# Integrated wireless network card setup -- help!

## jacobm

I just installed Gentoo on my HP Pavilion ZE 4430 US notebook, and I'm having trouble getting its integrated wireless networking card working. 

Briefly: I installed the orinoco driver and it appears to be working, but "iwconfig eth1" says "no such device" and I can't get any kind of network access. (I've got an eth0 device, my wired networking card, working fine.)

Long version: I read that the orinoco driver ought to work for my hardware, so I compiled my kernel with the orinoco driver as a module (specifically, I selected "Network Device Support" --> "Wireless LAN (non-hamradio)" --> "Hermes chipset 802.11b support  (Orinoco/Prism2/Symbol)") and rebooted. I ran "modprobe orinoco" and it didn't complain or say anything, and there's a /proc/net/wireless entry that doesn't crash or anything when I cat it (it gives table headers -- interface, status, etc -- for an empty table). But every tutorial I've read now seems to imply that I ought to have an eth1 device that I can start messing with via iwconfig,  ifconfig, and so on. Those tools complain that I don't have an eth1 device when I run them, and I can't get any network activity to happen. 

So, what's the deal? I'm sure I just don't know to do something obvious, but this is really driving me crazy. What should I do?

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## ctford0

Do you have a wlan0 device?  What output do you get when you just execute " iwconfig "?  Is your card a prisim 2 card or higher, if so then you might be better off trying the linux-wlan-ng drivers which were made for prisim 2 cards.  orinoco is prisim 1 i think.  

BTW, when using orinoco i think you need to modprobe hermes also...

just my 2 cents

chris

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## y0n

if your wireless card is integrated wouldnt you want to modprobe orinoco_pci?

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## ctford0

 *y0n wrote:*   

> if your wireless card is integrated wouldnt you want to modprobe orinoco_pci?

 

Well, wouldn't that depend on how its integrated?  It could possibly be integrated on the pci bus couldn't it?

chris

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## y0n

when he said integrated i was just assuming it was mini-pci

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## jacobm

 *ctford0 wrote:*   

> Do you have a wlan0 device?  What output do you get when you just execute " iwconfig "?  Is your card a prisim 2 card or higher, if so then you might be better off trying the linux-wlan-ng drivers which were made for prisim 2 cards.  orinoco is prisim 1 i think.
> 
> BTW, when using orinoco i think you need to modprobe hermes also...

 

Hi -- thanks for your response. After "modprobe orinoco" and "modprobe hermes", I don't have a wlan0 device or an eth1 device. iwconfig run without arguments says

 *Quote:*   

> lo: no wireless extensions.
> 
> eth0: no wireless extensions.

 

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## jacobm

 *y0n wrote:*   

> if your wireless card is integrated wouldnt you want to modprobe orinoco_pci?

 

Thanks for your response. Maybe I should use orinoco_pci, but I don't appear to have that module anywhere. I recompiled my kernel with "Hermes in PLX9052 based PCI adaptor support" as a module hoping that would provide it, but it didn't (and didn't fix the problem either).

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## y0n

what is your output from lspci (need sys-apps/pciutils) or cat /proc/pci

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## jacobm

 *y0n wrote:*   

> what is your output from lspci (need sys-apps/pciutils) or cat /proc/pci

 

```
bash-2.05b# lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device cab0 (rev 13)

00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc PCI Bridge [IGP 320M] (rev 01)

00:02.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)

00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 02)

00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV]

00:08.0 Modem: ALi Corporation Intel 537 [M5457 AC-Link Modem]

00:09.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM94306 802.11g (rev 02)

00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6912 Cardbus Controller

00:0c.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB21 IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)

00:10.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c4)

00:11.0 Bridge: ALi Corporation M7101 PMU

00:12.0 Ethernet controller: National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 (MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller

01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility U1
```

I think "00:09.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM94306 802.11g (rev 02) " is the relevant line here.

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## y0n

Linux 802.11g  support is very limited right now so you may be out of luck  :Crying or Very sad:  ...there is some support for the atheros chipset but that isnt what you have

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## jacobm

 *y0n wrote:*   

> Linux 802.11g  support is very limited right now so you may be out of luck  ...there is some support for the atheros chipset but that isnt what you have

 

Hmm, you might be right. That'd be too bad. Still, I've heard reports from other people with HP Pavilion ZE's of various flavors that they've gotten their wireless cards working using the orinoco driver; that's why I tried it in the first place. Maybe those reports are wrong ...

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## y0n

A quote from Jean Tourrilhes' page:   *Quote:*   

> Cards based on the Broadcom chipset (802.11b or 802.11g) are not supported, and Broadcom seems to not respond to inquiries about Linux, despite listing Linux in their product documentation.

 

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## jacobm

 *y0n wrote:*   

> A quote from Jean Tourrilhes' page:   *Quote:*   Cards based on the Broadcom chipset (802.11b or 802.11g) are not supported, and Broadcom seems to not respond to inquiries about Linux, despite listing Linux in their product documentation. 

 

Well, darn.  :Sad:  Thanks for your help. (It's funny that this is the integrated wireless card HP chooses to put in their laptop, seeing as they're currently trying to hype up their linux-ability ...)

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## dma

The drivers DO exist.  We just can't have them.  (Gotta love the lawyers...) They are used in the embedded linux installation on Linksys routers:

Here's the MIPS architecture driver binary on my Linksys WAP54G Router Firmware: (feel free to browse the rest of it as it is GPLed)

http://www.dmatech.org/~dma/linksys/wap54g-firmware-root/lib/modules/2.4.5/kernel/drivers/net/wl/wl.o

Perhaps someone could reverse-engineer the file and port it to x86.

Or perhaps Broadcom will wake up and release the code like they did for the 440x chip.  I've had some contact with some of their driver writers and they are receptive to requests.

Actually, one of the issues is that releasing source code will enable users to do potentially "illegal" stuff with the transmitters.  The FCC is very weird about this stuff (they are the ones behind the non-standard antenna connectors too!).

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