BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] success story

asun · #1 9th June 2007, 06:10 AM

Okay guys, I know many of you have the same problem as I did. So, after reading up a few threads here and on fedora-list, I've finally figured out how to get it working.

The only way so far for me to get this working is to use ndiswrapper. However, ndiswrapper from livna doesn't work. It's too old (1.43). What you need to do is:
- Get ndiswrapper and ndiswrapper-kmdl from atrpms. Axel Thimm has version 1.46 of ndiswrapper.
- Install those packages above.
- Install ndiswrapper with your bcmwl5.inf file.
- Insert the ndiswrapper kernel module.
- Start NetworkManager and voila!

Well, that's how I get it working. YMMV

CrackedLCD · #2 9th June 2007, 06:17 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by asun

Okay guys, I know many of you have the same problem as I did. So, after reading up a few threads here and on fedora-list, I've finally figured out how to get it working.

The only way so far for me to get this working is to use ndiswrapper. However, ndiswrapper from livna doesn't work. It's too old (1.43). What you need to do is:
- Get ndiswrapper and ndiswrapper-kmdl from atrpms. Axel Thimm has version 1.46 of ndiswrapper.
- Install those packages above.
- Install ndiswrapper with your bcmwl5.inf file.
- Insert the ndiswrapper kernel module.
- Start NetworkManager and voila!

Well, that's how I get it working. YMMV

Hmmm, I've been trying to do this for over a week with a variety of distros...Could you maybe include a few more details? Are you running F7 or FC6? What's the url for ATRPMS? Do you need to blacklist/remove any other modules?

saqer · #3 9th June 2007, 06:18 AM

I used livna ndiswrapper with my bcm43?? since FC5 with success. All I needed was the driver (I grabbed it from linuxant.com and also available from my windows partition as well) and it worked like a charm.

asun · #4 9th June 2007, 06:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CrackedLCD

Hmmm, I've been trying to do this for over a week with a variety of distros...Could you maybe include a few more details? Are you running F7 or FC6? What's the url for ATRPMS? Do you need to blacklist/remove any other modules?

Oh, it's F7. Atrpms is.. according to google: http://atrpms.net/
The specific packages are here:
http://atrpms.net/dist/f7/ndiswrapper/

Make sure you get the i686 package if your kernel is i686.

About blacklist, yeah, blacklist both bcm43xx and bcm43xx_mac80211 as usual if you wish to use ndiswrapper.

CrackedLCD · #5 9th June 2007, 06:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by asun

Oh, it's F7. Atrpms is.. according to google: http://atrpms.net/
The specific packages are here:
http://atrpms.net/dist/f7/ndiswrapper/

Make sure you get the i686 package if your kernel is i686.

ah crudcakes. i have to run FC6 'cuz F7 doesn't support the ATI driver (or so I hear)...do you know if it'll work with an x86_64 system?

asun · #6 9th June 2007, 07:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CrackedLCD

ah crudcakes. i have to run FC6 'cuz F7 doesn't support the ATI driver (or so I hear)...do you know if it'll work with an x86_64 system?

Axel has some ndiswrapper rpms for FC6 including x86_64 here:
http://atrpms.net/dist/fc6/ndiswrapper/

However, you must use 64bit Windows driver. Look around the other threads, I've seen them there.

hellfire[bg] · #7 10th June 2007, 01:00 AM

Quote:

Okay guys, I know many of you have the same problem as I did. So, after reading up a few threads here and on fedora-list, I've finally figured out how to get it working.

The only way so far for me to get this working is to use ndiswrapper. However, ndiswrapper from livna doesn't work. It's too old (1.43). What you need to do is:
- Get ndiswrapper and ndiswrapper-kmdl from atrpms. Axel Thimm has version 1.46 of ndiswrapper.
- Install those packages above.
- Install ndiswrapper with your bcmwl5.inf file.
- Insert the ndiswrapper kernel module.
- Start NetworkManager and voila!

I happen to have a bcm4318 wlan card. Now it works fine with Fedora 7 but the first time i installed it (which was my second Fedora install) took me a lot of time to set it up. Several notes:
1 I used ndiswrapper from livna - it works
2 I had to physically delete the bcm43xx module
3 In Debian Unstable (which i had been using for the past two years before i installed Fedora) when i installed bcm43-fwcutter it automatically downloaded and extracted (in the correct location) the correct firmware. The Fedora package of bcm43xx-fwcutter doesn`t do so but the location of the firmware is written in the readme.
4 Even after i had setup my wlan card network-manager-gnome refused to work. It asked me about my encryption key and even though i provided it it couldn`t connect. Even after i removed the encryption key it couldn`t connect. However i managed to configure my wireless connection with system-config-network. I haven`t tried network-manager-gnome ever since but i will try to resolve this issue (if it hasn`t resolved itself) asap.
5 I followed this guides:
http://fedoramobile.org/fc-wireless/ndis-yum-livna - for ndiswrapper
http://fedoramobile.org/fc-wireless/...8-ndiswrapper/ - for bcm4318

For now my wireless connection seems to work just fine (at least i can share my wired connection over my wireless interface). It wasn`t as easy as in Debian but it works fine.

CrackedLCD · #8 10th June 2007, 07:07 AM

Well, I gave it a try, but apparently that package requires an OLDER kernel than the one I have, can anybody outline how I can go about getting yum to remove the newer kernel in favor of the older one? btw, I'm running FC6 (i386). thanx.

CrackedLCD · #9 12th June 2007, 06:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by asun

Axel has some ndiswrapper rpms for FC6 including x86_64 here:
http://atrpms.net/dist/fc6/ndiswrapper/

However, you must use 64bit Windows driver. Look around the other threads, I've seen them there.

Okay, I've install ndiswrapper and the driver, but when I run iwconfig, my wireless card shows up as eth1:

Code:

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

eth0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11b/g  ESSID:""  Nickname:"Broadcom 4318"
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Invalid   
          RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality=0/100  Signal level=-256 dBm  Noise level=-256 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

And when I run NetworkManager and try to get it to activate my wireless connection, it says it can't find an IP address and to check the cable....apparently it believes it's an ethernet card...does anybody know how to fix this?

asun · #10 12th June 2007, 07:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CrackedLCD

Okay, I've install ndiswrapper and the driver, but when I run iwconfig, my wireless card shows up as eth1:

Code:

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

eth0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11b/g  ESSID:""  Nickname:"Broadcom 4318"
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Invalid   
          RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality=0/100  Signal level=-256 dBm  Noise level=-256 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

And when I run NetworkManager and try to get it to activate my wireless connection, it says it can't find an IP address and to check the cable....apparently it believes it's an ethernet card...does anybody know how to fix this?

That's odd. Try adding this line to /etc/modprobe.conf:

Code:

alias wlan0 ndiswrapper

and reboot.

And probably you'll need to rename your eth1 to wlan0, but try the above first.

Code:

mv /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0