Anyone able to get Wireless (bcm43xx) to Work?

[toddbailey]

Hi all,

Just finished installing F14 on a dell laptop using a 8gb usb flash drive. For the most part every thing works except networking, I have to manually issue ifup eth0 to get the cable lan to work and no matter what I try, wlan0 refuses to initialize/connect.
the wireless lan has 128 bit wep enabled, sid is hidden and the router is set to channel 9, fwiw

I downloaded and installed the bcm4306 firmware hoping that would fix the issue but nope.

I see an error at boot time set encode 8B2A, set failed invalid argument. for wlan0

I see the same error when I run a ifup wlan0 or ifup wlan0


I have networkmanager disabled and use network services for the devices

I can't even use the gui tools because they are broken, maybe when beta is released?

any ideas on what to try next?


maybe a modprobe on somedevice?

[stoat]

Some BCM4306 versions use the b43 driver module included with Fedora kernels and so-called version 4 firmware, and some use Fedora's b43legacy module and version 3 firmware. The kernel usually does the right thing when it loads those modules for detected supported hardware. For the record and your readers, you could post something establishing the chipset version and the module selected by the kernel...lspci
lsmod | sortStarting with Fedora 12 (and available to Fedora 10 and 11 via updates), Open-FWWF firmware for a few Broadcom chipsets is available in Fedora as a package named b43-openfwwf. The BCM4306 is one of the advertised supported chipsets, but not all versions. Thanks to that firmware package, my BCM4306 (rev 03) cards now can work even with the LiveCD without me doing anything. But jzawadzki04 recently established that his BCM4306 (rev 02) card which caused the kernel to load b43legacy would not use the b43-openfwwf firmware. He was able to install version 3 firmware and connect.

[toddbailey]

ok, then.. here is more detailed info

[todd@usb ~]$ dmesg |grep b43
b43-pci-bridge 0000:02:03.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKB] -> GSI 5 (level, low) -> IRQ 5
b43-phy0: Broadcom 4306 WLAN found (core revision 5)
b43-phy0 debug: Found PHY: Analog 2, Type 2, Revision 2
b43-phy0 debug: Found Radio: Manuf 0x17F, Version 0x2050, Revision 2
Registered led device: b43-phy0::tx
Registered led device: b43-phy0::rx
Registered led device: b43-phy0::radio
b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 410.2160 (2007-05-26 15:32:10)
b43-phy0 debug: Chip initialized
b43-phy0 debug: 30-bit DMA initialized
b43-phy0 debug: QoS disabled
b43-phy0 debug: Wireless interface started
b43-phy0 debug: Adding Interface type 1
b43-phy0 debug: Set beacon interval to 100
b43-phy0 debug: Set beacon interval to 100
b43-phy0 debug: Set beacon interval to 100

[todd@usb ~]$ lspci | sort
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82855PM Processor to I/O Controller (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82855PM Processor to AGP Controller (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 81)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV31M [GeForce FX Go5650] (rev a1)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5705M Gigabit Ethernet (rev 01)
02:01.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI7510 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
02:01.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI7510,7610 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
02:01.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCI7410,7510,7610 OHCI-Lynx Controller
02:01.3 System peripheral: Texas Instruments PCI7410,7510,7610 PCI Firmware Loading Function
02:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)

