Wireless will not connect Dell Inspiron 1440

English Network/Internet
1

I have loaded the latest version of opensuse and I have everything working but I cannot connect to my wireless WPA2 network.

I have downloaded the bcm43xx firmware using the method /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware

I then restarted the network. The computer will now read the network card and will find networks but I cannot get it to connect at all. At first it would connect using ifup in yast but would disconnect after a few seconds. It would never connect through NM.

I have a usb network card that works just fine. I am lost as to how to fix this problem.

2

My two cents:

sudo zypper in plasmoid-networkmanagement

And a compat-wireless driver install.
I would install the plasmoid and see how things go, then delve into compat.

3

Have a look at the wireless help here
Getting Your Wireless to Work

Wait an see if Larry picks up on it

In the mean time post the result of

/sbin/lspci -nnk
4

My usb wireless card also has a very short range but for now the internal network card is my concern.

00:00.0 Host bridge [0600]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Memory Controller Hub [8086:2a40] (rev 07)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
        Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a42] (rev 07)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
        Kernel driver in use: i915
00:02.1 Display controller [0380]: Intel Corporation Mobile 4 Series Chipset Integrated Graphics Controller [8086:2a43] (rev 07)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
00:1a.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 [8086:2937] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
        Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1a.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 [8086:2938] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
        Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1a.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 [8086:2939] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
        Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1a.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 [8086:293c] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
        Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
00:1b.0 Audio device [0403]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller [8086:293e] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
        Kernel driver in use: HDA Intel
00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 [8086:2940] (rev 03)
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 2 [8086:2942] (rev 03)
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1c.2 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 3 [8086:2944] (rev 03)
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1c.4 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 [8086:2948] (rev 03)
        Kernel driver in use: pcieport
00:1d.0 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 [8086:2934] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
        Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1d.1 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 [8086:2935] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
        Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1d.2 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 [8086:2936] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
        Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd
00:1d.7 USB Controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 [8086:293a] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
        Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd
00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge [8086:2448] (rev 93)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation ICH9M LPC Interface Controller [8086:2919] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
00:1f.2 SATA controller [0106]: Intel Corporation ICH9M/M-E SATA AHCI Controller [8086:2929] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
        Kernel driver in use: ahci
00:1f.3 SMBus [0c05]: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller [8086:2930] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
        Kernel driver in use: i801_smbus
09:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [10ec:8136] (rev 02)
        Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
        Kernel driver in use: r8169
0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1397 WLAN Mini-Card [1028:000c]
        Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
5

I suggest trying the wl driver

Do this:

sudo /sbin/modprobe -rv b43

Now follow this:
Install Broadcom Drivers from Packman

6

After about 24 hours of searching forums trying different things I eventually found a solution that worked so I thought I would share and point at the solution for those searching with terms like ‘Dell 1440’ with or ‘Broadcom 4315’.

I installed 11.3 a couple of days ago and had exactly the same problem with a Dell 1440 (wireless card can find networks but not connect to any of them - in the network log it says it takes too long associating to an AP). :

Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1397 WLAN Mini-Card [1028:000c]
        Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge

I found the wl drivers just made it impossible to enable the wireless card at all, so eventually I went back to the b43 drivers.

As I had the following lines in one of my logs, from right around the time I installed, or just after,

   64.084614] b43-phy0 ERROR: Fatal DMA error: 0x00000400, 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000, 0x00000000
   64.084624] b43-phy0 ERROR: This device does not support DMA on your system. Please use PIO instead.

I eventually found the solution in this thread Problem getting BCM4312 to work on openSUSE 11.3 worked for me. In particular this by lwfinger:

cannot help you with wl, but I can make it work with b43.

The DMA ERROR you are getting usually occurs with Netbooks, not with Notebooks,
but you are just “lucky”. The b43 developers know about the problem, but none of
us have such a device, and we have not found a fix. We do have a workaround. You
should create a file (as root) named /etc/modprobe.d/50-b43.conf and include the
line

options b43 pio=1 qos=0 nohwcrypt=1

As you noted, the driver switched to PIO after the DMA error; however, that is
an ugly hack that does not work on all devices. The fix above will work. The
downside is that PIO is slower than DMA and more CPU intensive.

I am not sure it is the optimal solution, but the wireless is now working reliably.

7

Thanks Brouwer2, I went through the steps listed and so far it seems to be working. As far as I can tell this is the only working solution if you have the same issue I had. Most of the others appear to be a solution only if the driver is not working at all.