problems with wlan and bcm43xx

[killingstar]

i tried several howtos and read many threads not only in this forum, but i can get this thing working. :confused:

i hope someone can give me some hints.

iwconfig says "Access Point: Invalid"

eth1 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:off/any Nickname:"acer"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.437 GHz Access Point: Invalid
Bit Rate=11 Mb/s
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0


dmesg gives this output

bcm43xx: set security called
bcm43xx: .level = 0
bcm43xx: .enabled = 0
bcm43xx: .encrypt = 0
SoftMAC: Associate: Scanning for networks first.
SoftMAC: Associate: failed to initiate scan. Is device up?
bcm43xx: PHY connected
firmware_loading_store: unexpected value (0)
bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed.
eth0: no IPv6 routers present
SELinux: initialized (dev rpc_pipefs, type rpc_pipefs), uses genfs_contexts
SELinux: initialized (dev autofs, type autofs), uses genfs_contexts
ppdev: user-space parallel port driver
ppdev0: claim the port first
ppdev1: claim the port first
ppdev2: claim the port first
ppdev3: claim the port first
[drm] Initialized drm 1.0.1 20051102



Kernel: 2.6.17-rc3

[brunson]

Have you extracted the microcode/firmware from the windows drivers and installed it correctly?

[killingstar]

what means "correctly" ?!
i used the fwcutter and some diffrent driver files, but nothing seem to work. i used the driver from the acer-cd (its a acer laptop) the driver from the acer website, ftp server and the 64-bit driver. its a 64bit processor. i copied the *.fw files into /lib/firmware as the readme told me.

i can scan the networks but i dont get an ip or reply from the aps. dont know what to do, i tried many possibilities.

[brunson]

Troubleshooting 101, You can't ignore error messages: bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed.

I had to play around with it, but I eventually got fwcutter to work. What are the md5 or sha1 checksums of your firmware files and I'll compare them with mine.

[hernol]

HI men, need a litle hand.
Just move from Ubuntu to fedora, and I have a wireless device BCM4318 802.11g blaiblabla
The thing is the low connectivity and rate of it...
this is what I got when I do dmesg
SoftMAC: sent association request!
SoftMAC: associated!
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth1: link becomes ready
eth1: no IPv6 routers present
SoftMAC: Scanning finished: scanned 14 channels starting with channel 1
SoftMAC: Scanning finished: scanned 14 channels starting with channel 1
SoftMAC: Scanning finished: scanned 14 channels starting with channel 1
SoftMAC: Scanning finished: scanned 14 channels starting with channel 1
SoftMAC: Scanning finished: scanned 14 channels starting with channel 1


So, I'm connected, it's working, but whenever I move away more than 10 mtrs from the my router the signal start is lower and lower... I don't really know if that wrong message is causing it, but if you can give me a clue I'll apreciatte it very much.

I guess I should try ndiswrapper, right? Mmm, I'm not so convinced, so I'll keep trying

cheers

[ramasees]

hi here how to get native broadcom drivers working with wep wpa

su yum -y install bcm43xx-fwcutter

get the file bcmwl5.sys this will be on the driver disc that came with the card if not download the driver
cd into the directory where ever you put it (doesnt matter where could be cd ) and simlpy enter the below

/usr/bin/bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware bcmwl5.sys

restart

this should work on any kernel ver in fc6
hope this is some help
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[hernol]

Hi,

Yes, this is how I made it work, but I'm getting the message. And connectivity rate is below 30% when I'm at 10 mtrs of the wifi router.

I know there's an option of something like 'enable IPv6 configuration for this inte rface', I have it off, should I turn it on ? I'M afraid I'll be disconnected.... :(

[shess01]

Last fall when FC6 was released I tried using the bcm43xx drivers. I could connect and get an IP but I was dropping packets like crazy. I posted here and did not get a solution at the time. I finally went back to using ndiswrapper and my windows driver which worked fine. I did find the mailing berlios mailing list, though. I read through some of the posts and decided the bcm43xx driver was much a work in progress. Here is the link, https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/bcm43xx-dev/

[alfiejs]

Following the instructions above, it works until here. I've also had a go with ndiswrapper, but no luck.

/usr/bin/bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware BCMWL5.SYS
Sorry, the input file is either wrong or not supported by bcm43xx-fwcutter.
This file has an unknown MD5sum b89bcf0a25aeb3b47030ac83287f894a.

Where to know?

[jdeslip]

for my bc4318 card I use ndiswrapper and it works well - I used this site to set it up: http://fedoramobile.org/fc-wireless/bcm4318-ndiswrapper/

You may want to compare.