Cant Get Suse 11 to detect Network

[dantedanger]

Hi guys,

Having just installed Suse 11 on my Acer Aspire PC having grown fed up of windows, I've encountered a few problems. I'm not very familiar with Linux, but I thought I'd jump in at the deep end. Basically, it seems to install okay, thought the display defaults to 800x600. Anyhow, I cant seem to get detect the wireless network that I am broadcasting at home.

The system detects both my wired and wireless network cards. It however does not seem to detect the network. I have set up a wireless network with 4 computers running windows vista and xp, but I cant seem to get this to work.

Do I have to manually input the default gateway / DNS etc even with a DHCP ste up?

I have tried to configure the recognised network card, inputting the WPA key etc, but when i search for a network , none are displayed. I am using a Linksys wrt54g router and a Linksys wireless network card.

Cheers,

Dante

[lwfinger]

dantedanger wrote:
> Hi guys,
>
> Having just installed Suse 11 on my Acer Aspire PC having grown fed up
> of windows, I've encountered a few problems. I'm not very familiar with
> Linux, but I thought I'd jump in at the deep end. Basically, it seems to
> install okay, thought the display defaults to 800x600. Anyhow, I cant
> seem to get detect the wireless network that I am broadcasting at
> home.
>
> The system detects both my wired and wireless network cards. It however
> does not seem to detect the network. I have set up a wireless network
> with 4 computers running windows vista and xp, but I cant seem to get
> this to work.
>
> Do I have to manually input the default gateway / DNS etc even with a
> DHCP ste up?
>
> I have tried to configure the recognised network card, inputting the
> WPA key etc, but when i search for a network , none are displayed. I am
> using a Linksys wrt54g router and a Linksys wireless network card.

Check the output of '/sbin/lspci -n'. If it reports that your Linksys card is a
BCM43xx, then you probably need to install the firmware. If you have Internet
access while in Linux, open a console and enter

sudo /usr/sbin/inxtall_bcm43xx_firmware

If you do not have Internet access from Linux, check the "Additional Wireless
Bits" sticky at the start of Networks / Wireless for instructions.

Larry

[dantedanger]

Hi,

Cheers for that, it is listed as a BCM 4318. I guess this means it that Suse 11 didnt come with the drivers. I'll check out what you said!

cheers,

Dante

[girdance]

Well, glad you got it fixed!

My post doesn't matter anymore

[lwfinger]

dantedanger wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Cheers for that, it is listed as a BCM 4318. I guess this means it that
> Suse 11 didnt come with the drivers. I'll check out what you said!

No, SuSE comes with the drivers. Broadcom does not allow any distro to include
their firmware. Every BCM43xx user must download one of the drivers that
Broadcom provides for other OS's, and use a program called b43-fwcutter to
extract the firmware from that driver, and put it in the right place. SuSE has
that program - the script uses it.

FYI, the bcm43xx project is nearing completion on reverse-engineering the
firmware. When that is finished, every distro will be able to include the
firmware and the users will only need to install that package.

Larry

[cookdav]

FYI, the bcm43xx project is nearing completion on reverse-engineering the
firmware. When that is finished, every distro will be able to include the
firmware and the users will only need to install that package.

Larry

We're HOPING that the distro's LiveCD will have the package
pre-installed, so that the wireless will work right from the LiveCD,
[just like those 'illegal distros' do now]

[lwfinger]

cookdav wrote:
> lwfinger;1832877 Wrote:
>> FYI, the bcm43xx project is nearing completion on reverse-engineering
>> the
>> firmware. When that is finished, every distro will be able to include
>> the
>> firmware and the users will only need to install that package.
>>
>> Larry
>
> We're HOPING that the distro's LiveCD will have the package
> pre-installed, so that the wireless will work right from the LiveCD,
> [just like those 'illegal distros' do now]

With open-source firmware, that is the way it will be. ATM, Broadcom has more
money for lawyers than do the distros.