_core 10268 1 tifm_7xx1
k8temp 7936 0
pcspkr 6272 0
sdhci_pci 10624 0
firewire_ohci 22532 0
soundcore 9416 1 snd
ssb 36228 1 b43
snd_page_alloc 11016 3 snd_atiixp_modem,snd_atiixp,snd_pcm
hwmon 6300 1 k8temp
yenta_socket 24972 1
joydev 12736 0
sdhci 17540 1 sdhci_pci
mmc_core 43676 1 sdhci
firewire_core 35616 1 firewire_ohci
crc_itu_t 5760 1 firewire_core
rsrc_nonstatic 13568 1 yenta_socket
i2c_piix4 12688 0
video 20244 0
output 6528 1 video
sky2 42628 0
ata_generic 8452 0
pata_acpi 7680 0
pata_atiixp 8320 2
radeon 233424 3
drm 157364 3 radeon
i2c_algo_bit 8836 1 radeon
i2c_core 21268 4 i2c_piix4,radeon,drm,i2c_algo_bit

[reed9]

Well, ndiswrapper isn't showing up in your modules here at all. Did you load have it loaded? B43 is loading. If you want to use ndiswrapper, blacklist the b43 drivers by adding a line to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist reading blacklist b43

You can unload the b43 driver with

su -
modprobe -r b43

[waterhead]

I would suggest just installing the firmware and using the b43 driver. It is a better driver than using NDISwrapper. You don't say what distribution you are using, as installing firmware is slightly different in each version.

b43 - Linux Wireless

[teknoratti]

Just a quick update. I finally got my wireless card working. I ditched ndiswrapper and simply used b43-fwcutter.

used the -w switch to extract the firmware from the b43 drivers and placed them in the /lib/firmware directory.

It was that simple. Thanks for everyone's help

[waterhead]

Nice to hear that you were able to figure out b43-fwcutter. It confuses a lot of people.

I just realised that you are using Fedora 10. I could have made this process even easier for you. I made a .rpm package that will install the firmware. You may want a copy of it for further use, as it installs on both RHEL and Fedora.

b43-firmware-4.150.10.5-0.noarch.rpm

[teknoratti]

Nice to hear that you were able to figure out b43-fwcutter. It confuses a lot of people.

I just realised that you are using Fedora 10. I could have made this process even easier for you. I made a .rpm package that will install the firmware. You may want a copy of it for further use, as it installs on both RHEL and Fedora.

b43-firmware-4.150.10.5-0.noarch.rpm

Oh ok, you simply did all the leg work. you already have the extracted firmware files and simply will drop them in the /lib directory.

[waterhead]

Actually, it was a learning experience for me, as I had never created a rpm package before. I found an rpm containing an older version of the firmware, there also was a rpm source package. The source package had the spec file needed to create a rpm package. i altered it a bit to suite my preference, and used Emacs to build it.

[kr0nik]

try this:
1. sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-common
2. sudo ndiswrapper -i driver.inf
3. lspci -nn (note down the device id)
4. sudo ndiswrapper -a ####:#### driver
5. sudo ndiswrapper -m
6. sudo gedit /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf (change managed to true)
7. sudo depmod -a
8. sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
9. sudo ifup wlan0