hp 2133 wlan bcm4312(1) problems Fedora 14

[Grub3r]

Hi there folks,

I have minimal F14 install and trying to get the wlan to work, as out of the box it does not.


have installed wireless tools and wpa_supplicant

When trying to connect with wpa_supplicant and .conf + dhclient wlan0 it says firmware missing(of course), visit wireless.kernel.org...

downloading b43-fwcutter and extracting firmware. Starting wpa_supplicant again and
before I can do anything it freezes. I cannot do anything, it just hangs there...

I see there are different fwcutters versions: bcm43xx-fwcutter and b43-fwcutter just the latter one works for me.


Question:

is my card not supported?
am I using wrong firmware?
wrong approach to the problem?

any help would be appreciated, have been struggling for several days now.

any info missing, just ask.
lspci:

02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11a/b/g (rev 02)

dmesg:

[    7.664416] b43-pci-bridge 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 24 (level, low) -> IRQ 24
[    7.664439] b43-pci-bridge 0000:02:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[    8.538637] b43-phy0: Broadcom 4311 WLAN found (core revision 13)
[    8.694221] Registered led device: b43-phy0::tx
[    8.694265] Registered led device: b43-phy0::rx
[    8.694309] Registered led device: b43-phy0::radio

regards, Gr0b

[stoat]

Only some BCM4312 chipsets work with the b43 driver. You can forge ahead with that if you prefer, but IMO your best chance of success is with the Broadcom 802.11 STA Linux driver. There is a very popular binary yum-installable version of it available from RPM Fusion. If your computer has a wired NIC connected to the Internet to do the downloads, then simply install the RPM Fusion repos...

su
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

Then install the driver for the "plain" 32-bit kernel and the 64-bit kernel this way...

su
yum install kmod-wl

Or install it for the PAE kernel this way...

su
yum install kmod-wl-PAE

If you do not have a wired NIC connected to the Internet, you still can install the driver offline and manually. Return and identify the running kernel...

uname -r

From that, I or someone will tell you which files to download, transfer to the wireless computer, and manually install.

[Grub3r]

Hi stoat,

thanks for the reply and your time.


OK,

If I'm not mistaken I have already tried this approach with kmod-wl, at least I've been reading about this lately. I tried a lot last weekend and messed up system several times.

The only success I had, is that firmware is being recognized but when I try wpa_supplicant the system just freezes sometime it freezes when I try iwlist wlan0 scan. I got it working only once, thinking I was done system came up, wpa worked fine, but it froze again after half an hour.

The kernel is the latest official F14 PAE kernel: kernel-PAE-2.6.35.9-64.fc14.i686

Other thoughts , I've tried ubuntu 10.10 live, booted up, no firmware, I could install as proprietary driver, when downloading and installing it failed! I got no clue why.

Windows 7 32bit work like a charm out of the box. It means that the hardware is ok. got connected without wpa, icmp test loss 7 from 2000, not bad with 1500b packets...

will try the kmod-wl-PAE approach and report back until end of the week.

Regards, Gr0b

[stoat]

Well you can try both methods. You never know until you try. Some BCM4312 adapters will work with the b43 driver module that comes with Fedora kernels. I use it for my BCM4306 cards. I extract the firmware from a source object file found in a driver tarball at OpenWrt. The only reason that I attempted to steer you away from it is because all versions of BCM4312 seem to work with broadcom-wl. If you decide to try broadcom-wl again, then confirm that yum wants to install the PAE version for your PAE kernel, like you said.

[Grub3r]

Hi,

Update:

reinstalled F14 minimal with updates. latest kernel-pae.

yum'ed kmod-wl-PAE
iwconfig shows up OK
ifup wlan0 OK
wpa_supplicant -c/config.conf -iwlan0 -d OK
dhclient wlan0 NOT OK, system freezes.

sometimes system freezes when wpa_supplicant -c/... or ifup wlan0, this is random, but one thing is sure, when system tries to use the wlan0, it may freeze!

what am I doing wrong? dont really understand what's wrong! dont want to give up this gadget, please assist.

Regards, Gr0b

[bullterrier]

I've got a same problem with bcm4312 on HP2133.

I used this:

su -
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/...ble.noarch.rpm
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfr...ble.noarch.rpm
yum install kmod-wl

When I started a wlan0, the wifi works nice, but only 5 or 10 second and OS freeze after this time :-(.

-=bullterrier=-

[Grub3r]

Hi again,

tried non-PAE kernel, with same results. Anyone got a clue what could be wrong, non-supported chipset/revision? how hard could it be to write a driver/firmware that suits all chipsets Broadcom

-Gr0b

[stoat]

I've not heard of any adapters with BCM4312 chipsets that could not use WPA encryption with b43 or broadcom-wl.

You appear to be managing your interface manually with terminal commands. And you must have created your own wpa_supplicant.conf file. Nothing wrong with that. I used to do it, too. There are various properties and tweaks that can be included in the wpa_supplicant.conf file. So maybe there is something there that can be researched and tried. Maybe you can try a different WPA protocol. BTW, can you connect and stay connected without WPA encryption? Say, with WEP or with no encryption?

Anyway, I mentioned that stuff to lead into the next idea which is to try allowing NetworkManager to manage the wireless interface. Have you tried that? I do. And I don't have to create a wpa_supplicant.conf file, or edit any of the traditional text config files. You could, for example, delete (or move) your wpa_supplicant.conf file and delete (or move) any text config files that you've altered (or undo the alterations). Then try just letting NetworkManager to the job for you. You also can try that with the Fedora LiveCD. Boot with it, install the broadcom-wl driver, restart NetworkManager and see what it does in a sort of clean environment. For me, all I have to do nowadays is install broadcom firmware for b43 and reboot or restart NetworkManager. I don't touch anything else, including the venerable and apparently irresistible system-config-network applet and its text config files. Nothing. And I have no wireless issues. I know that doesn't really mean anything to your situation necessarily, but the idea of letting NetworkManager do it all is worth trying IMO.

[dindoung1]

I know nothing about wireless. The only reason I was able to configure my broadcom chipset with FC13 was thanks to the linux unity project. This was after a half year of forums and books that got me nowhere.

[stoat]

This was after a half year of forums and books that got me nowhere.

That's a long time to suffer with a Broadcom wireless card. I published a Broadcom HOWTO here almost a year ago...

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=239922

I'm not an unbiased reviewer of course, but I think it's better than that Fedora Unity stuff. Anyway, that BCM4306 chipset that you mentioned in another thread is very easy to get going in Fedora. I have three of them. Long ago I used them with ndiswrapper, then with the bcm43xx driver, and now with its descendent, b43. Mine are definitely not for sale.