I’ve been having a wireless problem and been trying to look through the Wiki’s, forums and such but many of them are for openSUSE 10.x and I am wondering if there is much different in 11.1?
I remember with one version (10.3) that there was a command to run (something like #bc4xx_firmware or something, it’s a Broadcom 4306 mini-pci) but I’m not finding it now and don’t know if it would work in 11.1 or if it has been changed/dropped.
After I give it a go, I’ll probably be posting more direct questions (I think I’m exhausting one person in the Ubuntu forums so far…) which is why I’m not going into a lot of detail at this time.
Your mileage will obviously vary, depending on the wireless chipset that you’re using, but I was pleasantly surprised with how well 11.1 detected the wireless in my company laptop. Worked like a champ.
(I have an Intel chipset, if I recall correctly …)
>
> Your mileage will obviously vary, depending on the wireless chipset that
> you’re using, but I was pleasantly surprised with how well 11.1 detected
> the wireless in my company laptop. Worked like a champ.
>
> (I have an Intel chipset, if I recall correctly …)
>
>
It may detect the chipset but, as far as my and my machines are concerned,
that’s been the case for a few years. It’s also been true for a couple of
years that it’s said that it’s found a driver during the boot sequence.
Unfortunately, I still have to use downloaded firmware and fwcutter to get
connected. That’s not much trouble but I still dream of the day when setup
of the wireless connection can be done during installation. Pie in the sky?
–
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy
Well, in my case, it not only detected, everything worked fine. In fact, I was on the road with my laptop, stayed at a motel with wireless, and said, “hmm. Why not?” I tried it and it connected right away. I hadn’t even tried it before then.
Guess I should have been more specific.
Linux wireless is getting there. I was kindof impressed that night at the motel, to be honest, after the horrible experience I’d had just a couple of years earlier: I had to recompile the module, had to hold my mouth right, sacrifice a goat, throw three quarters under the keyboard … and it STILL wouldn’t connect.
>
> Graham P Davis;1936543 Wrote:
>> It may detect the chipset but, as far as my and my machines are
>> concerned, that’s been the case for a few years. It’s also been true for
>> a couple of years that it’s said that it’s found a driver during the
>> boot sequence. Unfortunately, I still have to use downloaded firmware
>> and fwcutter to get
>> connected …
>
> Well, in my case, it not only detected, everything worked fine. In
> fact, I was on the road with my laptop, stayed at a motel with wireless,
> and said, “hmm. Why not?” I tried it and it connected right away. I
> hadn’t even tried it before then.
>
> Guess I should have been more specific.
>
> Linux wireless is getting there. I was kindof impressed that night at
> the motel, to be honest, after the horrible experience I’d had just a
> couple of years earlier: I had to recompile the module, had to hold my
> mouth right, sacrifice a goat, throw three quarters under the keyboard
> … and it STILL wouldn’t connect.
>
> (You know the story.)
>
>
Oh yes! I have two desktops and a laptop. They have three different Broadcom
chipsets. The desktops need b34-fwcutter to work and the laptop is stuck on
10.3 because only ndiswrapper works for that one. I bought some cards
recommended for Linux and, lo and behold, support vanished at the next
release.
–
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy
Graham P Davis wrote:
>
> Oh yes! I have two desktops and a laptop. They have three different Broadcom
> chipsets. The desktops need b34-fwcutter to work and the laptop is stuck on
> 10.3 because only ndiswrapper works for that one. I bought some cards
> recommended for Linux and, lo and behold, support vanished at the next
> release.
What cards and what chipsets? Were these drivers vendor-written, or
in-kernel.
The fwcutter problem is due to Broadcom’s refusal to cooperate with
the open-source community; however, we are doing an end run on them. A
group in Italy has o-s firmware for those chips that use ucode5
firmware. These include the 4306/3, the 4318, and the 4311/1. I’m
testing it now. There is at least one nasty problem to fix, but I
expect it should be ready for 11.2. If so, those cards will work
“out-of-the-box”.
> Graham P Davis wrote:
>>
>> Oh yes! I have two desktops and a laptop. They have three different
>> Broadcom chipsets. The desktops need b34-fwcutter to work and the laptop
>> is stuck on 10.3 because only ndiswrapper works for that one. I bought
>> some cards recommended for Linux and, lo and behold, support vanished at
>> the next release.
>
> What cards and what chipsets? Were these drivers vendor-written, or
> in-kernel.
They were from Edimax and had Ralink chip-sets. When I was recommended them,
they were supposed to work “out-of-the-box”. Unfortunately, by the time I
really needed them, events had overtaken me and they were no longer
recommended. I tried one in a new laptop when I was having trouble with the
internal Broadcom chip and it worked but only very slowly. Looked like the
I/O lights were in reverse. I think had been verified OK for 10.1 but
things went downhill after that. Never mind.
>
> The fwcutter problem is due to Broadcom’s refusal to cooperate with
> the open-source community; however, we are doing an end run on them. A
> group in Italy has o-s firmware for those chips that use ucode5
> firmware. These include the 4306/3, the 4318, and the 4311/1. I’m
> testing it now. There is at least one nasty problem to fix, but I
> expect it should be ready for 11.2. If so, those cards will work
> “out-of-the-box”.
>
> What are your 3 Broadcom cards?
>
They’re 4306 and 4318, which work with b43, and the 4310 jack-of-all-trades
which only works with ndiswrapper and distributions of an age equivalent to
10.3 or earlier. I believe you’re hacking the code for that so I’m happy
enough for now.
I’m not too bothered for myself, I’m just looking forward for a time when
any novice can install Linux on a PC and get it up-and-running without
getting their hands too grubby messing about with the nuts and bolts of the
system.
–
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy
When I tried a LiveCD on my work laptop I was pleasantly surprised that wireless worked out-of-the-box. It was an Intel.
My personal laptop, the one with a Braodcom 4309, is not so lucky.
I am getting to the point of thinking it may be hardware and not software. While I love the idea of getting a new laptop or netbook, I also balk at spending any more money than I need and if I can get this laptop to work alright then I have what I need!
I verify it is in the kernel and the drivers are loaded but still it doesn’t see anything.
I tried with an older version of Ubuntu, thinking it may be a glitch with the newer kernels.
I tried it with openSUSE 11 hoping it may work better (has in the past). I did not, though, try ndiswrapper in openSUSE but have in Ubuntu.
All of them have left me at best at the same point; Network Manager says it is up but not finding any connections in the area.
Meanwhile, I have my work laptop sitting right next to it and it finds 3 access points including mine and one is wide open too.
> When I tried a LiveCD on my work laptop I was pleasantly surprised that
> wireless worked out-of-the-box. It was an Intel.
So was mine. That’s why I bought it, thinking it would be nice to get away
from Broadcom. When I installed SUSE, I found out the Intel chip was
actually a badge-engineered Broadcom 4310 - probably the most awkward of
the Broadcom bunch!
–
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy
dragonbite wrote:
> lwfinger;1936982 Wrote:
>> Have you checked the dmesg output to see if it is looking for
>> firmware? The driver will load without it, but not do anything.
>
> How would I specify the firmware? ndiswrapper? b43?
>
> I wish I could switch the card with the one in my work laptop, or
> better yet just switch TO my work laptop!
If it needs it, the log data output by dmesg will state that firmware
could not be loaded, and tell you the name of the file. You need to
read the output of dmesg.
Ndiswrapper does not need external firmware, but b43 does. That is
Broadcom’s fault.
Last night at the computer club meeting, the guy who gave me the wireless card asked how it was working and I told him it wasn’t. Then he uttered those 4 simple words.
Is it turned on?
Since it didn’t have a physical switch we looked in the bios and sure-enough it was turned off >:(
Otherwise, his suggestions was openSUSE 10.2, which he KNEW works with this card (from experience), so that was a possible next move (that or Windows XP).
Argh… why is it the most simple, obvious answers are usually the correct ones and the last ones you look at?!!
Don’t know what’s up with Broadcom. They need to get their act together re: Linux. We’ve had trouble with both their wired and wireless cards. As a result, when we order hardware now, we have to say, “NO Broadcom.” I know my money isn’t going to make or break them, but they’re not getting any of it until they get their minds right.
Last fall, we received a shiny new Dell Poweredge with two gigabit Broadcom NICs. We were building it up as a Scalix mail server. Imagine my disappointment when we just could NOT get 11.0 to work with those cards. Yast would detect them and would say they were configured, but we still got no network. A Google search (and a peek in this forum) showed that the issue is with Broadcom; other distros have had similar problems.
From what I’ve seen in other searches, their wireless cards don’t play well with Linux, either. It’s a hit-or-miss thing … either it works fine, or it won’t work at all.
While not a broadcom change, there are other wireless changes in 11.1 that have benefited some of us.
For example, important to me, 11.1 with its 2.6.27 kernel supports the Intel WiFi Link 5100AGN and 5300AGN wireless, while previous openSUSE versions (with their default SuSE-GmbH packaged kernel versions) did not support that device. The 2.6.27 kernel is required for the 5100/5300 AGN.
Since my relatively new Dell Studio 15 laptop has an Intel WiFi Link 5300AGN, that implementation in 11.1 was important for me.
I do think the wifi driver for the Intel WiFi Link 5300AGN supported by the 2.6.27 kernel needs a bit of work. I find to get a reasonable connection, I need to have a terminal running continually, constantly pinging our family wireless router. Without that, the wireless connection will stop, and then drop after a while. With that (ping in a terminal) the traffic of the wireless connection will still pause on occasion, but then after a pause it will continue.
That is not ideal, but better than no connection, and overall the wireless works pretty good, as I have successfully downloaded large files (such as 4-GByte iso files of Linux distributions).
I cannot speak to the state of drivers for Broadcom wired devices, but
I know quite a bit about their wireless devices.
There are only two things that Broadcom has done to support their
wireless devices on Linux. The first was inadvertent - they used Linux
2.4 to write the operating code for home-quality wireless routers, got
caught in a GPL violation and had to release their code. Although the
device driver was only binary, that code was the start of the
reverse-engineering process that led to the current drivers b43 and
b43legacy.
The second thing that Broadcom has done is to release their hybrid
Linux driver. This one has all the problems of an out-of-kernel
driver, which I will not go into here.
As you say, the devices either work well, or not at all. The first
condition speaks to the quality of the talent that has worked on the
reverse engineering and the driver writing. The second is due to
Broadcom releasing new devices faster than those volunteers can keep
up. There are two such devices - a new 802.11a/b/g unit with a PC ID
of 0x4315, and the 802.11n devices. The RE work is nearly done on the
former and driver writing has started. Once that device is working,
then the 802.11n work will start.
> dragonbite wrote:
>> Argh… why is it the most simple, obvious answers are usually the
>> correct ones and the last ones you look at?!!
>
> I always find stuff in the last place I look.
>
Years ago, I made that work for me. In six small raffles, I made sure I had
the last ticket. I won all six.
–
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy
Maybe sometime I’ll tell you about how, years ago, I was troubleshooting a piece of equipment … how I walked through each item, step-by-step, with my meter: no +5V! Hmm … no +12V, either! … and wow, there’s no 120V AC on the primary of the transformer! And no 120V AC on the switch …
All because it wasn’t plugged in. Took me an hour to notice that one. lol!
Then there was the time a friend and I almost disassembled a 50KW transmitter, had all sorts of analyzers hooked up … … … and we had one switch set in the wrong position.
So PLEASE don’t feel bad, my friend. All of us do stuff like that.
(And those who say they don’t are also prone to lie about other things.)
