Looking for testers of Live CD method for bcm43xx

Hi Jerry,

I tried this, but couldn't get it to work. Some details:
Compaq V2000 series laptop with a bcm4318, rev 02 chipset.

What did work for me:
"ndiswrapper -l" <- lists "lsbcmnds6" as also being used,
"ndiswrapper -r lsbcmnds6" <- to remove it.
"rmmod bcm43xx" <- to remove this too.
"rmmod ndiswapper",
"modprobe ndiswapper" <- just because

then follow the "Mepis network assistant" setup, as you outline, including the General tab "stop network"/"start network" (maybe twice).

Sounds complicated, but worked OK on the live CD, and on installed ones.

I found the "Ndiswrapper preference" didn't work for me, and left it alone.

James.

The check for conflicting driver part is easy to add, we haven't seen one up until now so that is a good catch.

One question: What is the output of ndiswrapper -l after all that? I mean, if you remove those two drivers, what is it using with the hardware? If you have time to check with the Live CD again, I would really like to know.

Thanks.

Edit: googled a bit, and see people have also gotten that chipset to work by removing bcm43xx and letting bcmwl5 do the work. For my bcm43xx there are at least three drivers that are shown with driver and hardware present. I wonder if we could remove any two of them and have the chipset work...

Hi Jerry,

Ndiswrapper had 3 drivers for this chipset:
bcmwl5, bcmwl5a, and lsbcmnds6, the one I removed. bcmwl5 and bcmwl5a are still active and running.

I think (I am new too all this) that there were 2 conflicts. The native bcm43xx driver conflicted with ndiswrapper. But within ndiswrapper, lsbcmnds6 may have conflicted with bcmwl5(and a).

It sounds like with your fix, you are using the native bcm43xx driver, so the ndiswrapper drivers (even if conflicted) are not used.

Further to all this, choosing ndiswrapper in the "Mepis network assistant" doesn't remove the native driver (even on an installed setup), nor does choosing native remove ndiswrapper.

Hope this helps,
James.

That's how I understand it too. I meant to ask whether it would work both ways: suppress any two of the ndiswrapper drivers to use the third, suppress ndiswrapper to use the native driver.

Don't really care as long as we come up with a single robust method that will allow end-users to see with the Live CD whether MEPIS will work with their bcm43xx card.

Thanks for getting back to me.

Hi Jerry,

No worries, hopefully this helps others get their networking working too.

James.

I've got a BCM4306 rev. 3 card, and am posting this using the 6.5.02 LiveCD with wireless...It was detected at boot and assigned eth0 using the native bcm43xx driver, but I ran knetworkmanager and it saw no networks. So I ran mnetwork, and it had defaulted to manual management. So I switched to auto, and it restarted the networks (run mnetwork as root in Konsole to see what's going on) and knetworkmanager when ran again was functional (to its limits, every network shows at 100% strength) and signed on here at starbucks...

Thanks for the input, that's a great contribution.

It seems to me bizarre how many different combinations of the same keystrokes can work.

For my next trick: I got my card also working with ndiswrapper and the native driver in the same liveCD session.
Removed the bcmwl5 & 5a drivers from ndiswrapper & modprobed it. Ran mnetwork from konsole, set to manual, restarted network, and watched it connect to tmobile in the terminal. Mnetwork seemed to hang, so I killed it, but wireless was working!

The SimplyMepis64 live CD worked wonderfully for me. With mnetwork, both ndiswrapper and native driver both worked. I would toggle between native/ndiswrapper, click apply, restart, stop, and restart again. At this point, after a few moments, the network would connect. This is great. It is the first distro I have seen that actually works with my hp dv6113us with a Broadcom 4311 wireless card.

I tried to use the knetworkmanager instead of mnetwork but only get partial success. Both native and ndiswrapper seem to see the various routers in my neighborhood, including mine, but it will never connect - only getting to 28% and then terminating and showing the icon that it is not connected. My router does use WEP as a 64bit hex key. Any suggestions.

I have tried Ubuntu, which sees the card but when I use the roaming option, I see my neighbor's routers, but not mine. And manual does not help either.

I tried PCLinuxOS using their ndiswrapper wizard and that works. However, if you load the newer nvidia driver, it lock up the system. Supposedly the newer core 2.6.20+ (or something like that) will solve the problem, but that new a core is not yet out of testing.

Even more troubling is my Mepis install. Having such success with the liveCD, I installed Mepis on my notebook but I now have no wireless success at all, even though I try to repeat the same process as before. Does anyone have any suggestions? Even my sound does not work, even though it did with the liveCD. Please help.

Have you gone through the basic steps:

http://www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php/Adjust_the_wireless_connection

If you get to the bottom and are still not connected, post back the information it asks for--thanks.

Just to reiterate, I am using my mepis64 liveCD using my wireless network to post this reply. So, wireless works with Mepis64 without configuration, but not for my installation.

live CD
---------------------------------------------------------

demo@0[demo]$ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"YeagerHome" Nickname:"default"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:40:05:CA:24:86
Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power:32 dBm
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:67/100 Signal level:-53 dBm Noise level:-96 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:147 Invalid misc:55438 Missed beacon:0

sit0 no wireless extensions.

