Re: Setting up HP Pavilion DV 6458

[Carl Fink <carlf@panix.com>]

Long delay, but I haven't had a lot of time to work on this.  Over the last
couple of days I've made some progress.

On Mon, Apr 21, 2008 at 11:43:36PM +0200, Gabriele Pongelli wrote:

> i've tried to use the kernel module bcm43xx on my vanilla 2.6.24.4 kernel but it won't work...
> if "lspci" tells you about this hardware 
> 03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Dell Wireless 1390 WLAN Mini-PCI Card (rev 01)
> you can use wifi with ndiswrapper and this [2] windows driver...
> you've to execute these commands, briefly:
> # m-a prepare
> # m-a a-i ndiswrapper
> # depmod -a
> # modprobe ndiswrapper
> # unzip -a /path/to/downloaded/R151517.EXE
> # cd /path/to/downloaded/ && cd to the created directory form extraction and in subdirectory DRIVER
> # ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

Thanks.  I do not have that hardware, I have the 4328.  Unfortunately, this
chip is explicitly NOT supported by the b43 driver, so I had to go with
ndiswrapper.  (I'd prefer Free software end-to-end, but I'd also like to use
my computer.)

I followed the steps above, and ndiswrapper reports success.

NitpickingHP2:/home/carlf# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth1      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Bit Rate:130 Mb/s   Tx-Power:32 dBm   
          RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B   
          Encryption key:B49A-A3D8-FD55-C799-1E7A-D5D6-2B   Security mode:restricted
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

However:

NitpickingHP2:/home/carlf# dhclient wlan0
There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.pid with pid 4340
killed old client process, removed PID file
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.1.0
Copyright 2004-2007 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:1a:73:67:9c:08
Sending on   LPF/wlan0/00:1a:73:67:9c:08
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 12
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 14
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 12
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 17
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.

So, I'm assuming I'm missing a step?

Honestly, I did read the Wireless-HOWTO and search the Debian Wiki among
other places, but I have no idea what I'm missing.  I will as before
appreciate any help--I really do appreciate it, Gabriele.
-- 
Carl Fink                           nitpicking@nitpicking.com 

Read my blog at blog.nitpicking.com.  Reviews!  Observations!
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