what are my chances of getting wireless working on F8T1?

[Robert P. J. Day]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2007, Dino Sangoi wrote:

> Robert P. J. Day <rpjday <at> mindspring.com> writes:
>
> >
> > don't worry -- this has been hashed out thoroughly on the fedora list,
> > and i now have a relatively accurate wiki entry explaining the
> > process:
> >
> > http://www.linux-games.ca/wiki/index.php/Rday%27s_installing_Broadcom_4318_wifi
>
> Nice! I will bookmark this link, so I enlight other poor bcm43xx owners.

sure, my pleasure, but one caveat -- that page will soon be moving to
be under my new (and under construction) web page for my company:

  http://crashcourse.ca

where there's a link called "Goodies" at the top that will take
readers to a wiki where i'm going to be collecting little tutorials
that i write just like that.  in short, the more reliable way to find
little HOWTOs that i write from now on will definitely be thru the
crashcourse site, so you should bookmark that URL instead.

> Just a few comments:
>
> To configure the device using system-config-network, after you have the
> firmware, add something like this to /etc/modprobe.conf
>
> ---- cut here
> alias wlan0 bcm43xx-mac80211
                     ^  (that should be a "_", right? :-)
> ---- cut here
>
> well, starting from kernel 2.6.23-0.105.rc3.fc8, the driver got renamed
> to b43,so the line becomes:
>
> ---- cut here
> alias wlan0 b43
> ---- cut here
>
> then run system-config-network, add a new wireless device, and you should be
> able to choose the 'b43 (wlan0)' as hardware device.

ah, this is useful information and answers some questions i asked at
that page.  i'll test this and add it to the page, thanks.

> Ideally system-config-network should find the device even without firmware
> (and without touching modprobe.conf!), and tell you something like "I'm very
> sorry, but sadly I can't configure your device because <put the hardware
> manufacturer here> doesn't allow us to distribute the firmware needed. This
> is weird, because you can find the firmware in every driver for other
> operating systems, and the only effect is pushing Linux users to a friender
> hardware. Anyway, you can obtain the firmware files following the instructions
> found here: <link to documentation>, copy it to /lib/firmware. and try to
> configure the device again)".
>
> better yet, it should do the work for you, but I'm dreaming...
>
> Talking about NetworkManager: after the device has the correct firmware, a
> simple 'service NetworkManager start' should be enough.

wouldn't you need to also start NetworkManagerDispatcher as well?  (i
admit that i don't really know how those two services work, but if i
can hook all this configuration into the GUI, i'd be happy.)

rday
-- 
========================================================================
Robert P. J. Day
Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry
Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

http://crashcourse.ca
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