demo@0[demo]$ lspci | grep -i network
0000:03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-PCI Card (rev 01)
demo@0[demo]$ modprobe bcm43xx
WARNING: Error inserting ieee80211_crypt (/lib/modules/2.6.15-27-desktop64-smp/kernel/net/ieee80211/ieee80211_crypt.ko): Operation not permitted
WARNING: Error inserting ieee80211 (/lib/modules/2.6.15-27-desktop64-smp/kernel/net/ieee80211/ieee80211.ko): Operation not permitted
WARNING: Error inserting ieee80211softmac (/lib/modules/2.6.15-27-desktop64-smp/kernel/net/ieee80211/softmac/ieee80211softmac.ko): Operation not permitted
FATAL: Error inserting bcm43xx (/lib/modules/2.6.15-27-desktop64-smp/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx.ko): Operation not permitted
demo@0[demo]$

mepis64 installation
----------------------------------------------------------

steve@0[~]$ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

steve@0[~]$ lspci | grep -i network
0000:03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-PCI Card (rev 01)
steve@0[~]$ modprobe bcm43xx
WARNING: Error inserting ieee80211_crypt (/lib/modules/2.6.15-27-desktop64-smp/kernel/net/ieee80211/ieee80211_crypt.ko): Operation not permitted
WARNING: Error inserting ieee80211 (/lib/modules/2.6.15-27-desktop64-smp/kernel/net/ieee80211/ieee80211.ko): Operation not permitted
WARNING: Error inserting ieee80211softmac (/lib/modules/2.6.15-27-desktop64-smp/kernel/net/ieee80211/softmac/ieee80211softmac.ko): Operation not permitted
FATAL: Error inserting bcm43xx (/lib/modules/2.6.15-27-desktop64-smp/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx.ko): Operation not permitted
steve@0[~]$

Please help.

That's why you are getting those fatal error messages. Try it again, this time as root, and see what happens.

Jerry

I tried sudo modprobe bcm43xx, but that does not work as a non-root user cannot execute this as root, even though the user is part of the root group.

I logged in as root and ran the command. The command did not error. However, the output from iwconfig was unaltered. It still read as before:

steve@0[~]$ modprobe bcm43xx
steve@0[~]$ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

steve@0[~]$ lspci | grep -i network
0000:03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-PCI Card (rev 01)

Please give me something else to try. Thanks in advance.

Found this by using the search box on this page...

http://www.mepis.org/node/11665

Let me know.

All these pages refer to trying to get the card working at all. I am concentrating on the difference between LiveCD and install.

LiveCD works!! Login as root or demo, both work. Ndiswrapper or native. Both work. Works using wpa and without. Only works with manual, auto network manager fails to connect, although it does see the various wirless networks in my area - it just cannot attatch. However, manual, native works for liveCD!!

Installing from that liveCD results in a system that does not work at all. Now the question is, what is different between the live and the install? How can I compare the systems and resolve the differences to get my install to work like the liveCD?

Thanks for the assistance, but the answer is right in front of us. Mepis has already solved the problem. We just need to identify how the liveCD solved it and apply it to the installation.

Please give me your thoughts. All you help is so appreciated.

You are not the only person who has had this situation, and the usual approach is to try the procedures covered in that post I linked one at a time:

1. blacklist bcm43xx
2. remove ndiswrapper drivers and reinstall new ones
3. use bcm43xx-fwcutter

You could try booting with the Live CD again, opening MEPIS Network Assistant (KMenu-System-MEPIS), and carefully noting all the settings on each of the three tabs. Cancel and exit the Live CD, then boot normally and replicate those settings, clicking apply on each tab. Not sure if that would help, but at least you might feel better...

Hope this helps.

Wow you respond quickly. Thanks so much.

No, I'm afraid that does not help.

Are you saying that the liveCD implementation of wireless management blacklists the bcm43xx driver if you select ndis, which is the default? Because the liveCD works for ndis with the broadcom driver found on/by the liveCD. Clicking the native driver then must blacklist the ndiswrapper and either use bcm43xx-fwcutter files, again located on or found by the liveCD, to properly configure the driver. Whatever approach the liveCD uses, it works.

Now the critical part is the driver. I have about half a dozen on my system that came with it or I downloaded. So far, using any of these for any distribution does not work. That is not altogether true. Ndiswrapper and my v4 xp driver does work in PCLinuxOS but not for Ubuntu with native drivers. But the PCLinuxOS was unstable whenever I used the Nvidia drivers and ndiswrapper.

Mepis is the only distrobution I have ever used to actually work stablely for either ndiswrapper or native. However, only with the liveCD.

I have tried these other solutions, as you have suggested, and many others. So, we are back to the same issue. You can keep directing me to the same support pages and move on to the next post, or we can investigate exacly what the liveCD does, in what order, with whatever drivers, and find a way to reproduce this in a Mepis installation and solve this thing properly - for myself and anyone else who is excited to use Mepis.

We can drop this issue or let it die, but that would be a disservice to Mepis and the admirable stance it has taken to create a valid desktop OS that makes microsoft quake in their tall towers.

My system is a HP dv6113us and a very common system. If we solve this, we will be solving it for a great many people. I will do my part and try almost anything you throw at me. Please provide me with your insight and expertise.

I know we can solve this the right way.

1) I don't know why that difference would exist.
2)The LiveCD comes with manual selected, Ndiswrapper enabled and the native bcm43xx Broadcom driver not loaded.
3) It is hard to tell from your response what actually happened: did you try to copy the configuration you have with the LiveCD onto the hard disk installation?
4) If yes but no luck, then the only thing I know to recommend is to walk through the steps in that post I linked to.

If you want to start a new thread here asking about the difference between the LiveCD and installed wireless setup, with a short explanation of why you are asking, you might get a better answer than I can provide.

Good luck.

OK, first I must apologize. I burned a new image of the cd and reinstalled as root. Now, I can get wireless to work, but only with ndiswrapper and only if I stop and restart the network from the network assistant interface. Any thoughts?

Thanks again for your assistance.