Lost wireless connection after installing GNOME 3

English Install/Boot/Login
1

My spec:
Netbook model: HP Mini 210
Memory: 990.2 MB
Processor: Intel® Atom™ CPU N450 @ 1.66GHz × 2 32-bit
Graphics: Intel® IGD GEM 20100330 DEVELOPMENT x86/MMX/SSE2
Hard drive: 127.5 GB
Wireless: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312
OS: openSUSE 11.4 Gnome 3 (32-bit)

I installed “broadcom-wl” and “broadcom-wl-kmp-default” as per the instructions in this guide:

Install Broadcom Drivers from Packman

And my wireless worked fine in the default GNOME 2 installation. However when I upgraded to GNOME 3 using the offical OBS, I lost access to my wireless networks. The GNOME 3 network applet says “wireless unavailable”. The MAC address shown in the network settings window matches that of eth0. Is this a GNOME 3 bug? Or do I need to install some additional packages? And yes I know GNOME 3 isn’t ready yet, Its just this is the only thing that’s not working :slight_smile:

I also tried tried the following with a reboot:

sudo /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware
sudo /sbin/modprobe -rv b43
sudo /sbin/modprobe -v b43

ifconfig output:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr C4:46:19:5B:90:A8  
          inet6 addr: fe80::c646:19ff:fe5b:90a8/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:17 

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr C8:0A:A9:E7:48:E9  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:42 Base address:0x4000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:18 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:18 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:1172 (1.1 Kb)  TX bytes:1172 (1.1 Kb)

lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation N10 Family DMI Bridge
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation N10 Family Integrated Graphics Controller
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation NM10 Family LPC Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH7 Family SATA AHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

Thanks

2

Well based on your ifconfig output, your wireless adapter isn’t turning on.
Try

sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

and see if things change.

3

I tried

sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

and I got

sudo: ifconfig: command not found

so I tired using

su root

and then running it as root and I got

wlan0: unknown interface: No such device
4

Did you read openSUSE:GNOME 3.0 - openSUSE ? I did and installed it anyway… If you add Frédéric Crozat’s home repo and do a zypper dup, it’ll work. ( Index of /repositories/home:/fcrozat:/gnome3/openSUSE_11.4 ) Normally I would not recommended installing software from a home repo, but this is the one used for the openSUSE based live image on the gnome site.

5

On my laptop, with a broadcom wifi card, the wireless interface is “eth1”, not “wlan1”. Presumably, this is because it was not properly recognized during install. And note that eth1 is shown as up, but without an IP address assigned.

6

So you think its an issue with GNOME3 rather than my set up?

Yes but it is not coming up in the network manager properly. So I can’t connect to a network to obtain an IP address from.

7

My earlier reply was mainly to the person commenting on your “ifconfig” output. I thought he was misreading it, because he expected “wlan0” and it wasn’t there.

I’m not sure of the full story with broadcom cards. When I installed 11.4, the interface came up as “eth1” and didn’t work. So I installed the broadcom drivers from the packman repo, and that got it working.

More recently, I installed the gnome 3 demo CD. And my wifi interface worked from the start and is known there as “wlan0”. I have since tried booting the original 11.4 live CD, and the interface now works there to, and is “wlan0”. So I think that somewhere along the line, the needed firmware was installed so that the drivers that come with the kernel now work and those from packman are no longer needed.

8

I enabled the home repo and disabled the official one but I’m getting the following problem when I try and do a zypper dup:

Problem: libsocialweb0-0.25.15-14.1.i586 requires libnm-glib.so.4, but this requirement cannot be provided
  deleted providers: NetworkManager-glib-0.8.998-1.4.i586
uninstallable providers: NetworkManager-glib-0.8.998-125.4.i586[gnome3fcrozat]
 Solution 1: Following actions will be done:
  deinstallation of patterns-openSUSE-gnome_basis-11.4-6.9.1.i586
  deinstallation of patterns-openSUSE-gnome-11.4-6.9.1.i586
  deinstallation of patterns-openSUSE-gnome_imaging-11.4-6.9.1.i586
  deinstallation of patterns-openSUSE-gnome_laptop-11.4-6.9.1.i586
  deinstallation of patterns-openSUSE-gnome_office-11.4-6.9.1.i586
  deinstallation of patterns-openSUSE-gnome_utilities-11.4-6.9.1.i586
  deinstallation of patterns-openSUSE-gnome_xgl-11.4-6.9.1.i586
 Solution 2: Following actions will be done:
  deinstallation of libsocialweb0-0.25.15-1.2.i586
  deinstallation of libsocialweb-0.25.15-1.2.i586
  deinstallation of libsocialweb-lang-0.25.15-1.2.noarch
 Solution 3: keep obsolete gnome-panel-3.0.0.1-4.1.i586
 Solution 4: break libsocialweb0 by ignoring some of its dependencies

Choose from above solutions by number or cancel [1/2/3/4/c] (c):

It says something about NetworkManager-glib not being available. Whenever I tried the live cd it never had the new network manager. Does this repo contain the GNOME 3 network manager applet? If so what solution should I pick?

9

Gnome 3 requires a newer version on network manager, I think the “stable” haven’t. Worked it out yet.

10

On 04/18/2011 10:36 PM, nrickert wrote:
>
> On my laptop, with a broadcom wifi card, the wireless interface is
> “eth1”, not “wlan1”. Presumably, this is because it was not properly
> recognized during install.

This statement is not true. The driver sets the device name. Although most
wireless drivers set the name to start with “wlan”, Broadcom chose “eth” for
some reason. The driver is recognizing the device, otherwise “eth1” woud not exist.

11

I’d go wit solution 1. The patters (as I understand it) are just packages with dependancies on other packages to bring functionality. Your system should be fine without them. But, as it said in the warning, you are on your own to fix system breakage,
. If you can’t handle it you might want to wait until stable is actually stable.

12

Thanks for that information.

13

Thanks for all the help everyone. Reverting back to Frédéric Crozat’s home repo did the trick.

14

Hello Everybody…

I am pretty new to open suse or even you can say to linux… but i really liked the gnome 3… i am facing a similar problem as reported earlier in this thread…

My wireless detects the the wifi signal… but doenst connect to it… please advice

Thanks in advance…