NEWBIE BCM 4311 Wireless Not Connecting

[pilot26]

I am new to lynx and I have just gotten Ubuntu 9.06 and I'm having trouble connecting to my wireless, hard line works just fine.

I have tried a number of other suggestions they did not work either due to do user error or not the right fix.

I have tried the download driver but that has not worked

I have a.

*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0
logical name: eth1
version: 01
serial: 00:14:a5:d0:34:88
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl0 driverversion=5.10.91.9 latency=0 module=wl multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11b

[Ayuthia]

I am new to lynx and I have just gotten Ubuntu 9.06 and I'm having trouble connecting to my wireless, hard line works just fine.

I have tried a number of other suggestions they did not work either due to do user error or not the right fix.

I have tried the download driver but that has not worked

I have a.

*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0
logical name: eth1
version: 01
serial: 00:14:a5:d0:34:88
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl0 driverversion=5.10.91.9 latency=0 module=wl multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11b

Can you try the following from the Terminal:

sudo modprobe -r b43 ssb wl
sudo modprobe wl
sudo iwlist scan

If it produces wireless sites, we will need to blacklist the b43 and ssb modules:

echo blacklist b43 | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
echo blacklist ssb | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
echo wl |sudo tee -a /etc/modules

This will prevent the b43 module from interfering with the Broadcom STA wireless module and then load the correct module when you restart your computer. Hope that helps.

[pilot26]

When I run:
sudo modprobe -r b43 ssb wl
sudo modprobe wl
sudo iwlist scan

it produces

lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

vboxnet0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

pan0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth1 Failed to read scan data : Invalid argument


what should I do next.

thank you for all of your help

Matt

[Ayuthia]

Sometimes the Broadcom STA module will not list any sites the manual way because NetworkManager is running. Are you able to see anything through NetworkManager (the GUI version)?

If not, can you once again post the results of:

lshw -C network

The information there should have changed because we loaded a different wireless module.

[pilot26]

lshw -C network
I think that I am using GUI version of network manager but I dont see any thing

*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: 88E8038 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller
vendor: Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
logical name: eth0
version: 14
serial: 00:e0:b8:ba:02:e7
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=sky2 driverversion=1.22 firmware=N/A ip=192.168.1.100 latency=0 module=sky2 multicast=yes
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0
logical name: eth1
version: 01
serial: 00:14:a5:d0:34:88
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl0 driverversion=5.10.91.9 latency=0 module=wl multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
*-network:0 DISABLED
description: Ethernet interface
physical id: 1
logical name: vboxnet0
serial: 0a:00:27:00:00:00
capabilities: ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes multicast=yes
*-network:1 DISABLED
description: Ethernet interface
physical id: 2
logical name: pan0
serial: e6:2e:3a:25:04:88
capabilities: ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=bridge driverversion=2.3 firmware=N/A multicast=yes

Thank You
Matt

[Ayuthia]

It might be NetworkManager. Can you try the following:

sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManager stop
sudo modprobe -r b43 ssb wl
sudo modprobe wl
sudo iwlist scan

If it does not produce any wireless sites, you can turn Network Manager back on by doing the following:

sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManager start

or restart the computer.

This set of commands will stop Network Manager then reload the wireless modules to see if we can get it started again.

[pilot26]

I tried

Re: NEWBIE BCM 4311 Wireless Not Connecting
It might be NetworkManager. Can you try the following:

any more sugestions


thanks much
Matt
Code:
sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManager stop
sudo modprobe -r b43 ssb wl
sudo modprobe wl
sudo iwlist scan




and it produced

sudo iwlist scan
lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth1 Failed to read scan data : Invalid argument

vboxnet0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

pan0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

[pilot26]

bump

[windom]

I have a laptop with the BCM4311 wireless. It is a Compaq Presario 500, precisely a C571NR. I have spent way too many hours (literally full work weeks) chasing this around over the last several weeks. It started because I thought it was time to bite the bullet and get my WEP system switched over to WPA-AES. I *finally* have a reliable wireless connection. I made many, many changes so I will describe where I stand at the moment.

