Fedora 9 on a Dell XPS M1530

[Caleb Burns]

I just got my XPS M1530 the day before yesterday with Vista pre-installed. The the touchpad, and the wireless nic all worked properly in Vista. I promptly installed Fedora 9, and now my touchpad, and wireless nic will not work. The mouse-pad worked while e using the graphical installer for Fedora, but not afterwords. Also, to my understanding Fedora doesn't even see that there is a wireless nic. According to Network Configuration the only network device present is eth0, which works perfectly fine. However, there is no wireless. The nic is a Dell Wireless 1505 Wireless-N Mini-card. Would someone please solve my dilemma?

[kicon_kijin]

You have to make sure that ndiswrapper is installed and that your wireless card is supported by it. I believe the command yum install ndiswrapper will work. From there you will have to check for a tutorial on how to set up the rest.

[biggsk]

Is the Wireless card Intel / Broadcom / etc?

Do a 'lspci | grep Network'

What does it have listed for Network Controller?

[Caleb Burns]

0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 03) is the Network Controller listed by 'lspci'.

[biggsk]

Try following the steps on the following link:
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=182684

see post #2

Hope this helps :o)

[Caleb Burns]

When I do 'modprobe ndiswrapper' I get the error 'FATAL: Module ndiswrapper not found'.

[biggsk]

What comes up when you do 'ndiswrapper -l' ?

[Caleb Burns]

bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4328) present (alternate driver: ssb)

[biggsk]

Hmm...Have you rebooted since installing the driver?
Also, what does 'iwconfig' show?

[Caleb Burns]

Okay, I was able to get 'modprobe ndiswrapper' to work. What do I do next?


[root@localhost ~]# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

[biggsk]

Did you add:
alias wlan0 ndiswrapper
to the /etc/modprobe.conf ?

Looking at your last post there is no wireless interface...

[Caleb Burns]

Yes, I did add alias wlan9 ndiswrapper to '/etc/modprobe.conf'.

I do not know if this is relevant, but this is what was shown when I used 'ndiswrapper -m':

[root@localhost ~]# ndiswrapper -m
adding "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" to /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper ...


This means that I have alias wlan9 ndiswrapper in both '/etc/modprobe.conf' and '/etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper'

[biggsk]

Try using the command:

ndiswrapper -ma

Also is there anything in the message log?
dmesg | grep ndis

And is ndiswrapper shown when you run:
modprobe | grep ndis
?

[Caleb Burns]

These are the results of the commands your recommended:

[root@localhost ~]# ndiswrapper -ma
module configuration information is stored in /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper

[root@localhost ~]# dmesg | grep ndis
ndiswrapper version 1.53 loaded (smp=yes, preempt=no)
usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper

[root@localhost ~]# modprobe | greb ndis
Usage: modprobe [-v] [-V] [-C config-file] [-n] [-i] [-q] [-b] [-o <modname>] [ --dump-modversions ] <modname> [parameters...]
modprobe -r [-n] [-i] [-v] <modulename> ...
modprobe -l -t <dirname> [ -a <modulename> ...]
-bash: greb: command not found

[root@localhost ~]# modprobe -l | grep ndis
/lib/modules/2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rndis_wlan.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686/kernel/drivers/net/usb/rndis_host.ko
/lib/modules/2.6.25.11-97.fc9.i686/extra/ndiswrapper/ndiswrapper.ko

[biggsk]

ok, this is from another post, not sure if it will help...I'm really not sure why the wireless interface is not showing up...

Add:
blacklist b43

to the file:
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

Reboot and see what happens.

[Caleb Burns]

I figured it out. I was using a 'bcmwl5.inf' file I found on some post on a forum, and noticed that the 'bcmwl5.inf' from the dell driver 'r140746.exe' was slightly a different size, so I tried that one and now it works. Thank you very much for your help.

[biggsk]

Awesome glad to hear you got it working!! :)

[Psycho]

hey, sorry. I'm really new to this and I'm having trouble following.
I have the same wireless card as you: could you give me a step by step on how to make it work?
thanks.

