Can't Connect CentOS5 Wireless

[MikeTbob]

I don't mean to keep changing my mind about what to do, but are you saying that if I got a more updated version of CentOS it would have a newer kernel that would make recognizing my wireless card easier? Because the version of CentOS I used to install was burned about 10 months ago, so if there's a newer version with a more updated kernel I have no qualms about downloading it and re-installing the newer version, if that means it'll take one line from the terminal to recognize the firmware.

I believe waterhead was referring to Fedora Project,,which is almost the same thing as CentOS. You can check it out at the Fedora page or Distrowatch.

[waterhead]

I don't disagree with you. I was being somewhat facetious, I'm afraid.

I understand, As they say "No blood, no foul", or something like that.

For whatever reason, I have never felt comfortable with any of the rpm based distros I've used - Mandriva, Fedora, or OpenSuse. For whatever reason, for me, Debian based distros and Arch have always seemed much more intuitive and simple to use. At this point, a lot of that is probably because I am now much more familiar with Arch and Debian than I am with anything else.

I guess I am the same, except I started with Fedora and SuSE. I find some things that Debian does to be difficult, or just plain silly. (Like Iceweasel instead of Firefox!)

[waterhead]

I don't mean to keep changing my mind about what to do, but are you saying that if I got a more updated version of CentOS it would have a newer kernel that would make recognizing my wireless card easier? Because the version of CentOS I used to install was burned about 10 months ago, so if there's a newer version with a more updated kernel I have no qualms about downloading it and re-installing the newer version, if that means it'll take one line from the terminal to recognize the firmware.

What I mean is that CentOS is actually a clone of RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux). RHEL is meant for servers or business use. Because of that, a stable system is desired. Fedora is the developmental arm of Red Hat, and RHEL 5 was based on Fedors 6, and now Fedora is up to version 11. There have been a lot of changes since Fedora 6.

While there is some wireless support that was backported to the RHEL 5, 2.6.18 kernel, the Broadcom wireless driver was not one of them. If you want a distro very similar to RHEL, but with a kernel that has almost ALL of the latest modules compiled and enabled, use Fedora 11.

Here is the rpm that I made for the Broadcom firmware. It will install on RHEL 5/CentOS 5, even if the b43 driver isn't there. It also works for Fedora, as the b43 driver is present in newer versions. You can download and save it for future use.

b43-firmware-4.150.10.5-0.noarch.rpm

[Ascendancy]

Hey waterhead thanks for supplying me that file, I think it worked? I ran this command:

rpm -ivh b43-firmware-4.150.10.5-0.noarch.rpm

And I got some response back saying it was completed successfully, so I'm restarting and hoping it'll pick it up. Let me know if I did something wrong though, or if there's more steps involved.

[waterhead]

I was pretty sure that it would install on RHEL 5 or it's clone, CentOS 5, because I built it on RHEL5.

The problem it that the driver that goes with it is unavailable on those systems, as far as I know. There is the possibnility that it was added to an updated kernel. You should update the system to the latest kernel available, which seems to be version kernel-2.6.18-128.2.1.el5.

Upon further review, I don't think that the b43 driver is even in an updated kernel. But you should still update it.

I found a how-to on getting a Broadcom wireless to work in CentOS. Maybe it will help you.

When you're done crying... - Getting the bcm4306 wireless adapter to work with RHEL5 or CentOS EL5

It is for a different model chip, but the process is still the same.