Help with wireless card

[cloud1989]

I have been having a lot of trouble with wireless networking, its about the only thing that keeps me putting windows back on my laptop but I want to hopefully figure this out, I downloaded fedora 9 dvd and found this guide on this forum somewhere that worked completely, though I don't know what I was doing but I did it

"If you are fully up to date then the rpm -q command should now mention 011 in its output.

In that case you need to download the file:


HTML Code:
http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/b...0.10.5.tar.bz2


cd into the directory you downloaded the compressed file into and extract it with:


Code:
tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2


Acquire full root rights over your machine with the command:


Code:
su -


That's a space and a minus sign after the su. It gives you full root rights over the whole machine rather than root rights over your own environment which is what you get from "su".

cd into the "driver" directory within the newly extracted "broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5" directory and issue the command:


Code:
b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta_mimo.o


That extracts the firmware from the specified file and places it in a directory within /lib/firmware.

Then if you follow the steps in posts #2 and #5 and restart your machine you should be in the best position to get your card going from NetworkManager.

As always, post back with any questions."

that worked for me, but I don't really like gnome so I got the KDE cd and installed that version of fedora and this method does not work he is what I did

[admin@localhost ~]$ su -
Password:
[root@localhost ~]# cd /media/USB20FD/broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5
[root@localhost broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5]# b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta_mimo.o
Cannot open input file wl_apsta_mimo.o
[root@localhost broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5]#


I believe its the same way I did it in gnome though I guess something might have happened since I was trying many methods before I got to this one. I am teribble at understanding working with the terminal and thats one of the big reasons I can't get it to work is because the instructions I find I don't understand. Would love some help with this as I really want to stop using vista.

One more question, how do I copy and past from my desktop, I moved my broadcom folder to there and drug it over to the terminal and it just ignored and and moved to that area on the desktop, and right clicked doesn't give me any copy options. I had to do it from my flashdrive.

[bbfuller]

Hello cloud1989

Those look like my notes.

For them to work, there is one more step that you have to take, you are in the "broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5" directory and if you issue the command:

ls

which lists the contents of the directory you will see that the "wl_apsta_mimo.o" file is not in there.

The part that you appear not to have done is the part that says:

cd into the "driver" directory within the newly extracted "broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5" directory

So when you are in the "broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5" directory as you are in your previous post then use the command:

cd driver

which will move you into the driver directory, and the 'ls' command will confirm that "wl_apsta_mimo.o" is there. Then use the:

b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta_mimo.o

command and you should find it works OK.

I'll be looking to see how you get on.

[cloud1989]

ok, I am about to try this, just one question, will this work on other distributions. I like fedora but I do seem to have a few problems, I notice when I start up its says It can enumerate USB device 6 or something like that, though everything pluged in works, then I had some error that poped up about a sound device, not sure what it was because I only seen it once. And most annoying of all is when my mouse pointer disappears, it only happens every other time and I can't quite figure out the cause, then other systems like ubununtu have a bios bug error, my laptop seems so picky about what I run on it, almost as if someone didn't want me to use anything other than vista. I would have mentioned this earlier but I just got done playing around with the system and finding all this out, so far opensuse seems to be the only linux that has no problems. I'll stick with fedora for awhile but if I can't get it running problem free I may have to switch.

[cloud1989]

my god it worked, thanks alot, still interested to know if this workes for other distributions though.

[bbfuller]

Hello cloud1989

I'd persevere with Fedora for a bit. Several of my machines pop up that sound error - but the sound still works! If it does for you I'd tend to ignore the error message.

Mouse pointer you might want to look around the forum. I understand that the mouse pointer is dependent on the graphics driver you have loaded for your card. If you have ATI or Nvidia you might find that the proprietary driver will solve that problem. I don't see that you've posted if you are using Fedora 8 or 9. If it's the former and you do have Nvidia or ATI, get the appropriate driver from the Livna repository ready compiled. If you need any help with that post back.

If you are running Fedora 9 then you would have a few weeks wait for the graphics drivers. ATI and Nvidia haven't released any to match the xorg/kernel in 9.

As to if the wireless notes will work on other distributions, the answer is a qualified "Yes".

They are the generic instructions for the b43 wireless driver. The qualifications are:

The distribution uses b43 and not bcm43xx as its wireless broadcom driver. Fedora, as ever, adopted that before a lot of other distributions and I'm not sure if they've all caught up.

It's important that they have the 011 version of b43-fwcutter, earlier versions used to cut different firmware. It's still available on the internet though.

The distribution stores its firmware in /lib/firmware. I think that's a fairly standard place but I haven't been able to check all distributions and see if they are standards compliant. If you look in /lib/firmware in Fedora and compare it with the other distribution you should get some idea if they are using the same scheme.

Hope that helps.

Great when wireless suddenly works isn't it.

[cloud1989]

I'm running fedora 9, and I have a nvida graphics card. But I did try fedora 8 live a long time ago for a brief moment and stopped mainly because of the same mouse error but I'll wait and look and see what I can do.

[bbfuller]

Hello cloud1989

Yes, if you are running Fedora 9 then you are running the open source "nv" driver and not Nvidia's own offering.

That will be the same driver that you used with your earlier Fedora 8 live CD.

Fedora doesn't include the Nvidias proprietary driver for license reasons and so you won't have tried with it unless you have specifically downloaded it and installed it.

Unfortunately, you won't get the option to do that with Fedora 9 for an unspecified time period (rumor reckons a few weeks) as Nvidia haven't released something that will work with both the F9 kernel and the new X server yet.

When it does become available it will be made available as a direct download from the Livna repository and it's a much easier route to take than trying to compile it yourself.

[dejan.kitic]

Originally Posted by bbfuller

Hello cloud1989

Yes, if you are running Fedora 9 then you are running the open source "nv" driver and not Nvidia's own offering.

That will be the same driver that you used with your earlier Fedora 8 live CD.

Fedora doesn't include the Nvidias proprietary driver for license reasons and so you won't have tried with it unless you have specifically downloaded it and installed it.

Unfortunately, you won't get the option to do that with Fedora 9 for an unspecified time period (rumor reckons a few weeks) as Nvidia haven't released something that will work with both the F9 kernel and the new X server yet.

When it does become available it will be made available as a direct download from the Livna repository and it's a much easier route to take than trying to compile it yourself.

Word is that nvidia wont release new version of driver until Xorg 7.4 is fully out.From what i understand, Xorg shipped with Fedora 9 is 7.4 beta version.Looking at Xorg web site, they have release date for 7.4 as May 2008, with an extra line of something like this: "Dont be supprise if we re already slipped this date", meaning we dont know exactly when it would be out.

It all comes to: we re stuck with 173 beta driver.