[todd@usb ~]$ lsmod | sort
ac97_bus 926 1 snd_ac97_codec
acpi_cpufreq 6269 0
arc4 1085 2
auth_rpcgss 29647 1 nfsd
b43 164326 0
cfg80211 113436 2 b43,mac80211
cpufreq_ondemand 7826 1
crc_itu_t 1235 1 firewire_core
dcdbas 6824 0
drm 141180 4 nouveau,ttm,drm_kms_helper
drm_kms_helper 22368 1 nouveau
ecb 1595 2
exportfs 2983 1 nfsd
firewire_core 39686 1 firewire_ohci
firewire_ohci 17801 0
fuse 52920 3
i2c_algo_bit 4217 1 nouveau
i2c_core 21700 4 nouveau,drm_kms_helper,drm,i2c_algo_bit
ip6table_filter 1207 1
ip6_tables 9974 1 ip6table_filter
ip6t_REJECT 3470 2
ipv6 241958 44 ip6t_REJECT,nf_conntrack_ipv6
iTCO_vendor_support 2070 1 iTCO_wdt
iTCO_wdt 9036 0
joydev 7562 0
lockd 56889 1 nfsd
mac80211 200317 1 b43
microcode 10643 0
mmc_core 54009 2 b43,ssb
Module Size Used by
mperf 1141 1 acpi_cpufreq
nf_conntrack_ipv6 14688 2
nfs_acl 1951 1 nfsd
nfsd 203647 13
nouveau 360650 2
output 1661 1 video
parport 26959 2 ppdev,parport_pc
parport_pc 17989 0
ppdev 6856 0
rfkill 14576 2 cfg80211
snd 48347 11 snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m,snd_ac97_codec,snd_seq, snd_seq_device,snd_pcm,snd_timer
snd_ac97_codec 90753 2 snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m
snd_intel8x0 23184 2
snd_intel8x0m 9668 0
snd_page_alloc 6328 3 snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m,snd_pcm
snd_pcm 62128 3 snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m,snd_ac97_codec
snd_seq 44245 0
snd_seq_device 5276 1 snd_seq
snd_timer 15751 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
soundcore 5184 1 snd
ssb 42604 1 b43
sunrpc 171451 15 nfsd,lockd,nfs_acl,auth_rpcgss
tg3 99628 0
ttm 47429 1 nouveau
uinput 5484 0
usb_storage 35799 2
video 18533 1 nouveau
yenta_socket 20998 0

[stoat]

Okay. I don't know what's working (or not) in Fedora 14. But I can say that you have the same (rev 03) chipset and firmware version as me. And the b43 module is loaded. To me, you should have what you need to connect.

To use ifup, you have preconfigured the interface somehow. How did you do that? Manually in a text config file like maybe ifcfg-wlan0? Or with system-config-network (if that is not the busted GUI you mentioned). That error that you mentioned in the first post suggests suggest something wrong in a config file. What does your configuration stuff look like?

[toddbailey]

finally located the config files for networking, once I reset the 2 files to use the network manager I was able to obtain better control over the interfaces, wlan0 now see's my lan and the neighbours wireless

And after several attempts It finally connected.


Another reason why I hate reinstalling the OS every 9 months to a year
Thanks for the advice on where to look,

[stoat]

I didn't really understand that you wanted to use NetworkManager. I thought the opposite. In that case, and when things should be working but aren't, you can edit the interface in system-config-network and check "Controlled by NetworkManager" and uncheck "Activate device when computer starts". That will do to those old text config files what you probably did to them. For me, it's usually that way by default, but it doesn't hurt to look there anyway. I hardly ever open system-config-network nowadays, and I never manually edit its text config files any more.

P.S.: Now that NetworkManager is managing things, you effortlessly can convert the encryption from WEP (which can be busted in seconds by a teenager with free software) to WPA. Your driver and firmware and NetworkManager can handle all of that without you having to do anything more than enter the passphrase.

[toddbailey]

Initially I thought I didn't want to use NetworkManager, but in reading the installation for broadcom wireless, it is highly recommended it.

At first I didn't think Linux or the router supported higher security than wep, but a quick call to tech spt has it now running wpa-personal. Getting Win Vista reconfigured is easy, Linux took a bit longer.
A quick crash course in wireless security indicates that even wpa-personal isn't all that great.
As a result I've incorporated the following

broadcast ssid is disabled
use of a non standard channel (9)
Wpa-personal with a long dual case random phrase.
access to only authorized mac-id.
Non standard password set on router.

Now I need to look at system and folder access permissions.


all in good time...

[AdamW]

broadcast ssid is disabled
use of a non standard channel (9)
access to only authorized mac-id

none of these really do anything. just so you know. =)

(it's very easy to sniff non-broadcast SSIDs and read the MAC address of an interface that's using that SSID, then it's also easy to spoof that MAC address. Anyone with the tools / know-how to crack WPA certainly should also be able to do those things.)

using a long passphrase and changing the router admin password are both essential, though. WPA is theoretically subject to being cracked but AFAIK it's not much of a problem in the real world, though WEP cracking is (i've met people who routinely crack WEP connections just so they can use the internet at the airport or something).