New thread, broadcom 802-11 related

[Gene Heskett]

On Tuesday 18 April 2006 16:09, Wolfgang S. Rupprecht wrote:
>Gene Heskett <gene.heskett at verizon.net> writes:
>> Trying to make the broadcom 802-11g BCM4318 chipset in an HP
>> Pavilion dc5320us lappy with an AMD turion cpu in it, running FC5 in
>> the x86 (not x86-64, that wouldn't even start to install).
>
>Inspired by your travails I decided to try to get the BCM4318 in my
>Turion HP/Compaq v5000z running under FC5/x86_64.
>
>(NB: I had previously added livna to the list of repo's.)
>
> yum install ntfs
> mkdir /mnt/ntfs
> mount -r -t ntfs /dev/hda1 /mnt/ntfs
>
> yum install ndiswrapper
> cd /mnt/ntfs/SWSETUP/WLAN
> ndiswrapper -i bcmw15.inf
>
>It turns out this driver only works for 32-bit kernels.  The 64-bit
>kernel needed the 64-bit ms-windows drivers.  (Getting ntfs running
>was useful even if this was a dead end in terms of the wireless.)

This FC5 is a 32 bit version.

>Next was to grab some 64-bit drivers from here:
>
>        ftp
> ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/notebook/aspire_3020_5020/driver/winx
>p64bit/80211g.zip
>
>        unzip 80211g.zip
>        ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
>
>Then the next problem hit.  The drivers expected a certain pci card ID
>("4318") .  My card's ID was "1" greater than it expected ("4319").
>This was discovered via:
>
>        lspci -n -vvv

03:02.0 0280: 14e4:4318 (rev 02)
        Subsystem: 103c:1355
        Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- 
ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
        Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- 
<TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
        Latency: 64
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 10
        Region 0: Memory at c0204000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) 
[size=8K]

>I then added the ID alias with:
>
> ndiswrapper -d 14e4:4319 bcmwl5

What file does this go into?

>At this point the driver was functional and a reboot showed that it
>did show up as "wlan0".
>
>system-configure-network was useless at finding the new interface.  It
>didn't even offer any reasonable choices for wireless chips.  I ended
>up letting it make an "eth1" with some incorrect chip just as a
>placeholder.  I then moved the 3 copies of the files to the name
>"wlan0" as below:

I wound up exiting without saveing, what a disappointment.  For the 
reasons stated. :(

>        /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0
>        /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/ifcfg-wlan0
>        /etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/ifcfg-wlan0
>
>(These files should all be hard links to the same physical file.)

They appear to be.

>Probably it would have been faster to just write the ifcfg-wlan0 file
>directly.  Here is mine, lightly edited to remove IP's and passwords:
>
>$ cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0
>
># broadcom bcm4318 wireless
>#
># Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
># for the documentation of these parameters.
>DEVICE=wlan0
>BOOTPROTO=dhcp
>HWADDR=00:00:00:00:00:00
>ONBOOT=yes
>TYPE=Wireless
>DHCP_HOSTNAME=my_short_name
>USERCTL=no
>IPV6INIT=yes (mine was no)
>IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes (didn't exist, does now)
>PEERDNS=no  (this is what mine says too)
>ESSID=myessid
>CHANNEL=6
>MODE=Managed
>RATE=Auto
>#
I don't have any of this below in mine.
># autonegotiated IPV6 addr is broken on wlan0 - added by hand.
>#
>IPV6ADDR=XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX
>IPV6_DEFAULTDEV=wlan0
>IPV6_DEFAULTGW=XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX
>IPV6ADDR_SECONDARIES=XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX
>#
># end
>
>And the WEP keys go into a mode 400 file with 3 hard links to the
>following paths:

That was 0600.

>        /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/keys-wlan0
>        /etc/sysconfig/networking/devices/keys-wlan0
>        /etc/sysconfig/networking/profiles/default/keys-wlan0
>
I only have one key in there, and its now read-only by root. All 3 
links.

>$ cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/keys-wlan0
>KEY1=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA
>KEY2=BBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBBB
>KEY3=CCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCCC
>KEY4=DDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD
>
>Upon rebooting everything came up.  It is still annoying that ipv6
>auto-configuration doesn't work, but at least one can beat it into
>submission via a configuring by hand.
>
>One last note: I run my own named since I found most public DNS
>servers at ISP's to be quite old and rickety.  One will want to turn
>on peerdns via "USEPEERDNS=1" if the laptop doesn't have a local named
>running.

I use hosts files for that, its only a 7 machine network when all are 
alive.  I point all dns queries to the firewall which fwds them to vz's 
servers if its not in the hosts file there.

>-wolfgang

-- 
Cheers, Gene
People having trouble with vz bouncing email to me should add the word
'online' between the 'verizon', and the dot which bypasses vz's
stupid bounce rules.  I do use spamassassin too. :-)
Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above
message by Gene Heskett are:
Copyright 2006 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved.