Re: Need Help Config'ing a Broadcomm Wireless NIC
On Sat, 15 Nov 2008 20:23:07 -0600
Kent West <westk@acu.edu> wrote:
> I'm running Debian Sid and have a Linksys WMP54GS.
>
> I've never really understood networking, and definitely not wireless
> networking.
>
> I've been trying half a week to get this card working, but the how-to's
> I've been finding simply don't explain things sufficiently for me to
> find my own way, and their ways inevitably fail for some reason or another.
This is the standard documentation for bcm43xx / b43:
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
> The best success I've had so far come from following the instructions at
> http://www.debiantutorials.org/content/view/153/213/ but when I get to
> the point of installing bcm43xx-fwcutter (do I want this, or do I want
> b43-fwcutter? I could never determine from the documentation I've
It depends on your kernel version. Older kernels use the obsolete
bcm43xx driver, and newer ones use the (much better) b43 driver. The
cutter packages are for the respective versions of the driver. b43 was
introduced around 2.6.24.
> Setting up bcm43xx-fwcutter (1:005-2) ...
> --2008-11-15 19:34:22-- http://boredklink.googlepages.com/wl_apsta.o
> Resolving boredklink.googlepages.com... 74.125.47.118
> Connecting to boredklink.googlepages.com|74.125.47.118|:80... connected.
> HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
> 2008-11-15 19:34:23 ERROR 404: Not Found.
>
>
> I found a clue to use "volatile", but didn't know exactly what that
> meant, but a google for "debian volatile" led me to add this line to my
> sources.list file:
>
> deb http://volatile.debian.org/debian-volatile etch/volatile main
> contrib non-free
>
> and then I reinstalled bcm43-fwcutter and this time it looked like it
> completed properly.
>
> But the docs seem to indicate that "voila! your wireless now works", but
> it doesn't. At least, not as far as I can tell. (The docs also talked
> about copying the driver (what driver? which file?) from the Windows
> install CD, and to extract it to /lib/firmware or /usr/lib/firmware and
> to create these directories, etc etc etc, but I THINK the install of
> bcm43-fwcutter took care of all these things for, right?)
It should. Broadcom cards require firmware that runs on the card. The
driver must load firmware onto the card for it to usable, and the linux
driver expects the firmware to be available in a specific place in the
filesystem, e.g. /lib/firmware/b43. The firmware must be extracted
from some non-freely-distributable binary driver package distributed by
Broadcom or some other company that utilizes Broadcom chipsets. The
cutter packages are tools that do the extracting and optionally the
placing into the appropriate directory. The Debian packages will
attempt to download the appropriate driver packages from the internet,
and you don't need to worry about extracting anything from a CD.
> 01:06.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One
> 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
I have this exact card.
> wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:18:f8:29:b5:96
> UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
> RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
> TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
> collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
> RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
>
> wmaster0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr
> 00-18-F8-29-B5-96-65-74-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
> UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
> RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
> TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
> collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
> RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
These two are your Broadcom interfaces. wmaster0 is a sort of
placeholder for the hardware, and is of almost no practical use to
you. wlan0 is a regular interface, usable like other network
interfaces.
> wlan0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:""
> Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
> Tx-Power=20 dBm
> Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2352 B
> Encryption key: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
Okay, you aren't connected to anything.
> loven@evoljasen:~/sux$ cat /etc/network/interfaces
> auto wlan0
> iface wlan0 inet dhcp
This looks right, assuming you don't care which AP you access, and that
you don't require any encryption.
...
> wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
> wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
> Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:18:f8:29:b5:96
> Sending on LPF/wlan0/00:18:f8:29:b5:96
> Sending on Socket/fallback
> DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
> DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
> DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 12
> DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
> DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 12
> DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
> No DHCPOFFERS received.
> No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.
> done.
...
With wireless, this generally means that the card isn't associating
with any AP, which is definitely the case if the output of 'iwconfig
wlan0' gives what you have above. What does 'iwlist wlan0 scan' show?
You can also try manually bringing up the card:
iwconfig wlan0 essid your-essid mode
ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.10
essid and IP address as appropriate, and assuming again that you aren't
using encryption.
> loven@evoljasen:~/sux$ uname -a
> Linux evoljasen 2.6.26-1-486 #1 Sat Oct 18 15:35:44 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux
If you are using .26, you should have b43.
Please supply the output of 'dmesg | grep b43', executed following
'modprobe -r b43 && modprobe b43'.
> Kent
Celejar
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