wireless networking (broadcom 4318)

[Larry Grover]

Orth "Jack" Chilling wrote:
> again i will repost this> 

- snip-

> "ok if you havent noticed... i cannot use my wireless yet. it can be set 
> as an active networking device. but it has no range... nor does it see 
> wireless stations..."
> 
> so anyone have some ideas? i would love this to work. everything else 
> works perfect, even the ati.


You'll probably get better help if provide more information, like:
(1) which release are you running:  hoary, breezy, dapper?
(2) are you trying to use ndiswrapper or native linux drivers?
(3) what have you already tried?
(4) any relevant error or log messages?


Anyway, here's my experience.  Maybe something here will be helpful.

My laptop (iBook, G4) has a broadcom 4318 card.  The lspci command 
indicates that it is a "Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 
802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)".  I have been running the 
dapper release since I got the laptop, about 3 months ago.  It took a 
bit of research/reading, and trial-and-error to get it working, and even 
now, it does not work perfectly (more about this below), but it is 
usable.  Since my laptop is powerpc, not x86, ndiswrapper is not an 
option.  I went with the dapper development release so that I would get 
the native linux broadcom driver.

The first thing you need to do is install the firmware for your wireless 
card.  I did this the hard way, by finding the right file from an OSX 
install, running the bcm43xx-fwcutter program to extract and then 
install the firmware.  You can find instructions for installing the 
firmware the easy way here:

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WifiDocs/Driver/Broadcom43xx?highlight=%28broadcom%29

Next, if you're lucky, the ubuntu gui network set up tools will work for 
you, and you can just configure the card like you would any other 
wireless network card.  I wasn't lucky.

It seems that there are several variants of the broadcom chip (43xx). 
Some seem to be easier to get working.

After lots or reading and trial-and-error, I figured out a set of manual 
commands that would get my card working, and then I added them into my 
/etc/network/interfaces file, so that the wireless network would come up 
automatically when I boot.  Here are the relevant lines:

iface eth1 inet manual
   pre-up /sbin/modprobe bcm43xx
   up /sbin/ifconfig eth1 up
   post-up /bin/sleep 1
   post-up /sbin/iwconfig eth1 rate 11M
   post-up /sbin/iwconfig eth1 ap any
   post-up /bin/sleep 1
   post-up /sbin/dhclient eth1

auto eth1

On my system, the two "sleep" commands are essential, as are the 
"iwconfig eth1 rate 11M" and "iwconfig eth1 ap any"; without them, my 
card will not work at all.

I haven't tried to set up WEP or WPA.  I don't know if they will work or 
not.  Also, the card stops working after a suspend/resume cycle.  To 
restart it I need to bring the interface down, remove the bcm43xx 
module, re-insert the module and bring the interface back up.  Kind of a 
pain to do manually, so wrote a small script to automate this, which I 
will be glad to share if you're interested.

If you haven't read this page yet:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WifiDocs/Driver/Broadcom43xx?highlight=%28broadcom%29
please do so now.  It has more and better information than I have 
provided here.

Regards,
Larry