Everything but Wireless on Acer Laptop

English Network/Internet
1

Hi,
I just bought a new Acer 5720 laptop and decided to carry out an immediate OS upgrade from Vista to Opensuse 11 64 bit. Everything works fine except wireless connection, which did work prior to opensuse installation. I’ve read through the posts but, as I’m fairly new to opensuse configuration, I could really use a little help.

I read through your primer post and here are the results:

ran lsusb – showed 7 devices non of which were wireless

ran lspci -

chris@linux-agl3:~> /sbin/lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel C
orporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 04)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 04)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 04)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 04)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 04)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 04)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 04)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 04)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 04)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f4)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 04)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 04)
05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 USB Controller (rev 01)
07:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
07:00.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
07:00.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
07:00.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 12)

This did not show a wireless device but one that looked very similar to the example in your post: 06:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 USB Controller (rev 01). Is it possible (like in windows) that the system has misidentified the adaptor as a usb controller and not a wireless device?

Running /sbin/lspci -n produced: 06:00.0 0280: 14e4:4315 (rev 01)
running dmesg did not show a wlan entry.

As the wireless device worked prior to the installation of opensuse I don’t think the hardware could be broken… could it be a 64 bit issue? Don’t really have a clue just trying to use the little knowledge I have to try and draw some conclusions.

Really appreciate any help as I really want to stick with opensuse

Thanks

2

The BCM4310 is, as you suspect, a wireless controller and not a USB controller.

I believe it is newly supported under linux.
Check out this thread, the poster eventually got things working, as I recall:

BCM4310…no wireless - Page 4 - openSUSE Forums

3

incognito9 wrote:
> The BCM4310 is, as you suspect, a wireless controller and not a USB
> controller.
>
> I believe it is newly supported under linux.
> Check out this thread, the poster eventually got things working, as I
> recall:
>
> ‘BCM4310…no wireless - Page 4 - openSUSE Forums’
> (http://tinyurl.com/3hza9g)

The BCM4310 USB unit, which is really a PCIe device, does not work
with b43. Your two options are to use ndiswrapper and the Windows
driver, or the Broadcom hybrid driver. Both methods have problems.

Larry

4

I always seem to pick the more challenging specifications!!

In your opinion which of the two choices do you think would be the more achievable for a complete newbie?

There seems to be a fair bit of info about the ndiswrapper option in the link provided by incognito9 (thanks for that) can you point me at some info about the hybrid option?

thanks
Chris

5

old webmonkey wrote:
> I always seem to pick the more challenging specifications!!
>
> In your opinion which of the two choices do you think would be the more
> achievable for a complete newbie?
>
> There seems to be a fair bit of info about the ndiswrapper option in
> the link provided by incognito9 (thanks for that) can you point me at
> some info about the hybrid option?

Google “Broadcom hybrid driver” and read the first entry.

Larry

6

I’ve been trying to sort this out for a few days but can’t get beyond making the LKM.

I went to the Broadcom site as suggested and following the instructions provided downloaded the relevant (64bit) file. I untarred it into a folder /hybrid_wl, as directed. This left a ‘src’ and a ‘lib’ sub directory plus a Linux 2.6 “kbuild” makefile.

The next instructions were to run the command: make -C /lib/modules/<2.6.xx.xx>build M=‘pwd’

I then discovered I had to install ‘make’ so installed all the files associated with the C++ pattern in yast.

Then checked my Kernel version and ran script again as su:

make -C /lib/modules/2.6.25.16-0.1/build M=‘pwd’

but keep getting this result: make: *** /lib/modules/2.6.25.16-0.1/build: No such file or directory. Stop.

One article I read suggested I needed to download the kernel source which I did using yast but still get the same result… could someone please tell me where I’m going wrong before I go mad!