Question regarding bcm43xx driver in FC5 kernels...

[Stanton Finley]

On Tue, 2006-02-07 at 15:02 -0500, Mike Leahy wrote:
> Hello List,
> 
> I've been discussing some problems I have with the bcm43xx drivers (for
> wireless cards based on the Broadcom 43xx chipsets) on their users list
> (bcm43xx-dev at lists.berlios.de).  As you can see from the response to my
> latest message below, it appears that the bcm43xx driver being released
> with the kernels is not up-to-date.  I have only been able to get my
> wireless card working in FC5 by manually deleting the bcm43xx module
> from the kernel, then (re)installing ndiswrapper.  As the bcm43xx is
> included with every FC5 kernel update, I have to do this procedure
> pretty frequently, since I'm generally keeping up with the development
> updates.
> 
> Larry Finger's reply below suggests that maybe if the latest bcm43xx
> source were used, this wouldn't be an issue.  Is this something that
> will likely be taken care of in the near future? I think it wouldn't be
> a bad thing if this was updated, as there are plenty of people out there
> with bcm43xx wireless cards on laptops. If it works out of the box, then
> I imagine it will be much easier for laptop users that are dependant on
> wireless capability (e.g., myself) to start using FC5 when it is finally
> released. I did try to compile the driver myself from the latest source,
> but the combination of my lack of experience with the need to reboot
> into Windows in order to search/discuss issues lead me to give up on it
> after a couple days.
> 
> Mike
> 
> Larry Finger wrote:
> > Mike,
> > 
> > Mike Leahy wrote:
> >>
> >> Michael: WRT what was going wrong, all I can say is that the driver
> >> appeared to load (e.g., I could get wireless info from the card using
> >> iwconfig when the bcm43xx driver was loaded), but any time I tried to
> >> modify the wireless card's configuration with iwconfig or scan with
> >> iwlist, I would get a message saying the functionality wasn't supported
> >> for that card.  Maybe somebody can suggest what I should look for, so
> >> that when I get the next kernel update I can try again and give more
> >> in-depth info.
> >>
> >> Thanks again,
> >> Mike
> > 
> > I wonder where Fedora is getting their source. The iwconfig errors you
> > report were fixed about a month ago. On my system, WPA started working
> > on Jan. 12 and that didn't work until most of the IOCTL links used by
> > iwconfig were working.
> > 
> > As you are obviously in the FC test program, could you inquire where
> > they are downloading softmac and bcm43xx code?
> > 
> > Larry
> > 
> 
Here is a thread that is related to this issue and may or may not help
you to manually enable your bcm43xx driver:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2006-February/msg00019.html

Works for me.

Also a related bug filing:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=179538

I too hope to see the latest bcm43xx driver source incorporated as soon
as possible.

Stanton Finley
http://stanton-finley.net/