Re: Need Help Config'ing a Broadcomm Wireless NIC
Celejar wrote:
> 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.
>>
>
> This is the standard documentation for bcm43xx / b43:
>
> http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
>
Yeah, but that site left me *puh-lenty* confused.
>> 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.
>
>
Finally! Someone gives me a clear, definitive answer. Thank you!
westk@evoljasen:~$ sudo aptitude install b43-fwcutter
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Reading task descriptions... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
b43-fwcutter
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 52 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B/16.4kB of archives. After unpacking 69.6kB will be used.
Writing extended state information... Done
Preconfiguring packages ...
Selecting previously deselected package b43-fwcutter.
(Reading database ... 160197 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking b43-fwcutter (from .../b43-fwcutter_1%3a011-5_i386.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up b43-fwcutter (1:011-5) ...
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Writing extended state information... Done
Reading task descriptions... Done
This didn't do any downloading and cutting like my earlier run of
bcm43xx-fwcutter; do I need to be concerned about that?
Do I need to uninstall bcm43xx-fwcutter?
>> 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.
>
I don't really understand that, but I can live with my fuzzy knowledge
if I can get it to working.
>> 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.
>
>
I will eventually care about both; right now though, I'm just trying to
get it to connect. (I don't really understand encryption, either, or
especially how to set it up; I'll worry about that later.)
>> 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?
>
(I ran this before installing the b43-fwcutter as mentioned above.
Running it again after the b43-fwcutter shows the same output.)
westk@evoljasen:~$ sudo iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:12:17:CD:47:AB
ESSID:"klonk"
Mode:Master
Channel:6
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality=43/100 Signal level=-69 dBm Noise
level=-60 dBm
Encryption key:off
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
Extra:tsf=00000003bc243004
Cell 02 - Address: 00:1B:5B:FB:BD:A1
ESSID:"2WIRE387"
Mode:Master
Channel:1
Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
Quality=36/100 Signal level=-76 dBm Noise
level=-60 dBm
Encryption key:on
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s
9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Extra:tsf=00000004501d2181
Sweet! This means the wireless card is basically working, since it sees
my network ("klonk"), right? (I have no idea who has the 2WIRE387
network (it's not a default name in my wireless card, talking to itself,
is it? Surely it's a neighbor's network?)
> 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.
>
>
westk@evoljasen:~$ sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid klonk mode
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
too few arguments.
westk@evoljasen:~$ sudo ifconfig wlan0 192.168.1.105
westk@evoljasen:~$ sudo ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0c:76:63:23:94
inet addr:192.168.1.102 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::20c:76ff:fe63:2394/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:53432 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:51491 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:39750556 (37.9 MiB) TX bytes:13106849 (12.4 MiB)
Interrupt:22
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:138 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:138 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:7508 (7.3 KiB) TX bytes:7508 (7.3 KiB)
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:18:f8:29:b5:96
inet addr:192.168.1.105 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::218:f8ff:fe29:b596/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:38 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:5461 (5.3 KiB) TX bytes:9477 (9.2 KiB)
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)
I'm currently connecting remotely, so I don't want to bring down the
eth0 interface; is there any way to test the wlan0 connection without
bringing eth0 down?
> Please supply the output of 'dmesg | grep b43', executed following
> 'modprobe -r b43 && modprobe b43'.
>
westk@evoljasen:~$ sudo dmesg | grep b43
[ 12.841339] b43-phy0: Broadcom 4318 WLAN found
[ 16.714574] input: b43-phy0 as /class/input/input6
[ 16.796363] firmware: requesting b43/ucode5.fw
[ 16.850180] firmware: requesting b43/pcm5.fw
[ 16.861368] firmware: requesting b43/b0g0initvals5.fw
[ 16.871329] firmware: requesting b43/b0g0bsinitvals5.fw
[ 16.996036] b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 410.2160 (2007-05-26
15:32:10)
[ 18.016540] Registered led device: b43-phy0::tx
[ 18.016616] Registered led device: b43-phy0::rx
[ 18.016687] Registered led device: b43-phy0::radio
westk@evoljasen:~$ modprobe -r b43 && modprobe b43
-bash: modprobe: command not found
westk@evoljasen:~$
westk@evoljasen:~$ sudo modprobe -r b43 && modprobe b43
-bash: modprobe: command not found
westk@evoljasen:~$ sudo aptitude install modprobe
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Reading task descriptions... Done
Couldn't find any package matching "modprobe". However, the following
packages contain "modprobe" in their description:
efibootmgr
Couldn't find any package matching "modprobe". However, the following
packages contain "modprobe" in their description:
efibootmgr
No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 52 not upgraded.
Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used.
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initializing package states... Done
Reading task descriptions... Done
westk@evoljasen:~$ sudo aptitude search modprobe
westk@evoljasen:~$
Thanks for you help! I'm feeling hopeful! W00t!
--
Kent West <")))><
Westing Peacefully - http://kentwest.blogspot.com
Reply to: