# wireless in laptop [SOLVED]

## jbwillia

OK, maybe this has been asked, maybe not...I've read through about as many wireless, ndis, etc posts as I can stand and cannot seem to find the answer to my problem anywhere. Here's my situation:

```

heimdall ~ # lspci | grep -i network

0000:03:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)

heimdall ~ # ndiswrapper -l

Installed ndis drivers:

bcmwl5  driver present

heimdall ~ # lsmod | grep ndis

ndiswrapper           108948  3787041149

heimdall net # ls /sys/class/net/

eth0  lo

```

As can be seen above, I can't seem to find a device that corresponds to my card. It doesn't appear that udev is mapping anything for it in /dev ... I've tried wlan0, eth1, etc .... eth0 is my standard e1000 ethernet connection. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

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## pilla

What does iwconfig tells you?

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## jbwillia

ahh yes, I forgot that one above...thanks

```

heimdall ~ # iwconfig

eth0      no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

```

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## pilla

according to the Wiki,  you should get the following after a ndiswrapper -l :

```

Installed ndis drivers

 bcmwl5 driver present, hardware present

```

You seem to be missing the "hardware present" thing. Isn't it disabled by the function keys of your computer or something like that?

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## jbwillia

i didn't even notice that....anyways, yes there is a function key above the keyboard that enables/disables the wireless card in wondoze but it doesn't do anything in linux. Is there some other way to activate the card? I hate gateway for building it this way, but oh well, I didn't buy it (it's work provided).

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## jbwillia

I've just discovered the ebuild rfswitch... I'll have to give that some play... thanks for the pointers.

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## pilla

Their laptop matrix is not very encouraging for Gateway laptops. What's your model?

BTW, when it comes up, it'll probably come as wlan0.

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## Alpo Nestori

My references to wlan0 are in /etc/modules.conf as 'alias wlan0 ndiswrapper' .That ndiswrapper should add for you with ndiswrapper -m. Then i made a symbolic link /etc/conf.d/wlan0 which points to /etc/conf.d/net

Then it's just 'dhcpcd wlan0' as root and it's ready. I don't even run ifconfig of iwconfig cause they seem to kill my link for some reason. You shouldn't even need them if everything is setup correctly in /etc/wireless/wireless.opts, ESSID="network" for one.

Have you activated the wireless extensions in the kernel?

->Device drivers -> Networking support:

Wireless LAN

PCMCIA Network device

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## jbwillia

 *pilla wrote:*   

> Their laptop matrix is not very encouraging for Gateway laptops. What's your model?
> 
> 

 

Neither of their two modules worked, and no it doesn't look very encouraging. I have a Gateway M675.

 *Alpo Nestori wrote:*   

> Have you activated the wireless extensions in the kernel?
> 
> ->Device drivers -> Networking support:
> 
> Wireless LAN
> ...

 

Yes I have, but unfortunately the card itself is dead unless I can turn it on. In windoze, the sofware recognizes when I push the wireless function button above my keyboard and then somehow turns the card on. This is what rfswitch is supposed to do for laptops like mine. Unforunately, they haven't done anything for gateway laptops yet.

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## pilla

Have you downloaded the windows driver or got the one that came with the CD? Here they say you should download from a link they give there.

I read in one comment about it that there should be no need of a software agent to turn it on -- after the driver is correctly loaded, it should work.

Would you mind trying to reinstall ndiswrapper?

Cheers,

pilla

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## jbwillia

alright, I'm getting there....this is what I get now after removing the other driver I got out of windoze and adding the one I downloaded:

```
jbwillia@heimdall ~ $ ndiswrapper -l

Installed ndis drivers:

bcmwl5  driver present, hardware present

jbwillia@heimdall ~ $ sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

jbwillia@heimdall ~ $ lsmod

Module                  Size  Used by

ndiswrapper           109354  1

snd_pcm_oss            50080  0

snd_mixer_oss          18944  1 snd_pcm_oss

snd_seq_oss            36096  0

snd_seq_midi_event      7168  1 snd_seq_oss

snd_seq                53648  4 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event

snd_seq_device          8332  2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq

snd_intel8x0           30528  1

snd_ac97_codec         76536  1 snd_intel8x0

snd_pcm                85380  3 snd_pcm_oss,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec

snd_timer              22916  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm

snd                    49380  11 snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_intel8x0,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm,snd_timer

snd_page_alloc          8836  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_pcm

jbwillia@heimdall ~ $ iwconfig

eth0      no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

```

So it seems the new driver actually ses the hardware, but ndiswrapper did not register the new interface. I am going to try rebootiong as soon as openoffice-ximian finishes compiling.............well, nevermind, it's wrapping up now (after about 5 or 6 hours  :Wink:  ) I'll post when I know more. Thanks.

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## jbwillia

SWEET .... thank you pilla!!! ... I am now using wireless via wpa_supplicant and ndiswrapper .... once I got the new driver and rebooted, everything fell into place. The radio button is apparently now controlled by the windoze driver via ndiswrapper because while ndiswrapper is loaded in the kernel, I can turn it on and off just like in windoze. Now I need to find some way of determining which connection to load because if I leave eth0 in the default run level it pauses for a really long time during boot while it waits for dhcp to timeout. That's childs play though  :Smile:  I guess I need to go about switching this thread to solved. Thanks again.

```
jbwillia@heimdall /etc/init.d $ iwconfig

eth0      no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"valhalla"

          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 00:0F:66:77:64:5A

          Bit Rate:54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:15 dBm

          RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B

          Power Management:off

          Link Quality:100/100  Signal level:-45 dBm  Noise level:-256 dBm

          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0

          Tx excessive retries:26  Invalid misc:928   Missed beacon:0

jbwillia@heimdall /etc/init.d $ ifconfig

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback

          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0

          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1

          RX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0

          RX bytes:300 (300.0 b)  TX bytes:300 (300.0 b)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:90:4B:72:F7:6F

          inet addr:192.168.1.100  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0

          UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:725 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:723 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000

          RX bytes:525178 (512.8 Kb)  TX bytes:100390 (98.0 Kb)

          Interrupt:19 Memory:e0304000-e0305fff

```

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## warravenfk2001

ah, my first post :-p

anywho, to lower the time that it takes for eth0 to try to communicate w/ the dhcp server you can add this to your /etc/conf.d/net

```
# For passing custom options to dhcpcd use something like the following.  This

# example reduces the timeout for retrieving an address from 60 seconds (the

# default) to 10 seconds.

#dhcpcd_eth0="-t 10"

```

i got it out of /etc/conf.d/net.example there are a bunch of other options you can use if you're interested. :Smile:  [/code]

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## pilla

I'm glad you sorted it out.

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