Newbie: WiFi network detecting, but not connecting

agrawal.prash · #1 4th October 2009, 05:42 AM

Hi,
I just moved to Fedora 11 but can't figure out how to get my wireless working. I have the broadcom driver installed and the Network Manager Applet shows the available wireless networks, but when I click on them they just don't connect. Any ideas??

I get the following output on lspci regarding the wireless adapter:

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11a/b/g (rev 02)

Thanks in advance.

Prashant.

nigerag · #2 4th October 2009, 08:26 AM

1. Do you have WEP or WPA enabled on your router?

2. Did you try wicd as you wireless network manager?

bbfuller · #3 4th October 2009, 10:23 AM

Hello agrawal.prash

Which of the two broadcom drivers did you install for your card?

There are versions of the 4312 that the b43 driver doesn't appear to support, whereas the 'broadcom-wl' driver - which is slightly more difficult to install - reckons to support all of the 4312's.

agrawal.prash · #4 4th October 2009, 12:30 PM

@ nigerag:

Quote:

1. Do you have WEP or WPA enabled on your router?

No. No wireless security enabled.

Quote:

2. Did you try wicd as you wireless network manager?

I tried installing wicd but apparently it requires something like python-urwid which itself requires a whole bunch of other packages i'm not aware of. Could you please direct me (some repo which has these packages) as to how do I install it?

@ bbfuller:
I installed the broadcom-wl driver (though i have no idea about the other one)

bbfuller · #5 4th October 2009, 02:03 PM

Hello agrawal.prash

That's the driver I would have suggested. Did you install it with 'yum' from the Fedora repositories?

It would usually be designated as 'wlan0' on your machine.

If you run:

Code:

dmesg | grep wlan0

and

Code:

dmesg | grep wl

does the output from those give any clues why it is not connecting?

agrawal.prash · #6 4th October 2009, 05:33 PM

yes, i installed broadcom-wl using 'yum' from Fedora repos.

I get nothing when i do "dmesg | grep wlan0" though i get the following when I do "dmesg | grep wl":

wl: module license 'MIXED/Proprietary' taints kernel.
wl 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LK4E] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
wl 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
eth1 (wl): not using net_device_ops yet

However, this thing is totally alien for me. Could you help out. Thanks.

bbfuller · #7 4th October 2009, 06:53 PM

Hello agrawal.prash

I'd just assumed that the broadcom-wl driver would have set itself up as wlan0, but it appears from this that it may not be so:

Quote:

eth1 (wl): not using net_device_ops yet

Try running:

Code:

iwlist

from the command line, that will probably talk about interfaces with "no wireless extensions" but should list information for your wireless one. If that turns out to be 'eth1' then run:

Code:

dmesg | grep eth1

dmesg is the command to print out startup messages, the '|' symbol tells dmesg to pipe its output through a further command, in this case grep. grep is a filter, in this case it looks at the output from dmesg and only outputs the lines that contain 'eth1'.

It's just a reporting process so you could try both if you were curious.

Post back the result of the command above though and we'll see if that gives any clues.

agrawal.prash · #8 5th October 2009, 09:58 AM

Oh yes! you were right. The wireless adapter was named as 'eth1' in my case.

Here is the output of 'dmesg | grep eth1':

Code:

forcedeth 0000:00:0a.0: ifname eth1, PHY OUI 0x732 @ 1, addr 00:1b:24:71:6a:7e
udev: renamed network interface eth0 to eth1
udev: renamed network interface eth1_rename to eth0
eth1: no IPv6 routers present
eth1: no IPv6 routers present

Any clues?

bbfuller · #9 5th October 2009, 12:33 PM

Hello agrawal.prash

Quote:

Any clues?

Not really!

Quote:

udev: renamed network interface eth1_rename to eth0

That line strikes me as unusual but I don't pretend to know what it means.

Though where it says:

Quote:

forcedeth 0000:00:0a.0: ifname eth1, PHY OUI 0x732 @ 1, addr 00:1b:24:71:6a:7e

forcedeth is a wired ethernet driver.

Could you post back the whole output from:

Code:

iwconfig

to see if that provokes any thoughts.

agrawal.prash · #10 5th October 2009, 06:58 PM

Here is the complete output of iwconfig:

Code:

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11  Nickname:""
          Access Point: Not-Associated
          Link Quality:5  Signal level:217  Noise level:174
          Rx invalid nwid:0  invalid crypt:0  invalid misc:0

eth0      no wireless extensions.

pan0      no wireless extensions.

virbr0    no wireless extensions.

bbfuller · #11 6th October 2009, 12:08 AM

Hello agrawal.prash

Teh output of you 'iwconfig' loods a little odd to me. For comparisons sake, here is the output of one of my wireless interfaces when it is not connected to anything.

Quote:

wlan3 IEEE 802.11bg Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz
Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management: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

Is:

Quote:

Nickname

the name of one of your wireless networks? And have you inputted that manually into any configuration screens?

Could you run:

Code:

uname -r

to determine which kernel you have, and:

Code:

yum list installed *wl*

to determine which broadcom-wl packages you have installed.

agrawal.prash · #12 6th October 2009, 01:34 PM

Quote:

wlan3 IEEE 802.11bg Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz
Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management: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

What looks weird is that I don't even have the 'Mode' or 'Frequency' fields even though you have them for the wireless interface that isn't connected to anything.

Quote:

Is Nickname the name of one of your wireless networks? And have you inputted that manually into any configuration screens?

No. I don't think so. I don't recall having manually inputted this.

As you asked, my kernel is 2.6.30.8-64.fc11.i586.

yum list installed *wl gives:

Quote:

Installed Packages
akmod-wl.i686 5.10.91.9-4.fc11.2 @rpmfusion-nonfree-updates
broadcom-wl.noarch 5.10.91.9-1.fc11 @rpmfusion-nonfree-updates
kmod-wl.i586 5.10.91.9-4.fc11.3 @rpmfusion-nonfree-updates

bbfuller · #13 6th October 2009, 02:50 PM

Hello agrawal.prash

Although I've guided a good few people through installing broadcom-wl, I don't actually use it for any of my cards so I'm not sure exactly what I would expect to see from the 'yum list' command.

Can I assume that you did:

Code:

yum install akmod-wl

and let yum bring in all the parts it thought necessary and then let it build the driver when the machine restarted?

The reason I ask is that when I talk people through manually installing that driver I get them to fetch three packages.

Quote:

broadcom-wl.noarch 5.10.91.9-1.fc11
kmod-wl.i586 5.10.91.9-4.fc11.3

which you have, but also a:

Quote:

kmod-wl-2.6.30.8-64.fc11.i586-5.10.91.9-4.fc11.3.i586.rpm

which matches your running kernel. I believe it is the job of the akmod package to create that.

Certainly, that's what happens with my nvidia driver and akmod and the 'yum list' command there produces a kmod matching my kernel.

I wonder if it would be worth your manually installing that last package:

Code:

yum install kmod-wl-2.6.30.8-64.fc11.i586-5.10.91.9-4.fc11.3.i586.rpm

and see if yum reports it is already installed.

agrawal.prash · #14 6th October 2009, 04:53 PM

Ah yes!.. I installed the third driver you suggested and now everything is working just fine.

Thanks a lot.

bbfuller · #15 7th October 2009, 12:19 AM

Hello agrawal.prash

I'm pleased it worked out OK. But I'm still a little puzzled that it should be necessary as you had the 'akmod' package installed.

Enjoy the wireless.