Wireless not working on Dell Inspiron 1525

[mayankjuneja]

Hello everyone

I have installed Fedora 9 on my dell inspiron 1525 and using it in dual boot mode with Microsoft Vista. I am not able to run wireless connection on Fedora 9. I have tried using ndiswrapper but in vein. Please guide me regarding the same.


Thanks
Mayank

[bbfuller]

Hello mayankjuneja

Welcome to the forum.

Before anyone can help we'll need some information on exactly what wireless card is in your machine. Manufacturers do have a habit of changing it even during the lifetime of one particular model.

If you open a terminal window and run the command:

/sbin/lspci

and post back the output relating to "network" and "ethernet" devices we'll see what help we can give.

[mayankjuneja]

Hello bbfuller

This is the output when i ran the command /sbin/lspci

09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 USB Controller (rev 01)

Please guide me what to do next.

Mayank

[wvn]

look in my signature in Ndiswrapper guide.

you have the drivers at hand?

[bbfuller]

Hello mayankjuneja

That 4310 card is one of the broadcom cards that does require ndiswrapper.

The notes below tell you in general what you need to do.

Ndiswrapper, as it's name implies is a way of wrapping some Linux code around a windows driver to make it work in Linux.

Ndiswrapper will not work with Windows Vista drivers. It is also not happy with every version of a driver for every chipset. If the one that came with your card doesn't work it may be necessary to experiment with other manufacturers drivers that were made for the particular chipset.

The parts of the windows driver file that you are looking for are the .inf file and the matching .sys file.

For instance in my case when I used ndiswrapper for my broadcom card, there was a 'bcmwl5.inf' file in the driver along with a bcmwl5.sys. Other manufacturers will use different file names.

Acquire full root rights with:

su -

That's a space and a minus sign after the su. It gives full root rights over the machine, not just over your own environment which is what you get with plain su.

If you haven't already, install the Livna repository:

rpm -i http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm

Install ndiswrapper:

yum install kmod-ndiswrapper

should bring in the three relevant packages.

Then set up and configure ndiswrapper with:

ndiswrapper -i <path to your windows driver file>.inf

should install the driver,

ndiswrapper -l

if it is going to work should return "driver present" and "hardware present"

modprobe ndiswrapper

should load the driver into the kernel, but probably only until you reboot.

If you are lucky now and NetworkManager is running then after a short while it 'may' begin reporting wireless networks. NetworkManager is the preferred method of connecting to wireless networks with Fedora and should be located on the top Gnome Panel to the right in the notification area.

If it works, or indeed if it doesn't you will also need to run:

ndiswrapper -ma

and then edit the file:

as root and add the line:

alias wlan0 ndiswrapper

to it.

{Editing modprobe.conf should only be applicable to Fedora 8. In many instances Fedora 9 doesn't even have the file. If NetworkManager doesn't recognise your card you may need to create the modprobe.conf file in 9}

Reboot and try connecting again.

Don't be put off by the length of them, they try to cover a lot of eventualities but really reduce to a series of fairly simple steps.

If you have trouble finding the correct driver files for your card post back, I've got a link here to a set that work that we found when I was helping comeone else with this device.

In any event, post back with questions or problems.

[mayankjuneja]

I am not able to find the driver files. Can you please post the link here.

[bbfuller]

Hello mayankjuneja

I've pasted the link to the driver below.

Note that it's a Dell .exe file. It is what is called a self extracting executable. Som of those including Dells can be extracted in Linux using a command in the form of:

unzip -a <dell driver name> -d /driver

The extracted files will be located in the 'driver' directory directly off the directory you have the exe stored in.

There will be several sets of the files you need. You'll see sub-directories labelled US, Europe, ROW etc. Choose your location. What you really need are the files 'bcmwl5.inf' and 'bcmwl5.sys' for your location.

I can't remember now what else is in the extracted data but avoid any bcmwl6 driver files. They are for Vista and ndiswrapper doesn't work with Vista files.

http://ftp.us.dell.com/network/Dell_...17_R174291.exe

Post back with any problems or questions.

[mayankjuneja]

Hello bbfuller

Thanks a lot . The wireless is working now.

[bijay.physics]

Hello everyone

I have installed Fedora 9 few months back on my dell inspiron 1525 and using it in dual boot mode with Microsoft Vista. I am not able to run wireless connection on Fedora 9. I was following the steos as mentioned in this forum. This is the output when I run the command

/sbin/lspci

09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11a/b/g (rev 01)

I was trying to install ndiswrapper but after giving the command

yum install kmod-ndiswrapper


I am getting the following output

[root@localhost ~]# yum install kmod-ndiswrapper


Loaded plugins: priorities, refresh-packagekit
livna | 2.4 kB 00:00
rpmfusion-nonfree-updates | 2.7 kB 00:00
fedora | 2.4 kB 00:00
rpmfusion-free-updates | 2.7 kB 00:00
rpmfusion-free | 951 B 00:00
updates | 2.6 kB 00:00
rpmfusion-nonfree | 951 B 00:00
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kmod-ndiswrapper.i686 0:1.53-5.fc9.10 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9.i686 = 1.53-5.fc9.10 for package: kmod-ndiswrapper
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9.i686.i686 0:1.53-5.fc9.10 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: ndiswrapper-kmod-common >= 1.53 for package: kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9.i686
--> Processing Dependency: kernel-uname-r = 2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9.i686 for package: kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9.i686
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9.i686.i686 0:1.53-5.fc9.10 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: kernel-uname-r = 2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9.i686 for package: kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9.i686
---> Package ndiswrapper.i386 0:1.53-2.fc9 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution
kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9.i686-1.53-5.fc9.10.i686 from rpmfusion-free-updates has depsolving problems
--> Missing Dependency: kernel-uname-r = 2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9.i686 is needed by package kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9.i686-1.53-5.fc9.10.i686 (rpmfusion-free-updates)
Error: Missing Dependency: kernel-uname-r = 2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9.i686 is needed by package kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.12-78.2.8.fc9.i686-1.53-5.fc9.10.i686 (rpmfusion-free-updates)

and I can't do anything beyond this. I am very new to linux. Please help me out.

[stoat]

Originally Posted by bijay.physics

/sbin/lspci

09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11a/b/g (rev 01)

Please help me out.

You do what you want, but it's completely unnecessary for you to be suffering with ndiswrapper. The BCM4312 is a chipset that can work with every driver method currently known for Broadcom-based wireless cards. You can see a summary of those methods in another post here. It outlines the relevant steps and provides links to example threads where other people used the BCM4312 with them.

Post #27 in "No Wireless on Fedora 10 (Broadcom BCM4312)"

P.S.: Regarding your ndiswrapper problem there, you probably need to update your kernel. You may need to connect to the Internet by wire to accomplish that. An alternative is to install and learn to use the yum-allowdowngrade plugin for yum.