No DHCPOFFERS with Broadcom 4311

[cberube]

Hi,

I've recently aquired a Compaq Presario C500 laptop on which I have replaced Vista with Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty). It has the dreaded Broadcom 4311 wireless chipset.

I have followed all kinds of tutorials around the web, spending many many hours trying to get this wireless card to work.

I have used ndiswrapper, the Broadcom STA (wl) driver, and the b43 fwcutter.

It is not getting the card to be recognized that is the problem. With any of the methods I can get the driver to take control of the card so that the wireless status light comes on.

Network manager can see my network with a full signal. The problem is, it can't connect. It just attempts for about a minute and a half and fails.

When I run dhclient for the wireless card or look in the log it says that no DCHPOFFERS have been received.

I have also tried static DNS with fully manual settings and it still will not connect. Wired connection works without a hitch.

Any ideas? I would greatly appreciate it!

--A frustrated Ubuntu user

[superprash2003]

post output of ifconfig and iwconfig from your terminal

[cberube]

Hmm network manager is now reporting that the wireless device is not managed, even though the driver and module is loaded..

Anyways, output of ifconfig is:
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:d4:c1:af:04
inet addr:192.168.1.47 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::216:d4ff:fec1:af04/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:291 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:246 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:252293 (252.2 KB) TX bytes:34307 (34.3 KB)
Interrupt:16 Base address:0x2000

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1a:73:28:7c:6a
inet6 addr: fe80::21a:73ff:fe28:7c6a/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:18

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:240 (240.0 B) TX bytes:240 (240.0 B)
(eth1 is the wireless connection)

And output of iwconfig is:
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 IEEE 802.11 Nickname:""
Access Point: Not-Associated
Link Quality:5 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 invalid crypt:0 invalid misc:0

pan0 no wireless extensions.Also, as you can see from the output of lshw -C network, the wireless card has the driver and module loaded
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:06:00.0
logical name: eth1
version: 01
serial: 00:1a:73:28:7c:6a
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl0 driverversion=5.10.79.10 latency=0 module=wl multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
Thanks for your help!

[Ayuthia]

Can you try the following:

sudo modprobe -r b43 ssb wl ndiswrapper
sudo modprobe wl
sudo ifconfig eth1 up
sudo iwlist scan
Please let us know if any wireless sites appear. If not, please post the results of:

dmesg|grep wl
lspci -nn

[cberube]

Network manager still has the wireless as "device not managed", but following the commands you have posted successfully detected both wireless networks that are in my area.

The output is:
eth1 Scan completed :
Cell 01 - Address: 00:12:0E:5B:F7:2C
ESSID:"CAREN"
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
Quality:4/5 Signal level:-64 dBm Noise level:-92 dBm
Encryption key:on
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s
9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
Cell 02 - Address: 00:E0:98:D6:2A:20
ESSID:"Berube House"
Mode:Managed
Frequency:2.462 GHz (Channel 11)
Quality:5/5 Signal level:-30 dBm Noise level:-92 dBm
Encryption key:off
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 22 Mb/s
6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s
36 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s


Cell 02 is the network I want to connect to. It is unsecured currently with no MAC address filtering, so I am at a loss why I can't connect to it (other devices, including this computer with Vista on it, can connect fine, even with DHCP)

Thanks!

[Iowan]

Was the wireless interface configured through Network Manager, or via /etc/network/interfaces? (NM usually complains about the latter.)

[Ayuthia]

You might try blacklisting b43 and ssb:

echo blacklist b43 | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
echo blacklist ssb | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
As Iowan was asking, we brought up the wl module manually so that is most likely why NetworkManager is not happy. You can try blacklisting the b43 and ssb modules as I described above and reboot. Hopefully NetworkManager will kick in just fine. I don't use NetworkManager so I am not too sure about how to make that portion work.

[cberube]

I have previously edited the /etc/network/interfaces file but after setting it back to default, Network Manager is still giving problems.

I have had b43 and ssb blacklisted for a while and unfortunately that didn't solve the problem.

While Network Manager would be nice, I'd really just like to get the wireless working. It is strange that it detects the networks but cannot connect..

The output of dhclient eth1 is as follows
Listening on LPF/eth1/00:1a:73:28:7c:6a
Sending on LPF/eth1/00:1a:73:28:7c:6a
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5
DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 15
DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 16
DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.

DHCP or static configuration, nothing works.

[Ayuthia]

You can try killing the NetworkManager processes:

ps -ef|grep Network
sudo kill <pid>
Replace <pid> with the process id number for the NetworkManager processes. Then you can try:
sudo iwconfig eth1 essid "Berube House"
sudo dhclient eth1

[cberube]

I changed managed=false in /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf to managed=true and killed the process like you said and now Network Manager works again.


After changing the network settings, I finally got the wireless to work! I'm not even sure what fixed it but I think it was just a series of bringing the network down and then back up again and re-setting all of the settings in the terminal. After reboot, it still works.


Thanks for everyone's help!!