BCM4328 Ndiswrapper in F12

[temporalmaniac]

Hello, all!

I upgraded to F12 last week, and I've had nothing but bad luck with ndiswrapper and my BCM4328 card. They both worked fine in F11, so I wonder what's changed to make it invalid...

I've tried it using both the ndiswrapper in RPMFusion (1.54) and from source (1.55). I had previously been using 1.55 from source without issue, but neither the source or binary solutions works.

If I used the RPMs, the kernel will block off my IRQ 19 (wireless) due to too many "bogus" packets. In order to sleep the computer after this, I need to remove the ndiswrapper module, which works.
If I use the source-compiled version, the process ntos_wq (an ndiswrapper process that normally behaves) will start hogging resources and my wireless will stop. Removing ndiswrapper will crash the system.
In both cases, NetworkManager fails to figure out that anything has happened, even though it can't use the wireless. Additionally, NM needs restarting after the system initially loads the module (so I've built a script to load the driver and restart the service during the startup sequence.)

Now, the neat thing: I have another wireless card, a BCM4312, that I've just swapped (back) in to the machine, and it's running OK with b43 for the moment. I uninstalled the openFWWF and used the fwcutter, as I had had success in the past. NM still needed to be reset, though, but I'll just add that to my script for having the 4312 in.

Anyway, that's my experience so far... if people know how to "fix" ndiswrapper for F12, I'd be glad to hear how. Otherwise, I'll hope that b43 works, even though I don't have N with the 4312.

Overall, the wireless performance is probably the biggest issue for F12 in my experience... the Nvidia and Pulse were walks in the park by comparison. I know I'm probably "asking for it" by using Broadcom hardware, but oh well...

[stoat]

Originally Posted by temporalmania

I've had nothing but bad luck with ndiswrapper and my BCM4328 card.

Originally Posted by temporalmania

...if people know how to "fix" ndiswrapper for F12, I'd be glad to hear how.

Hello temporalmaniac,

I don't how to fix ndiswrapper. Sorry. But the BCM4328 chipset is one of the two "unadvertised" chipsets that people have discovered to work with the Broadcom 802.11 STA Linux driver (aka broadcom-wl). It is available from RPM Fusion in a kmod version and an akmod version. Maybe it will work better with that first card. No promises.

P.S.: For the i686 and x86_64 kernels in Fedora 12...

su
yum install kmod-wl

For the PAE kernel in Fedora 12...

su
yum install kmod-wl-PAE

For the akmod version...

su
yum install akmod-wl

P.P.S.: If you try this and it doesn't work, remember to check for ndiswrapper or b43 being loaded since you've been working with them. Sometimes, their modules will auto-load and stop the wl module from loading. If that happens, you can blacklist them while you're experimenting instead of uninstalling things. If it still doesn't work after that, confirm that the wl module is loading...

lsmod | sort

If not, then try manually loading it just to see if it's going to work...

su
modprobe wl

If it works then, you can tinker with ways to make it auto-load later.

[elelab]

Hi Stoat,
I tried installing. below is the output. any suggestion?

thanks



"
yum install kmod-wl-PAE
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
No package kmod-wl-PAE available.
Nothing to do
"

then I enable RPM fusion for Fedora 12

"
Loaded plugins: presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kmod-wl-PAE.i686 0:5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.10 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: kmod-wl-2.6.31.6-166.fc12.i686.PAE >= 5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.10 for package: kmod-wl-PAE-5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.10.i686
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kmod-wl-2.6.31.6-166.fc12.i686.PAE.i686 0:5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.10 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: kernel-uname-r = 2.6.31.6-166.fc12.i686.PAE for package: kmod-wl-2.6.31.6-166.fc12.i686.PAE-5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.10.i686
--> Processing Dependency: wl-kmod-common >= 5.10.91.9.3 for package: kmod-wl-2.6.31.6-166.fc12.i686.PAE-5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.10.i686
--> Running transaction check
---> Package broadcom-wl.noarch 0:5.10.91.9.3-1.fc12 set to be updated
---> Package kmod-wl-2.6.31.6-166.fc12.i686.PAE.i686 0:5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.10 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: kernel-uname-r = 2.6.31.6-166.fc12.i686.PAE for package: kmod-wl-2.6.31.6-166.fc12.i686.PAE-5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.10.i686
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
kmod-wl-2.6.31.6-166.fc12.i686.PAE-5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.10.i686 from rpmfusion-nonfree-updates has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: kernel-uname-r = 2.6.31.6-166.fc12.i686.PAE is needed by package kmod-wl-2.6.31.6-166.fc12.i686.PAE-5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.10.i686 (rpmfusion-nonfree-updates)
Error: Missing Dependency: kernel-uname-r = 2.6.31.6-166.fc12.i686.PAE is needed by package kmod-wl-2.6.31.6-166.fc12.i686.PAE-5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.10.i686 (rpmfusion-nonfree-updates)
You could try using --skip-broken to work around the problem
You could try running: package-cleanup --problems
package-cleanup --dupes
rpm -Va --nofiles --nodigest
"

[stoat]

Try updating your kernel. Even better, update the entire system. Then install the RPM Fusion stuff again.

[temporalmaniac]

Long time no talk, but the wl driver is working beautifully under Fedora 13. I installed the broadcom-wl package from RPMFusion.

[Darr247]

Originally Posted by stoat

Try updating your kernel. Even better, update the entire system. Then install the RPM Fusion stuff again.

I ran into that same problem...
In my opinion, something is wrong with either yum's dep logic, fc12 itself, or RPMFusion's packaging standards for it to require the latest kernel to install kmod-wl even when the exact files FOR the currently installed kernel are specified.

I'm really not interested in updating the kernel if the fallback kernel ends up without a functioning wireless card.

Anyway, I finally downloaded all 3 files from
http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfr...thing/i386/os/
in a browser and used

# yum --nogpgcheck localinstall /var/cache/yum/i386/12/rpmfusion-nonfree/packages/broadcom-wl-5.10.91.9.3-1.fc12.noarch.rpm /var/cache/yum/i386/12/rpmfusion-nonfree/packages/kmod-wl-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE-5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.6.i686.rpm /var/cache/yum/i386/12/rpmfusion-nonfree/packages/kmod-wl-PAE-5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.6.i686.rpm

to get them to install.

The --nogpgcheck switch was necessary because yum kept insisting there was no key installed for the kmod-wl-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE-5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.6.i686.rpm package (it didn't complain about the other 2 files, though they came from the same repo... nor about any other files from rpmfusion-nonfree).

Just 'install' is supposed to work if complete path/filenames are specified rather than only package names, but empirically, the localinstall command was required in this instance.

Now I guess I'll try to delete/reinstall fc12, since the wireless card was disabled (in XP pro) during the initial dual-boot install, and now no matter which method of wireless driver I use, the BCM4328 (rev 01) card still simply refuses to be 'seen' by fedora (except by lspci). Anaconda installed b43, even though I have not found where anyone has gotten b43 to work with BCM4328 cards.

$ lspci
           [snip]
0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 01)

$ rpm -qa | grep -e kernel -e broadcom-wl -e kmod-wl | sort
abrt-addon-kerneloops-0.0.11-1.fc12.i686
abrt-plugin-kerneloopsreporter-0.0.11-1.fc12.i686
broadcom-wl-5.10.91.9.3-1.fc12.noarch
kernel-firmware-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.noarch
kernel-headers-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686
kernel-PAE-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686
kernel-PAE-devel-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686
kmod-wl-2.6.31.5-127.fc12.i686.PAE-5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.6.i686
kmod-wl-PAE-5.10.91.9.3-3.fc12.6.i686

$ iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.
eth0      no wireless extensions.
pan0      no wireless extensions.
virbr0    no wireless extensions.

So, hopefully, it will work better when the card is enabled in windows before running the install again. This laptop is 4 years old, so it should not require the 'latest and greatest' version... and I'm only upgrading the fedora core version once per year unless I get a computer so new it needs the latest for something, like a touch screen, et cetera.