NetworkManager crash

frizzinkalli · #1 27th December 2008, 12:55 AM

Hi everybody! I'm new here so be nice

I just installed Fedora 9 on my new laptop and I'm having a hard time connecting to the internet. First, NetworkManager doesn't see any wireless networks, and I know there are at least 3 in range. I'm trying to connect to an unsecured wireless network named NETGEAR. So I go to Create New Wireless Network and put in NETGEAR for the SSID and click OK (or create, apply, whatever) and it crashes.

So what I'm asking for is
a) if anyone knows how to fix this (I know I'm not giving much information, I don't really know what else is relevant), like if this is a common bug or something,
b) if there is a cli way to connect to the internet, or
c) if there is another application I can use.

Thanks a bunch!
frizzinkalli

stoat · #2 27th December 2008, 02:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frizzinkalli

NetworkManager doesn't see any wireless networks, and I know there are at least 3 in range.

Hello frizzinkalli,

That right there makes me wonder if your card's driver is installed and working. After all, you didn't say anything about that. Fedora does support some cards "out-of-the-box", but just as many (or more) have to be somehow installed. What about that? It's usually the chipset that matters. You can identify it in the output of this (usually)...

Code:

/sbin/lspci

Or sometimes this (maybe)...

Code:

/sbin/lsusb

frizzinkalli · #3 27th December 2008, 03:52 AM

Hi stoat, thanks for the quick reply!
Here is the output of /sbin/lspci:

Code:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Cantiga Memory Controller Hub (rev 07)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cantiga PCI Express Graphics Port (rev 07)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobilitiy Radeon HD 3650
01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc RV635 Audio device [Radeon HD 3600 Series]
04:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 USB Controller (rev 01)
08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5784M Gigabit Ethernet PCIe (rev 10)
09:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
09:01.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
09:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C843 MMC Host Controller (rev 12)
09:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
09:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev ff)

So what does that mean? LOL... thanks again for the help!

stoat · #4 27th December 2008, 03:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frizzinkalli

04:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 USB Controller (rev 01)

Quote:

Originally Posted by frizzinkalli

So what does that mean?

It means you have a Broadcom wireless card with a BCM4310 chipset. It means that Fedora will not operate it "out-of-the-box", so to speak. You must somehow install a driver for it. This why it is not now working for you. NetworkManager is not your problem. Here is a review of the current driver methods used with Broadcom cards. It's not all good news, but there is hope at the end. I'm mentioning it all to keep you from wasting your time thrashing around with something known not to work with your card...

The b43 Native Linux Driver

The b43 driver is a kind of reverse engineered driver for Linux but still requires firmware that has to be extracted from a Broadcom driver. It has been included as a module with Fedora kernels since Fedora 7 when it replaced its predecessor, the bcm43xx driver. The Linux Wireless website (home of the b43 Broadcom driver) specifically says that the BCM4310 card is not supported by b43. They also say that the BCM4310 USB device uses the PCI bus despite its name. I have to agree since it appeared in your lspci report.

The new Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA wireless driver (broadcom-wl)

The new Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA wireless driver (broadcom-wl) is a new player in the game. It is a real Linux driver by Broadcom and intended for use by only a few Broadcom chipsets. Its list of supported chipsets does not include the BCM4310. You may run across a new HOWTO here and a person (its author) claiming that this driver works with any Broadcom chipset. And some people have been trying it for just about any Broadcom chipset. So far, I haven't seen one not in the list work with it. I recommend that you not waste time on it.

Dangermouse's autoten and Broadcom Driver RPMs

Dangermouse's autoten and Broadcom driver rpms are well known and highly regarded around here. But they are not known to install a driver for the BCM4310. They both basically install the b43 firmware (already discussed), so these rpms do what b43 does. In fact, Dangermouse himself addressed the BCM4310 chipset vis-a-vis autoten in another thread here only a few months ago.

Ndiswrapper

That leaves ndiswrapper. Ndiswrapper is well-known software that acts as a sort of "adapter" to make the Windows XP driver work in Linux. I have used it myself in the past with a BCM4306 card with great success. The BCM4310 is known to work with ndiswrapper and the card's XP driver. Here is a thread with all the details and a happy ending (Hint: everything you need is on the first page of it)...

Broadcom bcm4310 wireless chipset

That thread happens to involve Fedora 9, too. The steps will be applicable to you except for one important change: The Livna repository is no longer maintaining the packages used in the instructions. Wherever it says to install the Livna repo like this...

Code:

su -
rpm -Uhv http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-9.rpm

...you should instead install the rpmfusion-free repo like this...

Code:

su -
rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm

Two highly regarded resident experts here provided the instructions to the victim in that thread. There is quite a bit of the obligatory thrashing around at first, but by the second page of it, the poor victim has the BCM4310 working. The problem was he/she was using the card's Vista driver in the beginning. Ndiswrapper is known not to work well with the Vista driver. It works with the card's XP driver. It is also known to work with the W2K driver and even the W98 driver. But get the XP driver from the CD that came with your card, the Internet, or even from your XP system folders. You will need a SYS file and an INF file. Once you have those, follow the steps in the thread that I linked above. If you have problems or questions, I recommend that you return here to ask them. If you have success, I request that you also return here and report that, too. It will be important for the record, and this thread may turn into a BCM4310 HOWTO. One never knows at this point in the game. Good luck.

frizzinkalli · #5 27th December 2008, 06:02 PM

Thanks for the help, but I'm still a bit confused as to what I'm supposed to do here.
The computer came with Vista if that makes a difference. And also since I'm not connected to the internet I can't download anything from within Fedora. I tried downloading the ndiswrapper rpm while on Vista and putting it on a flash drive so I could get it on Fedora. I did

Code:

yum localinstall ndiswrapper-1.54-18_r2670.fc9.x86_64.rpm

but it didn't work. Here's the output:

Code:

Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
Setting up Local Package Process
Examining /media/disk/Files/ndiswrapper-1.54-18_r2670.fc9.x86_64.rpm: ndiswrapper-1.54-18_r2670.fc9.x86_64
Marking /media/disk/Files/ndiswrapper-1.54-18_r2670.fc9.x86_64.rpm to be installed
Could not retrieve mirrorlist http://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/mirrorlist?repo=fedora-9&arch=i386 error was
[Errno 4] IOError: <urlopen error (-3, 'Temporary failure in name resolution')>
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: fedora. Please verify its path and try again

So what should I do?

stoat · #6 27th December 2008, 11:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frizzinkalli

The computer came with Vista if that makes a difference. And also since I'm not connected to the internet I can't download anything from within Fedora. I tried downloading the ndiswrapper rpm while on Vista and putting it on a flash drive so I could get it on Fedora.

It doesn't really make any difference about Vista being installed. But if you are going to use ndiswrapper, you need the XP driver for your wireless card. You will have to acquire it from a CD that may have come with the computer (doubtful) or the Internet. You computer's web site support may have it.

It's actually a little group of three files that would have been downloaded. They are dependent upon each other. Two are kmod-ndiswrapper packages and one is the ndiswrapper package. One of the kmods is kernel specific. The bad news is that the kmod-ndiswrapper package for the original Fedora 9 kernel is not available at RPM Fusion now. Since you don't have an Internet connection with Fedora, I figure you still have the original kernel (kernel-2.6.25-14). Right? To use ndiswrapper (your apparent only choice) you must now figure out a way to update your Fedora kernel.

The only thing that I can think of now is to connect Fedora to the Internet with a wired NIC connection even if you have to move the computer or get a long Cat5 cable. Then connect to the Internet, update the kernel, and install the rpmfusion ndiswrapper packages. Can you possibly do that?

Maybe somebody else has a better idea.

P.S.: FWIW, the kmod-ndiswrapper packages for the original Fedora 10 kernel are still available for download from RPM Fusion. You could re-install with Fedora 10 and then download the three rpmfusion packages with Vista. Just a thought.

frizzinkalli · #7 29th December 2008, 03:13 AM

I'm going to update to Fedora 10 because it seems easier and also I might as well since it's newer and everything, so the image is downloading now and I should have it installed by tomorrow. I also found the XP driver I need. So what I believe I have to do is:
- Install Fedora 10
- Connect Fedora to internet with wire
- Install rpmfusion ndiswrapper packages
- Set up ndiswrapper with XP driver

And then it should work, right?

frizzinkalli · #8 29th December 2008, 05:57 PM

It was all working perfectly. I was getting so excited. I installed Fedora 10, installed ndiswrapper, installed the driver, and then BAM. I think God is taunting me.

Here's what happened:

Code:

[jess@JESS-LAP ~]$ su -
Password: 
[root@JESS-LAP ~]# rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
Retrieving http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
warning: /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.7fNoJ7: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 49c8885a
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:rpmfusion-free-release ########################################### [100%]
[root@JESS-LAP ~]# yum install kmod-ndiswrapper
Loaded plugins: refresh-packagekit
rpmfusion-free-updates                                   | 2.7 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-free-updates/primary_db                        | 120 kB     00:01     
rpmfusion-free                                           | 2.7 kB     00:00     
rpmfusion-free/primary_db                                | 212 kB     00:02     
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kmod-ndiswrapper.i686 0:1.53-5.fc10.12 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.9-159.fc10.i686 = 1.53-5.fc10.12 for package: kmod-ndiswrapper
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.9-159.fc10.i686.i686 0:1.53-5.fc10.12 set to be updated
--> Processing Dependency: kernel-uname-r = 2.6.27.9-159.fc10.i686 for package: kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.9-159.fc10.i686
--> Processing Dependency: ndiswrapper-kmod-common >= 1.53 for package: kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.9-159.fc10.i686
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kernel.i686 0:2.6.27.9-159.fc10 set to be installed
--> Processing Dependency: kernel-firmware >= 2.6.27.9-159.fc10 for package: kernel
---> Package ndiswrapper.i386 0:1.53-2.fc10 set to be updated
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kernel-firmware.noarch 0:2.6.27.9-159.fc10 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

