Fedora 10 : Need Wireless driver for Dell Inspiron 1525 (Broadcom BCM4312 802.11b/g)

[elan]

Hi,
I have recently installed Fedora 10 on my Inspiron 1525 Laptop
Name of my Network controller is Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01).

I have searched Internet for this driver for past 2 days , but no luck.

Please help.!!

[djselbeck]

Hello,

you try to install kmod-wl from rpmfusion.org and try to load the wl kernel module after this.

[elan]

Thanks for the prompt reply, Im trying that out now

[BStarbuck]

These were the instructions given to me. I was unable to get it to work in F10, but I also noobed it up and tried many different steps and probably messed something up. F9, however, worked on the first go.

http://www.cenolan.com/2008/11/rpm-i...driver-fedora/

[sideways]

I've always used ndiswrapper for that network adapter, works beautifully in 32bit and 64bit Fedora 8,9 and 10, even with the 4k stack in 32bit.

Here's a download link (contains both 32bit and 64 bit drivers) install with ndiswrapper -i <path to>/bcmwl5.inf (it'll select the correct driver).

ndiswrapper is best installed via rpmfusion, you'll need a temporary cable to get internet connection, otherwise manually download ndiswrapper-1.53-2.fc10, kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.5-117.fc10 and kmod-ndiswrapper-1.53-5.fc10 (or whatever matches your kernel) and install using rpm -ihv.

extract with 'tar xvf bcm43.bz2'

http://www.jbg.f2s.com/bcm43.bz2

[elan]

I tried this link
http://www.cenolan.com/2008/11/rpm-i...driver-fedora/

but it did'nt work , I am now trying working with ndiswrapper. Will let you guys know once i am done

[elan]

Hey thanks a lot SIDEWAYS.. it worked.

Thanks again !!

[sideways]

cool, these are really well written drivers and one of the few times I'd recommend an ndiswrapper solution above the alternatives. They work with 4k stacks in 32bit, turn on your wifi led and are incredibly stable. I've stayed in hotel rooms where the wifi access point was only giving me 1 bar in NetworkManager but I was still able to do speedy updates of large package collections no problem.

incidentally, you'd normally need an 80+ mb download, i stripped out the relevant files for convenience

[Tekno_Cowboy]

Hmmm...That's strange....

I have the same laptop and the proprietary driver works well for me. (kmod-wl)

[Vector]

I have used ndsiwrapper for a long time. But i think that the project is going by the wayside. I noticed that their wireless drivers list if completely gone, and that i can no longer compile it. Before, i would not be able to yum it, because things would not install correctly; so i would do it by hand, etc. Now i cannot even do that.

Tell me, did you yum ndis or compile it? Are you using 32-bit or 64? Did you say that you were using F-10 or F-9? And did you use the native windows driver, or the driver in that link (is that a kernel driver?). This really bugs me that it will not cooperate for me any more, but i have found wlassistant and some other command line wireless tools to be quite on the spot, now.

Thanx

[sideways]

Originally Posted by Alex-Grim

I have used ndsiwrapper for a long time. But i think that the project is going by the wayside. I noticed that their wireless drivers list if completely gone, and that i can no longer compile it. Before, i would not be able to yum it, because things would not install correctly; so i would do it by hand, etc. Now i cannot even do that.

Tell me, did you yum ndis or compile it? Are you using 32-bit or 64? Did you say that you were using F-10 or F-9? And did you use the native windows driver, or the driver in that link (is that a kernel driver?). This really bugs me that it will not cooperate for me any more, but i have found wlassistant and some other command line wireless tools to be quite on the spot, now.

Thanx

First, see if the broadcom-wl driver works, that will replace the ndiswrapper solution for many. If you can't install via yum 'yum install broadcom-wl' then to install it manually you need to download 3 files (see this thread)

broadcom-wl-<version>.rpm
kmod-wl-<version>.rpm
kmod-wl-<kernel>-<version>.rpm

where <kernel> is what you get from 'uname -r'

If that doesn't work then try ndiswrapper, use the drivers posted in the link in my post above, it includes both 32bit and 64bit windows drivers which ndiswrapper will install automatically.

If you can't install via yum then you need to download 3 files manually from rpmfusion and copy to a usb stick or similar

ndiswrapper-<version>.rpm
kmod-ndiswrapper-<kernel>-<version>.rpm
kmod-ndiswrapper-<version>.rpm

where <kernel> is what 'uname -r' returns

su -
rpm -ihv ndiswrapper-*.rpm, kmod-ndiswrapper-*.rpm
tar xvf <path to>/bcm43.bz2
ndiswrapper -i <path to>/bcmwl5.inf
ndiswrapper -m
depmod
modprobe ndiswrapper
service NetworkManager start

[Vector]

Originally Posted by sideways

su -
rpm -ihv ndiswrapper-*.rpm, kmod-ndiswrapper-*.rpm
tar xvf <path to>/bcm43.bz2
ndiswrapper -i <path to>/bcmwl5.inf
ndiswrapper -m
depmod
modprobe ndiswrapper
service NetworkManager start

Yeah, i know this part well, i am the guy who wrote those articles on how to do that part. But what interests me, is that the drivers list is gone, as well as their wiki, AND, to make matters worse, it will not even compile anymore. Also, i downloaded the latest version of source code, and it was the same version that i've had on my backup drive for the last 2-4 fedora versions now; so it's been a while since the source has been touched. I did yum it, but it still didn't work. And yes, i know very well how to set it up, so i didn't miss anything. The project has just gone to hell; i think that it's getting dumped, frankly.

No, what interested me, is that you DID manage to get it working. Very interesting...............
But, your kernel approach is completely new to me, so thanx for the tip with that; will try.

[sideways]

I'm not sure what you mean by "kernel approach", whether you compile yourself or install via the repos you still have an ndiswrapper kernel module and a wrapped windows driver.

The ndiswrapper source code for v1.53 needs a small patch to compile against F10 kernels, in ndiswrapper-1.53/driver/iw_ndis.c you need to add an initial argument to the iwe_stream_add_*() function calls. There's probably a proper patch somewhere, if you can't find it try downloading this version of iw_ndis.c, bunzip2 it and replace the one you have

[sideways]

ok, I found the correct patch for ndiswrapper here, this should compile on all current F10 kernels

It's for ndiswrapper v.1.52 but also applies to v1.53 (which I used) If you have problems applying it then just download iw_ndis.c.bz2 and replace iw_ndis.c by copying over it (This is the same link as posted above but I edited the code to follow the official patch)

[Vector]

I'm sorry; i meant the pre-packaged kernel modules, vs the source code approach. While it is true that they will both yield kmods in the end, the prepackaged approach doesn't edit the necessary configuration files in order to get things working, which is why i always elect to do it by hand.

And when i said 'kernel approach', i wasn't talking about the ndiswrapper's kmod --as i already knew about that, and purposely opted the source code as opposed to the kmod-- but rather, i was referring to the packages that you listed for the kmod-wl*, as i've never heard of them before.

The laptop in question (with the bcm4318 card) is not an issue now, as i'm giving it to someone who does not have (and will never have) internet. But i was interested anyway because i deal with laptops a lot; and so i will need to know this stuff in the future. So, thanks for all the info. And hopefully they'll update their source code against F-10 sometime soon. I like F-10 so much that i do not think i will use F11 when it comes out; so i will be compiling against it for some time to come...