Wifi ndiswrapper problem

[Dougan778]

Hey everybody. I just got ahold of a Dell Latitude D505 laptop and I'm trying to put Fedora 6 on it. (Why 6? I had the 6 DVD. I may upgrade later). Anyway, I've heard so many horror stories about getting wireless to work, and now I understand why. First of all, I'm dual booting and set up windows first. The driver CD that came with the computer had the bcmwl5.inf driver for the wireless, which I guess is a popular driver. Windows registered my wireless card as being an Intel PRO/Wireless 1350 wireless card. Upon initial install of Fedora 6, my regular ethernet card worked fine.

I found about a million tutorials on google that made setting this up in Fedora seem easy. First I got ahold of the ndiswrapper utility. I then got all six of the bcmwl5 .inf, .sys, etc. files in one directory. I then did:
ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
ndiswrapper -l
ndiswrapper -m


The middle command showed that I had it installed and was recognizing the proper wireless card (eth1). I then did some tweaking to the SSID, key, etc. for the card. iwconfig gave me this after I was done:

eth1 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"home"
Mode:managed Channel:0 Access Point: Not-Associated
Retry min limit: 7 RTS thr: off Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption key <key>

And then a bunch of stuff indicating that I wasn't connected to a network.

Trying "ifup eth1 up" does this:
Error for wireless request "Set Bit Rate" (8B20) :
SET failed on device eth1 ; Operation not supported.

Then it tries to get an IP and fails. This also happens if I try to "activate" it through the GUI network tool in Fedora.

This happens every time. I've reformatted three times and tried differently each time, including following some troubleshooting I found on google, getting new bcmwl5 files, etc. I'm not really sure where to go on this. Anybody have any tips?

[scotta3234]

When i first read your post I was a bit confused because you said it was an intel pro/wireless device although after reading I realized that this is a broadcom based card (at least I think). That's why you were trying to use ndiswrapper. I don't use ndiswrapper so I can't really assist you but looking at what you've done so far doesn't appear to be enough. I would take a look at some of the ndiswrapper how-to's on this forum and possibly have a look at this: http://fedoramobile.org/fc-wireless/ndis-yum-livna/ Hope this information can at least steer you in the right direction.

[Dougan778]

You are correct about it being broadcom-based. At least I think it is.

[bbfuller]

Hello Dougan778

Welcome to the forum.

I have a broadcom card that I use with ndiswrapper. If I use the command:

/sbin/lspci

in a terminal it is revealed as a 4318.

I have been used to it working easily with fedora 7 using the commands in this howto:

http://www.fedoraguide.info/index.php/Fedora7#Ndiswrapper_drivers_howto

Note there is a specific section on 4318's just after the ndiswrapper section.

There are provisos however.

Just recently I reinstalled fedora on that laptop so I only have the original 2.6.21.1-3194.fc7 kernel and the newest 2.6.22.5-76.fc7 kernel in place.

The laptop will connect regularly to wireless with the 3194 kernel but will not connect using the latest kernel as soon as I introduce WPA encryption.

The NetworkManager software that eases wireless connection is installed but not enabled by default in fedora.
system-config-services in a terminal will take you to a gui where you can enable this service and save the changes so it starts on boot.

Lastly, not all variants of the bcmwl5 driver seem to be to ndiswrappers taste. There is a link here:

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=166620

to where someone has had success with mine after I posted them in the days I thought they worked with all my fedora kernels.

[Dougan778]

Update!

I figured it out, and I figured I'd post the link because it looks like I'm not the only person with this problem. http://www.linux-noob.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=3014

Apparently sometimes this needs to be done to update the firmware. I upgraded to F7 and had a different error which this solved, but after some investigation, the SET error will be solved by it as well.

Hope I can help anybody else who's having the same problem.

Scott

[mdlinuxwolf]

Try using a wireless Ethernet bridge if your Ethernet is detected but your wireless is not. Here are a few.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/category/category_slc.asp?CatId=1594

Often, trying new hardware is less of a struggle then fighting with stuff that doesn't work. After getting that to work, try updating by searching for your wireless.

[A.Serbinski]

You sure windows reported it is an "Intel PRO/wireless 1350"? Because there is no such thing. The "Dell wireless 1350" is a broadcom 4306.

I wouldn't use ndiswrapper for this. Its something that should be referred to as a REAL HACK. Use the bcm43xx driver included with fedora. You'll need to use bcm43xx-fwcutter to extract the firmware from the windoze drivers, then load the module, and it should work easy.

[Dougan778]

I don't need ndiswrapper? Wha? I got the impression I did (and yes, you are right, it is a broadcom 4306, or at least that's what the windows drivers are for and they work fine on windows).

[A.Serbinski]

http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=115572
http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/fedora-ppc/2006-March/000804.html
etc.