Hi i just recently installed opensuse 11 on a HP 6449us with a broadcom wireless card (4328 model) and just cant make the wireless to work.
i followed all the steps to install the drivers using ndiswrapper and so far i thinked i´ve done it correctly since im able to get a wireless signal and a Essid from my router and for what is worth several others.
Now the problem relies when trying to connect to the internet…it just wont work…i select my router ESSID…on the system tray you can see like a wheel spinnig(meaning that is working) but at the end nothing
happends.
now one thing that is worth mentioning is that during installing ndiswrapper i just couldnt blacklist the alternated driver which it was SSB cuz i just couldnt edit the freaking file…and i dont know if that could be the problem
i would appreciate any help on this since im new with suse
Hi!
As a first troubleshooting step I’d go to YaST>Network Devices>Network Settings and Delete any pre-existing wireless connections. Then I’d disable firewall altogether and reboot. After the reboot, go to YaST again; it should detect your ndiswrapper config – if it’s set up correctly – and ask you whether you wish to modprobe it; answer yes. Then select Add wireless connection. Make it a plain vanilla connection, just put ndiswrapper as driver and fill in your ESSID etc etc. Select no encryption for the time being. Set it to activate at boot via Network Manager. Now reboot. Hopefully everything will work, otherwise post here again. We’ll get it working in the end, don’t worry.
If you have a look at the stickies at the start of the wireless section you would have found this:-
if you have a broadcom chip-set, & a wired connection, this command, in a console, may help
Code:
sudo /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware
To install the BCM43xx firmware if you do not have a connection in Linux, do the following:
Using any method that you have to access the Internet, download this
http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/b...0.10.5.tar.bz2
Then copy it into your home directory. Once you have it there, you should enter the following:
tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
sudo mkdir -p /lib/firmware
sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware \ broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver/wl_apsta_mimo.o
These three commands will skip the download step and extract the firmware in the same way that the /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware does.
Note: If the output of ‘lspci -v’ indicates that you have a BCM4310, BCM4328 or BCM4329, this procedure will not work. For those cases, you will need the Windows driver and ndiswrapper.
For those devices that support 802.11a/b/g, 802.11a operation is not yet supported.
Andy
Hi thanx for the soon reply. i disable the firewall as you said and also deleted of the pre existing wireles connections.
did the reboot and went to yast again, got a pop up message asking if i wanted to modprob it…clicked on yes …at this point everything so far so good.
I added the new wireless connection, filled everything in. reboot again …when the system comes back again you can see that it is trying to connect(cusz you see
wheel spinning again on the system tray and even the light coming from the wireless switch is on meaning that is also active…but again nothing 
do you think that i might have something to do with the blacklist driver thing that was supposed to do previusly or that the ndiswrapper was not properly configured??
because im using the same drivers i use for win x…do you think i might need some other drivers??
According to Andy’s post the BCM4328 that you have requires Ndiswrapper.
regarding blacklisting:
You should blacklist the conflicting driver.
You can open the file “blacklist” for successful editing with this command in a console:
if KDE use command: kdesu kwrite /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
if Gnome use command: gnomesu gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
Since you’ve undone/redone the configuration in Yast – here’s a few pics to check it against and JB will no doubt see you through.
Regarding the “using the same drivers i use for win x…do you think i might need some other drivers”, I recommend the XP drivers.
You don’t have to turn the firewall off AFAIK, but I may easily be missing something. @JosipBroz, can you elaborate please?
Swerdna is absolutely right, there’s no immediate reason why firewall should be turned off, it’s just an old habit of mine, I like to exclude any unneeded variables before troubleshooting a system. Personally, I think all the steps you’ve done so far are OK. At this point, I’m suspecting the router. Specifically, I think you may have MAC filtering enabled in the router, or WPA/WEP encryption, or a conflicting network range. Here’s what you should do:
Leave your connection as it is. Let’s go check the router now. First, enter your router’s configuration page via a wired connection (it’s usually accessed by typing http://192.168.1.0 or something like that in the address bar of your browser). Then you disable all the abovementioned things: MAC filtering (also called Mac Address Control; it means the router only allows connection from known hardware devices, identified by their MAC number) and WPA/WEP encryption. Then you check if you have DHCP enabled (it’s a protocol that dynamically assigns an IP number to your computer) – of course, it has to be enabled in your YaST connection too. Another thing to check is that your router’s and your card’s wireless protocols match (both should be either 802.11b or 802.11g - the latter being better).
Now, if things still don’t work after you try out all these steps, please post here the output of:
iwlist scan
You must issue this command from a root shell (a console, in which you first type su).
Hi again, i like to let you that im writting this message finnaly using my wireless card connection 
i really appreciate all of your advises.
What did the trick was to disable the wep encription on my router.
Now i just have problem which is not a big deal but, cuz i’m using a dual boot on this laptop but …in order to have the wireless connection up ,i had to disable the wep encription…now i wont be able to do this when trying to connect to a diferent network somewhere else :
what can be done in order to fix this problem??
Glad you got it working. Now you may enable WEP again in your router, remembering to enable it in your card too. Just set them both with the identical passphrase and the thing will work. When you get it right, try also reenabling the firewall (if you disabled it). Your best bet is to have the router’s firewall enabled, that’s your first line of defence, even for computers without software firewalls.
As for connecting to other networks: now you know how it’s done, just Add a new wireless connection in YaST (this time it will be called wlan1), filling in all the required data of the new network. And so on, wlan2, wlan3 … for every new network you want to join.
Greetz & good luck!
There are two problems that could affect WEP encryption.
-
If you are using NetworkManager, then wpa_supplicant needs to be installed,
even though one would not think it is needed. -
A more likely problem is that you are trying to input a passphrase rather
than a WEP key. There are at least two different ways of converting a passphrase
into a WEP key. Unless your AP and Linux just happen to use the same one, then
failure will occur. When setting up a WEP link, I use a passphrase on the AP,
but I write down the key and use that for ALL further connections.
As long as you can connect to an unencrypted AP, then you should be able to use WEP.
Larry