John Jason Jordan wrote: > I have a Compaq R3240 with Ubuntu Feisty, amd64 (upgraded from Edgy, > upgraded from Dapper, upgraded from Breezy, upgraded from Hoary. All > amd64, and ever since Hoary I have had my Broadcom 4306 working with > ndiswrapper. System is completely up to date. > > Yesterday I was at the university and discovered that the wireless was > not working. It was as if the university's wireless network was down, > i.e., no signal. But everyone else in the room had no problems > connecting to the university wireless network. I tried various things, > but could not get it to see a signal. The previous time I used it was > two weeks earlier, and it worked fine then. I am at home now where I > use ethernet, but I can always still see signals from the neighbors. > However, something is still wrong because I do not see any signals at > all. > > Here is what I did at the command line: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ uname -a > Linux Devil5 2.6.20-16-generic #2 SMP Thu Jun 7 19:00:28 UTC 2007 > x86_64 GNU/Linux [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ sudo ndiswrapper -l > bcmwl5 : driver installed > device (14E4:4320) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx) > netbc564 : driver installed > device (14E4:4320) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx) > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ sudo ndiswrapper -v > utils version: 1.9 > driver modinfo: could not open ndiswrapper: No such device > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ sudo modprobe ndiswrapper > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ > > I checked to make sure bcm43xx is still blacklisted, and it is. > > I can't figure out why ndiswrapper -l shows everything is fine, but > ndiswrapper -v says there is no such device. I also do not understand > why ndiswrapper -l shows the bcm43xx as an alternate driver, when it is > blacklisted. I also get the following: > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ sudo modprobe bcm43xx > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ sudo rmmod bcm43xx > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ sudo modprobe bcm43xx > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ > > How can I modprobe a module that is blacklisted, and even after > removing it? > > Is it possible that the Broadcom 4306 died? Considering the above, that > doesn't seem likely, but has anyone else ever had their Broadcom 4306 > go to wireless heaven? > > I hope someone has some suggestions, 'cause I'm out of ideas. > --Most stupid question of all: Are you sure the wifi is physically on? There is that button on the right-front corner, which turns the radio on and off, regardless of OS. Did you try toggling that button to see if the wifi sees any signal? Does 'lspci' list the wifi?
Ubuntu Feisty comes with a 2.6.20 kernel by default, which has the bcm43xx drivers built in, which you blacklisted (you need to explicitly enable them if you compile your own kernel). To make the BCM4306 "natively" functional, you need to load the right firmware via 'fwcutter'. I stopped using ndiswrapper about six months ago, when the bcm43xx drivers became reliable. On my R3240, I've found that I need to 'rmmod bcm43xx' and then 'modprobe bcm43xx' a couple of times and then issue a 'ifconfig wlan0 up' command (I do all this by hand; the "native" drivers want to make the wifi show up as 'eth*', but using an appropriate entry in '/etc/udev/rules.d/', I make it show up as wlan0, the way it used to when I was using ndiswrapper, so I don't have to modify my firewall scripts). When I had to use ndiswrapper, again I had to do several rmmod/modprobe cycles before bringing up the wifi with an ifconfig. After I upgraded my hard disk to 100GB 7200 rpm, I had hda1 destined for WinXP, but I chose to install Ubuntu Feisty 64 bit to experiment with it (my main distro is SuSE 10.2 and I have some issues with Feisty, but that's another topic). I observed that after I installed the BCM firmware via fwcutter, Feisty brought up the wifi and obtained an IP address from a nearby network, without me knowing that!!!!! I had to explicitly blacklist bcm43xx to prevent this unpleasant surprise. So, you may try to bring up the wifi manually, toggling the hardware switch. To ask the wifi what networks it sees, you may issue a 'iwlist wlan0 scanning'. You don't need an IP address to scan. If it works and you spot a network you like, you can then obtain an IP address by issuing 'dhcpcd wlan0' or 'dhcpcd3-client wlan0'. That's my five cents worth of wisdom. I have to say I have not been happy with this laptop. I get the impression that the hardware in this laptop is on the "hairy edge," as if it has not been designed right. For example, the built-in ethernet adapter sometimes shows up as eth0, some other times as eth2 (the /etc/udev/rules.d have reserved eth1), sometimes eth3, and I have even seen it come up as eth4!!!! I am looking forward to the Thinkpad T61p, with the Intel Core2 Duo "Santa Rosa" (64-bit dual core) processor. c.f. -- Running 64-bit Linux on AMD64 _______________________________________________ LinuxR3000 mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pcxperience.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/linuxr3000 Wiki at http://prinsig.se/weekee/
