Broadcom 802.11 down

[darkscript]

Okay, before I installed linux, I made sure I got the proper ndis drivers for ndiswrapper
what we had was bcmwl6.inf and .sys, these were vista drivers, so I had to go to hp.com and download the XP Versions of the same drivers in order for them to work, they installed fine in ndiswrapper, or so i thought


I'm just going to show you guys some output, it seems on instal bcmw33x drivers were actually used, but they didn't work at all when trying to connect... perhaps it might have to do with the wireless on off switch on the laptop


[darkscript@finalrest ~]$ ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4311) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx-mac80211)



[darkscript@finalrest ~]$ dmesg | grep bcm
bcm43xx_mac80211: Broadcom 4311 WLAN found
bcm43xx_mac80211: Found PHY: Analog 4, Type 2, Revision 8
bcm43xx_mac80211: Found Radio: Manuf 0x17F, Version 0x2050, Revision 2
bcm43xx_mac80211: Radio turned off
bcm43xx driver


lsmod | grep ndis returns blank


fedora suprised me, it seemed that it detected my wireless out of the box, but later on, I realized that the interface was useless, and it couldn't do anything, it would throw up error messages about
cannot set

I cant reproduce these, as I removed the device in network config dialogues and cant find a way to get it back.

It says up in the code radio turned off, I know my laptop has a wireless on/off switch, maybe the wireless just isn't turning on at all. It always stays amber, when blue means its on.

I dont know whats going on, Any help would be greatly appreciated .

[scotta3234]

I don't know much about ndiswrapper.... but i can probably explain how to use the native drivers to get your wireless working. See here: http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=156282

[darkscript]

Okay, I've done a bit more digging, and I uninstalled the aforementioned ndiswrapper driver, and got another one meant for windows vista 64 bit, since I installed the x86_64 spin of fedora 7
Heres the output of what I did

[darkscript@finalrest Documents]$ ndiswrapper -l
[darkscript@finalrest Documents]$ sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl6.inf
installing bcmwl6 ...
[darkscript@finalrest Documents]$ ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl6 : driver installed
device (14E4:4311) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx-mac80211)
[darkscript@finalrest Documents]$ ndiswrapper -m
module configuration already contains alias directive

[darkscript@finalrest Documents]$ ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:D3:97:5F:4D
inet addr:192.168.1.3 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::216:d3ff:fe97:5f4d/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:8863 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8003 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:8107284 (7.7 MiB) TX bytes:1177977 (1.1 MiB)
Interrupt:17 Base address:0xe000

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:10696 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:10696 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:88783188 (84.6 MiB) TX bytes:88783188 (84.6 MiB)

virbr0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet addr:192.168.122.1 Bcast:192.168.122.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::200:ff:fe00:0/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:48 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:9456 (9.2 KiB)

[darkscript@finalrest Documents]$ ifconfig wlan0
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1A:73:41:91:F6
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)

[darkscript@finalrest Documents]$ sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory


It would seem that perhaps if i could remove bcm43xx-mac80211 that may solve my problem, then I have the issue of getting ndiswrapper to work right. and making sure that the interface will actually turn on. But we'll get to that later, right now I just want it up. Thanks again for your help

[darkscript]

I'm hesitant to strip the firmware of this, because windows is working perfectly well with it right now and stripping it of its firmware, would probably trash the windows driver. I want to stay away from that. I like to have something working.., and I don't want o loose wireless G functionality, as I'm a friend of higher speeds, especially when we have a great connection here.

What I'm wanting to do is remove the bcmw33x driver and force it to use ndiswrapper, and set it up as an alias to wlan0.

In any case, thank you so much for your quick reply scotta.

[darkscript]

Oh, I see were actually replacing the firmware, I guess thats worth a shot, I'm doing that now, if i could get it to run natively, that would be super amazing.

[telepatico]

My HP laptop has the on/off for wireless right in front on the light that is on the center under the HP logo. That little square with the antenna symbol is the on/off switch.

[darkscript]

but that switch is controlled by the software. its not that i dont know where the switch is, its that i dont think the system recognizes that its not on. In any case, I think ive figured out that it isn't the problem..

from what Scotta had in his post, it appears to be a problem with the firmware.

I tried something else though

[darkscript@finalrest ~]$ lsmod | grep bcm
bcm43xx_mac80211 415137 0
ssb 43589 1 bcm43xx_mac80211
mac80211 164297 2 rc80211_simple,bcm43xx_mac80211

[darkscript@finalrest ~]$ sudo modprobe -r bcm43xx_mac80211
Password:
[darkscript@finalrest ~]$ sudo modprobe -r ssb
[darkscript@finalrest ~]$ sudo modprobe -r mac80211
FATAL: Module mac80211 is in use.
[darkscript@finalrest ~]$



The modprobe blacklist appears to be only temporary, as they come back up after a reboot. I cant get them to go away. I want them to go away, so i can use ndiswrapper properly;

[scotta3234]

I should have perhaps been a little more specific. If you follow the method used in my post you'll be using the native fw-cutter method. Ndiswrapper has absolutely nothing to do with what I say in that post. Chances are you're trying to do both and that's why you're running into so much trouble. Basically, you do it the ndiswrapper way..... OR the Native (fwcutter) way. So, you can either uninstall ndiswrapper and undo anything you've done with that or follow my method for using native drivers which are built into the kernel already you just need fwcutter to extract the firmware. The mac_80211 driver IS the bcm43xx driver so you'll want to keep this if using the native drivers.

[darkscript]

cool I knew about that actually, and i've been trying to do it the ndiswrapper way. but the native drivers keep getting in my way, and replacing the ones i install with ndiswrapper

I think I"m just going to try to uninstall them
via rpm -e

would stripping the firmware remove windows compatability. I'm dual booting. Windows vista 32bit and F7 x86_64

[scotta3234]

You could try blacklisting the driver to keep it from loading by adding whatever modules you want to blacklist by editing /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist*

blacklist bcm43xx_mac80211 (example)

[darkscript]

Okay, I blacklisted that, but ndiswrapper -l still says using alternate driver bcm43xx_mac80211

but lspci | grep bcm and dmesg | grep bcm both return empty. So it would appear the blacklist worked, but ndiswrapper is still using bcm43xx_mac80211...

[darkscript]

STRANGEST GLITCH IN THE ENTIRE FORUM!!!!

allright... Update...
I reinstalled f7 this morning from scratch and did the bcm43xx-fwcutter method...everything works Great... NOT.

Every time i try to connect to my access point.. .It Shuts the Access Point Down.. What the heck is up with that.


*Edit*

This is not a flame... I'm somewhat upset with the situation... though an iwlist shows that the interface does infact work... connecting to the accesspoint 2wire250, shuts it down...whereas in windows it works fine....

Whoever heard of a problem at the AP... geez thats insane