Cant get wireless to work on Fedora 8...

[Rival904]

Model is an HP Pavailion ZX5000. I have not used Fedora before and am trying it now, I tried to use

lspci, which gives me, no command found. I also did "sudo yum install lspci". Can anyone walk me through this, I would really enjoy having my onboard wireless working.

AIM - imguessingurgay1
Email - mattm@honestautoestimates.com

[bbfuller]

Hello Rival904

Welcome to the forum.

To use the command lspci as an ordinary user you need to specify the full path to it. Try:

/sbin/lspci

and post back the part of that which relates to your wireless card.

[Rival904]

02:02.0 Network Controller: Broadcom Corp BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN C+ (rev10)

[bbfuller]

Hello Rival904

That's halfway to good news because I have one of those cards myself and have got it running without too much trouble.

The half problem is that I couldn't get mine to work with the Fedora 8 I installed from the CD.

In case you hadn't realised, Fedora makes a habit of running all of the latest software and updating it regularly. It was only after I installed the updates that appeared sometime in January/February that I managed to get mine to work.

Is there any chance you could get your machine connected to a wired connection and use yum to update it before we go any further?

[Rival904]

I hooked it up directly to my router and downloaded and installed all ~225 updates.

[bbfuller]

Hello Rival904

Yes, there is always a lot of updating to do after Fedora has been released for a few months. It's part of the Fedora philosophy of keeping things as cutting edge as possible. If you're not aware of that philosophy though, be warned, because it sometimes means that updates will not work correctly on certain installations.

However though, onto the wireless. In brief, there is a driver called b43 included in the Fedora kernel for this and several other broadcom cards. You need to obtain the firmware for your card, cut the firmware and then configure your card.

Download this package:

http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/...50.10.5.tar.bz2

extract it with:

Code:

tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2


there will be a new broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5 directory where you extracted the file.

Navigate into that, cd into the 'driver' directory.

Issue the command:

Code:

su -


to obtain root rights. Note that the space and the minus sign after the su are vital.

Then use the command:

Code:

b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta_mimo.o

to cut what you need from the package you downloaded and install it in the right place.

Probably easiest then to restart the machine to let the system load the firmware into your card. NetworkManager, on the top Gnome panel in the notification area to the right, should have a list of wireless access points to connect to.

If NM doesn't show it may need to be started, you can do that from:

system-config-services

tick NM, start it from the toolbar and save the changes.

There is one other step you may have to undertake, though it is not guaranteed. Look in:

system-config-network

If your wireless card is listed there, highlight it and select "Edit" and make sure it is NOT set to "Activate device when computer starts", but that it is ticked to be "Controlled by NetworkManager".

If you've had to do either of the above then best to restart the machine again.

Now when you click on the NM icon and select an available access point it will ask you for your passphrase.

Keyring will then offer to store that passphrase and keep it secure with a password. What password you specify is up to you, but you will be asked for it each time you connect rather than the actual key.

Post back with any questions.

[Rival904]

I downloaded the file, and extracted it to the desktop. After that I couldnt get it to cd into the correct directory, kept saying no such file or directory.

[bbfuller]

Hello Rival904

Wherever you have saved that file, remember that directory and file names in Linux are case sensitive.

In Fedora the "desktop" is spelled "Desktop" and one is not a substitute for the other.

If you are in a terminal window at the usual opening location then the command:

cd Desktop

should get you there.

If you are operating in a root terminal though you will have to specify the whole path to whoevers desktop it is. On my machine with me as a user for instance:

cd /home/bbfuller/Desktop

Of course add any other part of the path remembering to get the case right.

[Rival904]

I got to "b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta_mimo.o" and it said "Cannot open input file wl_apsta_mimo.o"

[bbfuller]

Hello Rival904

I know we talked about you downloading the file to your Desktop, and we also talked about cd'ing onto your Desktop, but did you read that in conjunction with post #6 where I said:

there will be a new broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5 directory where you extracted the file.

Navigate into that, cd into the 'driver' directory.

before you used the b43-fwcutter?

[zx5000]

Have you tried ndiswrapper? You use the Windoze driver from the HP Drivers CD. It works well on the zx5000.