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hard time making wireless to work on Ubuntu

post #1 of 8
10/26/06 at 12:03pm
Thread Starter 
I have a emachines M6811 with Ubuntu 6.06 64 bit version installed. Iwconfig sees the built in adapter. There is generally a light on the keyboard that tells you when the wireless is active but it doesnt seem to work. Used to think that was hardware but now I dont know. I enable the wireless in network manager and disable to lan connection. I tried to connect thru terminal (dont have the info with me know but nothing. What do you guys do to get the wireless work? Can it be done with the built in adapter or do I have to consider a card? Is there a particular network management software I could use?
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post #2 of 8
10/26/06 at 2:11pm
for me, the wifi always just sorta worked out of the box w/o any configuring. the gnome networking applet should be powerful enough to get hyou going....

lspci -v output, among other things would be helpful ya kno
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post #3 of 8
10/26/06 at 3:52pm
Thread Starter 
Quote:
Originally Posted by abf
for me, the wifi always just sorta worked out of the box w/o any configuring. the gnome networking applet should be powerful enough to get hyou going....

lspci -v output, among other things would be helpful ya kno

Which applet do you mean?
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post #4 of 8
10/27/06 at 1:50pm
talltime, From what Google says, that wireless card for that laptop is a broadcom, which means that Kubuntu tried to load the Broadcom drivers by default... only the broadcom drivers don't really work, without some seriously pain in the ass tweaking, and even then they may not. You need to blacklist the broadcom module, and then use ndiswrapper with the windows drivers. In terminal:
Quote:
sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
scroll down to the bottom, and add the following:
Quote:
# Broadcom drivers suck blacklist bcm43xx
Then save the file and quit vim. Install ndiswrapper:
Quote:
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils
Find the Windows drivers online. For my card, they are called bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys. Using ndiswrapper:
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sudo ndiswrapper -i /home/olly/drivers/bcmwl5.inf
obviously using the actual location of the drivers on your machine
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sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
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sudo ndiswrapper -m
Finally, add ndiswrapper as a module to start on boot:
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sudo vim /etc/modules
add the word ndiswrapper at the end of the file, save, quit vim, reboot. This should load up ndiswrapper, and you'll see your wireless card at eth0 or whatever. -olly
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post #5 of 8
10/27/06 at 10:19pm
Thread Starter 
Thanks for the help! I think ndiswrapper is already installed and I was under the assumtion that it already was using the windows drivers somehow (not sure how cause I wiped it and installed Ubuntu). I was under the impression that The broadcom was a windows only device but iwconfig saw it right away.
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post #6 of 8
10/28/06 at 3:27pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by talltim
Thanks for the help! I think ndiswrapper is already installed and I was under the assumtion that it already was using the windows drivers somehow (not sure how cause I wiped it and installed Ubuntu). I was under the impression that The broadcom was a windows only device but iwconfig saw it right away.

As of 6.06, there were open source broadcom drivers included with (K)ubuntu. They were meant to work out of the box, the same way the Atheros driver will... problem is they don't.

Ndiswrapper isn't installed by default, so unless you have installed it, it's not. Type ndiswrapper at a terminal, and you'll know for sure. Regardless of whether it is or not, you'll need to configure it, which means getting the Windows drivers.

-olly
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post #7 of 8
10/28/06 at 9:45pm
The reverse engineered broadcom drivers are still very much alpha software and are not meant to work out of the box to be honest(By the developers, by Caonical is another matter)

Seablade
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post #8 of 8
10/30/06 at 12:58am
Thread Starter 
I'll try ndiswrapper. I already ghosted win2k back on though.
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