Dell 1350 WLAN wireless installer for Linux

Great! Thanks! I'm a linux n00b and I was thinking about installing Fedora on my new i700m that has the 1350. I think I'm going to give it a shot!

damn... now I'm wishing that I got the 1350 adapter instead of the intel 2200bg... I can't connect properly to my school wireless network with ndiswrapper or the ipw2200. I can connect to my own router in my dorm perfectly fine with either driver, but the dumb school network doesn't let me connect... I dunno why

Yeah, I do quite a bit of iwconfig to get the wep, ssid, modes and all correct... it just refuses to associate. I can iwlist wlan0 scanning, and the network will show up on the list, but I can't connect to it

Might I respectfuly recommend you check the firmware versions of the card. I had that bit me om my old Netgear card. Under windows it was fine but not Gentoo. Come to find out the windows driver was soft flashing the firmware where I had to truely flash the firmware to get the netgear to associate under Gentoo.

Well, I've actually managed some success on my school network with the ipw2200 driver using the newer firmware. I'm at Johns Hopkins University, and their wireless configurations sucks; too many access points using the same channels- even in windows, connectivity is poor as the computer constantly switches from one access point to another.

Yesterday, I went to the library (where there were over 5 access points accessible from where I was sitting); I rebooted linux, and upon reboot, it finally managed to connect to the the "standard" network, the ssid of the Hopkins wireless! After setting the encryption key, turning ap hopping off, and setting it at a single channel, I was able to maintain a steady connection for the duration of my stay (4 hours).

However, today, I bring my laptop around my classes. In two of these classes, I know that wireless is accessible. Again using the ipw2200 driver, I could associate with the standard network. However, iwconfig refused to set the key- I could set the key with iwconfig eth1 key xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx, but checking iwconfig, the key never sets. I am unable to set a wep encryption key... why is that?

So I switch to the ndiswrapper driver, gave that a try. Connecting to standard and setting the wep key was not an issue- however, the server never responded. Dhcpcd was unable to fetch an IP, and under ifconfig eth1, I could see that my computer has sent almost 4 mb of dhcp requests to the server, but it didn't respond with a single bit. What's with that?

Keep in mind, that I can connect to my own router in my dorm easily with either the IPW2200 driver or the ndiswrapper driver. Why is the Hopkins wireless so damned fickle and hard to connect to?

Have you solved this problem?

I have a similar issue with a M60 (big Lattitude) laptop using the ipw2200 driver. After much ado it is installed and I have copied my XP settings to Linux (Fedora 2).

I get the following error on my home DSL network:

10.168.55.250 ping 3 packs transmitted, 0 received 100% loss time 1999ms, pipe 4, failed.

The IP address is the network gateway at work. Seems somehow it is looking for the gateway from work, not the one for the DSL at home. A mystery but I think solvable. At least hardware seems to be working. Any suggestions?

If anyone reads this, here is some debugging on the wireless for ideas?

I changed the address to mirror the access point

One thing that bothers me is that the Mode on the scan shows “Master” and on the settings shows “Managed”. I did not see comparable options. :

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
[root@localhost root]# /sbin/ifup eth1 up

interface 'eth1' not found

Error for wireless request "Set Bit Rate" (8B20) :

SET failed on device eth1 ; Operation not supported.



Determining IP information for eth1...

[root@localhost root]# iwconfig

lo no wireless extensions.



eth0 no wireless extensions.



sit0 no wireless extensions.



eth1 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"2WIRE035" Nickname:"localhost.localdomain"

Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:0D:72:63:69:C9

Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm

RTS thrff Fragment thrff

Encryption key:3930-3139-3339-3832-3436-0000-00 Security modepen

Power Managementff

Link Quality=40/100 Signal level=-60 dBm

Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0

Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:2



[root@localhost root]# iwlist eth1 scanning

eth1 Scan completed :

Cell 01 - Address: 00:0D:72:63:69:C9

ESSID:"2WIRE035"

Protocol:IEEE 802.11b

Mode:Master

Channel:6

Encryption keyn

Bit Rate:22 Mb/s

Extra: Rates (Mb/s): 1 2 5.5 11 22

Extra: RSSI: -58 dBm

Extra: Last beacon: 9ms ago



[root@localhost root]# service network restart

Shutting down interface eth1: Device eth1 has different MAC address than expected, ig noring.

[FAILED]

Shutting down loopback interface: [ OK ]

Setting network parameters: [ OK ]

Bringing up loopback interface: [ OK ]

Bringing up interface eth0:

Determining IP information for eth0... failed; no link present. Check cable?

[FAILED]

[root@localhost root]# iwconfig

lo no wireless extensions.



eth0 no wireless extensions.



sit0 no wireless extensions.



eth1 unassociated ESSID:"2WIRE035" Nickname:"localhost.localdomain"

Mode:Managed Frequency=2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:00:00:00:00:00

Bit Rate=0 kb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm

RTS thrff Fragment thrff

Encryption key:3930-3139-3339-3832-3436-0000-00 Security modepen

Power Managementff



[root@localhost root]#

Just came back to linux after a several year break (man have things changed) and naturally I ran into the wireless issue with core 3. Just wanted to say thanks for this script, it made things a lot easier to get up and running. Now I just have to learn all the rest of the crap I forgot.

Is the Dell 1350 WLAN based on the Broadcom BCM4306 chipset? I think I may have used Dell wireless drivers successfully in Windows with my Emachines M6811, and I'm wondering if this ndiswrapper package might also work.

Further, my wireless LAN is secured with WPA-PSK and MAC address filtering - can this be enabled with ndiswrapper?

WPA-PSK is not supported by ndiswrapper

i did some googlin and i found out that yes ndiswrapper supports wpa - psk.

YOu need to also have wpa-sup..

Created the following file as /etc/network/wpa_supplicant.conf:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant # for wpa_cli support
network={
ssid="MY-SSID"
psk="MY-PASSPHRASE"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
proto=WPA
}

Added the following to /etc/network/interfaces :

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid MY-SSID
pre-up modprobe ndiswrapper
pre-up wpa_supplicant -wB -i wlan0 -c /etc/network/wpa_supplicant.conf -D ndiswrapper
pre-up sleep 3
down killall wpa_supplicant

Nicely done. I for one appreciate all your help fielding the support issues around here.
Bill

Well, as it turns out, the script that I found in this thread does work, but after a reboot, trying to activate the card again ends with a error about the mac address and I've double check, the mac address is correct. But if I remove the settings are rerun the script, everything seems to work again. While a bit odd, it does work in an odd sort of way.

If anyone knows of something better, please share. I'm considering making the move from Core 3 to Suse or Ubuntu if I can't get this cleared up as I've heard they work with the dell wireless right out of the box.