[Caleb Burns]

hey, sorry. I'm really new to this and I'm having trouble following.
I have the same wireless card as you: could you give me a step by step on how to make it work?
thanks.

This is how I was able to get my Dell Wireless 1505 Wireless-N Mini-card. You will need the Livna RPM Repository, and 'ndiswrapper' installed for your current kernel (I used 2.6.25.14-108.fc9.i686). If you don't either or both let me know.

Download the 'R140746.EXE' driver package, which contains both 'bcmwl5.inf' and 'bcmwl5.sys'. NOTE: I found two different variations of 'bcmwl5.inf' while searching the internet to get my wireless card to work, initially. This driver package contains the correct one.
$ mkdir /tmp/R140746/
$ cd /tmp/R14076/
$ wget http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R140746.EXE
$ unzip -a R140746.EXE -d ./
$ cd /tmp/R140746/DRIVER/


Wrap Windows driver with 'ndiswrapper': if no errors occur while doing this, then that means it worked
$ ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
$ ndiswrapper -ma
$ modprobe ndiswrapper


Remove the temp folder:
$ rm /tmp/R140746/ -r


Make 'wlan0' appear under hardware:
$ gedit /etc/modprobe.conf


Add the following to 'modprobe.conf':
alias wlan0 ndiswrapper


Create wireless connection
$ system-config-network

Click 'New'
Select 'Wireless connection', then click 'Forword'
Select 'Broadcom Corporation BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n (wlan0)', then click 'Forword'
Click 'Forword'
You can configure your network settings is you so desire, click 'Forword'
Click 'Apply'
Select device 'wlan0'
Click 'Edit'
Select 'Controlled by NetworkManager', then click 'OK'

BCMWL5 Driver Removal: in case for some reason this does not work
$ su -
$ rmmod ndiswrapper
$ ndiswrapper -e bcmwl5

[Psycho]

cd /tmp/R140746/DRIVER/
is outputting
-bash: cd: /tmp/140746/DRIVER/: No such File or directory

I tried it a couple times and all the steps before it work.

[Caleb Burns]

Sorry about that. I should have proof read what I told you to do. Try this:
$ mkdir /tmp/R140746/
$ cd /tmp/R14076/
$ wget http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/R140746.EXE
$ unzip -a R140746.EXE -d ./
$ cd /tmp/R140746/DRIVER/


If 'mkdir' gives you an error, that's perfectly alright. It simply means that you already made that temp directory.

[Psycho]

alright... the new steps worked. I don't have ndiswrapper installed because they don't have it out for the kernel I'm using. I have another thread going here (http://forums.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=200092) trying to fix that if you can help there as well.

Thank you!

[Psycho]

I got the old version on ndiswrapper working on an old kernel.

but the line
[root@localhost DRIVER]# ndiswrapper -i bcm15.inf
is returning
couldn't open bcm15.inf: No such file or directory at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper line 219.

[Caleb Burns]

Oops, you want the file 'bcmwl5', not 'bcm15.inf'. Also, it is a lowercase 'L' ('l') not a one ('1').
ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

[Psycho]

HAHA! Thank you so much.

it's working now!

[Caleb Burns]

You are most welcome.

[djselbeck]

Hello,

I also have this wireless card and find out that it works much better with native broadcom driver. Here is a small howto( yes i know it is ubuntuforum, but also works on fedora very well) http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=896713

You also need to add

"blacklist ssb" to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

[Caleb Burns]

Hello,

I also have this wireless card and find out that it works much better with native broadcom driver. Here is a small howto( yes i know it is ubuntuforum, but also works on fedora very well) http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=896713

You also need to add

"blacklist ssb" to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

I didn't know there was a native driver for this wireless card in linux. That will make life easier.

[djselbeck]

Yeah I also discovered this driver first at the last weekend but so far it works much better than the windows one with ndiswrapper.