================================================================================
 Package            Arch     Version             Repository                Size
================================================================================
Installing:
 kmod-ndiswrapper   i686     1.53-5.fc10.12      rpmfusion-free-updates    10 k
Updating:
 kernel-firmware    noarch   2.6.27.9-159.fc10   updates                  358 k
Installing for dependencies:
 kernel             i686     2.6.27.9-159.fc10   updates                   19 M
 kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.9-159.fc10.i686
                    i686     1.53-5.fc10.12      rpmfusion-free-updates    90 k
 ndiswrapper        i386     1.53-2.fc10         rpmfusion-free            34 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Install      4 Package(s)         
Update       1 Package(s)         
Remove       0 Package(s)         

Total download size: 19 M
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
http://astromirror.uchicago.edu/rpmfusion/free/fedora/updates/10/i386/kmod-ndiswrapper-1.53-5.fc10.12.i686.rpm: [Errno 4] IOError: [Errno ftp error] timed out
Trying other mirror.
(1/5): kmod-ndiswrapper-1.53-5.fc10.12.i686.rpm          |  10 kB     00:00     
(2/5): ndiswrapper-1.53-2.fc10.i386.rpm                  |  34 kB     00:00     
(3/5): kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.9-159.fc10.i686-1.53-5.fc |  90 kB     00:01     
(4/5): kernel-firmware-2.6.27.9-159.fc10.noarch.rpm      | 358 kB     00:02     
(5/5): kernel-2.6.27.9-159.fc10.i686.rpm                 |  19 MB     01:47     
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Total                                           139 kB/s |  19 MB     02:22     
warning: rpmts_HdrFromFdno: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 4ebfc273
updates/gpgkey                                           | 2.3 kB     00:00     
Importing GPG key 0x4EBFC273 "Fedora (10) <fedora@fedoraproject.org>" from /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-fedora-i386
Is this ok [y/N]: y
warning: rpmts_HdrFromFdno: Header V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 49c8885a
rpmfusion-free-updates/gpgkey                            | 1.7 kB     00:00     
Importing GPG key 0x49C8885A "RPM Fusion repository (Fedora - free) <rpmfusion-buildsys@lists.rpmfusion.org>" from /etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmfusion-free-fedora
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
  Updating       : kernel-firmware                                          1/6 
  Installing     : kernel                                                   2/6 
  Installing     : kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.9-159.fc10.i686                  3/6 
  Installing     : kmod-ndiswrapper                                         4/6 
  Installing     : ndiswrapper                                              5/6 
  Cleanup        : kernel-firmware                                          6/6 

Installed:
  kmod-ndiswrapper.i686 0:1.53-5.fc10.12                                        

Dependency Installed:
  kernel.i686 0:2.6.27.9-159.fc10                                               
  kmod-ndiswrapper-2.6.27.9-159.fc10.i686.i686 0:1.53-5.fc10.12                 
  ndiswrapper.i386 0:1.53-2.fc10                                                

Updated:
  kernel-firmware.noarch 0:2.6.27.9-159.fc10                                    

Complete!
[root@JESS-LAP ~]# ndiswrapper -i /home/jess/Desktop/R174291/DRIVER_JPN/bcmwl5.inf
installing bcmwl5 ...
[root@JESS-LAP ~]# ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl5 : driver installed
	device (14E4:4315) present
[root@JESS-LAP ~]# modprobe ndiswrapper
FATAL: Module ndiswrapper not found.
[root@JESS-LAP ~]#

stoat · #9 29th December 2008, 06:06 PM

Try this next...

Code:

ndiswrapper -mi

Then skip that modprobe ndiswrapper step and just reboot. See what happens with NetworkManager.

frizzinkalli · #10 29th December 2008, 09:44 PM

IT WORKS!!!
thank you SOO much!! I am so happy

stoat · #11 29th December 2008, 10:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by frizzinkalli

IT WORKS!!!
thank you SOO much!! I am so happy

So am I. Here are some parting thoughts about that last ndiswrapper command because the ndiswrapper documentation available nowadays is very poor and hard-to-find. Just so you'll know and for future readers that might be interested...

There are now three variations of that last step.

Code:

ndiswrapper -m
ndiswrapper -ma
ndiswrapper -mi

See the ndiswrapper help (/usr/sbin/ndiswrapper --help) for some very brief descriptions of them. Once upon a time, that first one was all we had. It creates the usual alias line in the file /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper. Recently, the other two appeared (with very little explanation about them). According to ndiswrapper help, the -ma one will "write module alias configuration for all devices", and it also does that in the file /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper. And according to ndiswrapper help, the -mi one will "write module install configuration for all devices" and again in that same file. The important thing about these three ndiswrapper command options is to execute only one of them because those last two completely rewrite the /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper file erasing what was there before, and the -m one will complain if one of the other two has already been done before it. So, if you ever experiment with these commands, first manually clear out or delete /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper. I have seen posts where people did all three one after the other (more is better approach). It just doesn't work the way they think and can create a mess if -m is done last. I tried all of this stuff.