1) I found that the b43 driver was the last piece of my puzzle. When I switched to it there was much joy. This means ndiswrapper (with the few different windows drivers I tried with it) and wl are not on my preferred list. b43 can be used by:

a) add these lines to /etc/modules
ieee80211_crypt_tkip
ieee80211_crypt_ccmp
b43
I am not sure the crypto modules need to be there but they don't hurt.

b) add these lines to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
blacklist ndiswrapper
blacklist wl

I tried many things and had all these modules installed on my system. Again, if you don't have wl and/or ndiswrapper installed this should not hurt.

Load the b43 module with the verbose parameter (modprobe -v b43). It will show the loading of a few other modules. Make sure they are not listed in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf. Check dmesg to make sure the firmware loaded. If you have a problem with it loading, there are a lot of sites that deal with this situation and at least one that serves the firmware directly so it does not need to be extracted with fw-cutter. Use the google on the internet machine.

2) Remove NetworkManager. For whatever reason, it just didn't do the job for me.

3) Install wicd. For what ever reason, it works for me.

4) Grep the etc directory tree for references to the wireless device to make sure all references are in sync. I used 'cd /etc' then 'sudo grep -r wlan *'. I use the device name wlan0. I don't think if eth1 makes a difference but wlan0 is better than wlan1. I can't be very specific because there can be a great variance depending on what is or is not installed on the system. Just check for consistency. One can change this device nickname in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules. I have the lines

# PCI device 0x14e4:0x4311 (b43-pci-bridge)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="00xxxxx", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="eth*", NAME="wlan0"

One can see the MAC address (redacted with x's in this case) embedded in the second line. The second from last parameter denotes the kernel assigned name while the last parameter declares what I want the name to be. You need to research udev if you need more specifics

5) /etc/network/interfaces should not have any references to any interfaces other than the loopback. My file looks like this:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

wicd will take care of both the wired and wireless interfaces

6) wicd has a set of templates used for configuring wpa_supplicant. They are located in /etc/wicd/encryption/templates. As I mentioned, I started this odyssey based on the need for WPA-AES connectivity. The default template used by wicd for this senario is a one size fits all approach that really should work but my situation was so fragile I removed references to TKIP encryption and the RNS (WPA2) protocol. My make it work any harder than it has to? As I mentioned, I considered my situation to be fragile. A reference for doing this can be found at http://wicd.sourceforge.net/templates.php One should also read http://www.y3m.net/docs/gentoo-on-t4...upplicant.conf so one has some idea of what she is changing when working with wpa_supplicant configuration files. The link points to the documented configuration file supplied with the wpa_supplicant package and can be found online in many other places. Please take the time to read these documents (it doesn't take long) if you plan on making any changes. I sincerely doubt this step is necessary but I was desperate

7) Implied in #6 is that wpa_supplicant is installed

At this point, reboot for good measure. Do a lsmod|sort|less to check the loaded modules. The crypt modules, b43, and b43's associated modules should be loaded. ndiswrapper and wl should *not* be loaded. Open the wicd client applet. Select preferences. In general settings select wext for thw wpa_wupplicant driver and add your interface names. Leave the other tab alone. Your AP should be showing in the client. Click on the triangle to the left of the network name and then click on Advanced Settings. I set to use a static IP (again, trying to make it as easy as possible to connect). For the DNS I used 208.67.220.220 and 208.67.222.222 which is OpenDNS (opendns.com (a plug for the service)). Select your form of encryption. I entered my WPA key as an ascii phrase. Click OK. In my case I was connected before I could click the connect button. Probably because the 'automatically connect to this network' was already clicked.

For debugging use 'ps ax | grep wpa' to see if/how wpa_supplicant is running. It will show the config file wicd is using for it. wicd also has a log in /var/log/wicd/wicd.log. Go to wicd client --> Preferences --> General to enable debug mode.

Yeah this is a long post but wireless connectivity seems to be so precarious. And newbies will probably say I left an awful lot out. And others (or even the same people) will say I am not very definite about anything. It's true. I am just trying to document what worked for me. And I hope I did not omit anything of import. I think a big part of getting this working is not just the setup but also undoing others things that were tried and failed. Please note that there may be implied sudo's in some commands. I got tired of typing it and often just started with a sudo -s.

I saw a lot of similar problems while researching my problem. It made me so disappointed in Linux since the other OSs on my multiboot machine made the same connection as fast as I could type.

Good luck to all who find themselves in the same situation.

windom

[pilot26]

Bump