HOWTO: Broadcom 4318 Wireless Cards

[mikemn84]

First of all, great howto Compwiz18, I feel like I am really close to getting this to work. I ran the script without any trouble and I now have the bcmwl5 driver and ndiswrapper installed for my BCM4318, but I still cannot connect to a wireless network. The output of iwconfig is:

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Bit Rate:54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:25 dBm   
          RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B   
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

sit0      no wireless extensions.

Also, I can see my home wireless network using

sudo iwlist eth1 scan

However, when I go to configure my wireless connection at System > Administration > Networking there aren't any networks to chose from in the drop down menu. There aren't any choices for wireless networks using the network monitor applet either. So I know my card can detect networks around me, but I have no way of connecting to them. Any ideas?

[compwiz18]

Try the program in my signature.

[mikemn84]

That's weird, apparently the second reboot made everything fall into place... Anywho, Im responding on my wireless connection now so, thanks a million Compwiz. Ill give your connection manager a test spin to see how it goes.

Another happy customer

[compwiz18]

Don't you hate when that happens? My graphics card just did the same thing, lol.

[anachreon_]

THANK YOU!! You made my year with this script. You are a saint.

[Forest Ent]

Thanks a lot for this script. It made everything very simple.

It failed on first attempt. I looked at the log and saw that "ndiswrapper" install had failed. I added the command "apt-cdrom add" to get the pack from the CD, and then it worked.

By the way, this being my first post here, let me introduce myself. I am french and have been using windows for 10 years and got fed up. I got a new computer for xmas 2 days ago and decided that this time it would be linux. I installed kubuntu 6.10 live-CD and it worked perfectly, but for wifi. Now everything is fine and I am so glad I finally changed. I am going to talk all my friends into doing the same.

Thanks a lot for all the people who are making it work. I really am grateful.

[kvorg]

Hmmm, compwiz18, I gave a spin to your kernel at http://linux.punkforjesus.com/kernel/index.htm and was a bit surprised. It does not look like a generic kernel build, it seems to lack some driver modules we came to expect in generic ubuntu kernels, and, above all, it does not, for example, make temperature sensors and fans operate correctly on my laptop (as opposed to stock ubuntu kernels 2.6.17-10-generic 2.6.17-6-amd64-k8 2.6.15-27-amd64-generic and
2.6.15-26-amd64-generic.

So perhaps it would be a good idea to maybe warn laptop users they migh cook their processors silly if they don't know what they are doing.

But thanks for the service, of course!

[compwiz18]

Hmmm, compwiz18, I gave a spin to your kernel at http://linux.punkforjesus.com/kernel/index.htm and was a bit surprised. It does not look like a generic kernel build, it seems to lack some driver modules we came to expect in generic ubuntu kernels, and, above all, it does not, for example, make temperature sensors and fans operate correctly on my laptop (as opposed to stock ubuntu kernels 2.6.17-10-generic 2.6.17-6-amd64-k8 2.6.15-27-amd64-generic and
2.6.15-26-amd64-generic.

So perhaps it would be a good idea to maybe warn laptop users they migh cook their processors silly if they don't know what they are doing.

But thanks for the service, of course!

Really? I copied the standard Ubuntu configuration file, and built my kernel around that, only removing the Digital Video Broadcasting drivers (they cause the compile to fail)...so in theory it should contain all drivers that Ubuntu provides. What processor do you have? It was NOT built for generic 64bit processors, it was built for AMD64 processors - so if you have a 64bit Intel processor this isn't gonna work for you.

[catflea]

I couldn't get this to work using the file from the body of the text. But using BCM4318.tar.gz from the bottom of the post worked a treat! Cheers!

[compwiz18]

Weird. I guess older versions work better sometimes...