wi-fi card help (i think this be the right place to post this..) [updated]

[capetorial]

ok, long-time shifter here, just found my old forum account (i was known as potheade and kedesai for a short time and apologize for the potheade to all).  i have dual-boot windows and linux (i cant go online with linux but i can transfer data into linux-ubunti-gnome.

heres the problem:  linux fully sees my wi-fi (laptop) card but it doesnt know how to turn it on!  i know this because it has a button along with the internet, power, email etc. buttons and it lights up when activated, if its off, its like being ejected..sort of..kinda like when you 'eject' an ipod, you can still see it but cant mess with it.  now, besides pressing the button, how do i turn it on?

laptop type:
gateway M675

anymore info and i dont know how to get it

[Xordan]

What laptop is it?

[Araye]

I can't tell you for Ubuntu, but in Suse you usually need ndiswrapper for most wi-fi cards.  I have to wrap all of the cards I own because of the broadcom chipsets in them.

The basic steps are...

 - Remove the card from the pc so it doesn't try to auto detect (this kills me - damn suse is too smart for it's own good).
 - Install ndiswrapper from the install source.
 - Put wi-fi cd in drive and find location of an appropriate .inf driver (I usually use win98 driver).
 - As root, ndiswrapper -i /path/to/the/driver/driver.inf
 - As root, modprobe ndiswrapper
 - As root, ndiswrapper -l
Should give a response that the driver is loaded but the hardware is missing.
 - At this point I start YaST > Network Card and set it up to use ndiswrapper, but since you don't have YaST I'll give you other instructions...
 - Put the card in and try ndiswrapper -l as root again (hell, all commands as root).
 - Should find your hardware this time too.
 - Now ndiswrapper -m as root (this will install a line in your config file to load this driver at startup)
 - And then, iwconfig wlan0 essid <Name of your access point here>
 - You should see the lights light up.
 - Try iwconfig by itself and a bunch of stuff should pop up....  here's mine:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"davidson"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 00:0F:66:2A:3F:43
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:14 dBm
          RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B
          Encryption key:<bunch of hex>   Security mode:restricted
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:100/100  Signal level:-59 dBm  Noise level:-256 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

I'm not going into how to set up encryption.....

******************************

So gather the info from your hardware (lspci -v) and reboot into win and google 'ubuntu wi-fi card ndiswrapper' and save those websites to disk, then reboot into linux and follow the directions.

There are a lot of k/ubuntu users here so I'm sure you'll receive better instructions shortly.  People will need to know what your hardware is, so you may choose to post it next time instead of asking us to research your issue based on your laptop model.

[Caarrie]

laptop type:
gateway M675

I went to google and found this maybe it might help you
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=31859

[capetorial]

there is no wi-fi cd.  everythings like..in itself..windows just takes it (i just reinstalled..hehe..guy didnt know i wasnt sposed to get pro) and it just takes it and runs it, no cds.  the thing is linux doesnt understand these buttons (like email, internet, help and my computer shortcuts) one of the shortcuts is wi-fi card power!  this isnt turned on power-on, its more like num-lock, the OS has to know to turn it on, or im not understanding something.  and btw, i cant remove the card as its behind my cd drive and thatd take a screwdriver and tech expertise..i dont have the 2nd one..


i thank you all so much for your help, you are so kind

[bilbous]

If your windows autodetects it you should be able to figure out from device manager which drivers it needs, find the inf in the inf directory or do a global search it is likely there somewhere. If you are dual booting as you say you can likely access the windows drives from within linux, might need to recompile the kernel for ntfs support and the read/write drivers for ntfs are a little iffy maybe. you just need read access anyway. Anyway all the files will be on the windows drive somewhere.

[Mordraugion]

Firstly Caarrie gave you a link which includes the info in this one http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=31926

Secondly you don't need the wifi cd you can get the drivers from here http://support.gateway.com/support/drivers/dlcenter.asp or from within your windows directory.

If you follow the instructions carefully then you should have working wifi in no time although it is unlikely that the wifi power on button will work.

[Induane]

Ubuntu is  a distro with particularly good laptop support.  I've got 3 laptops all of which the wifi button works on.  1 is a Hewlett Packard, 1 a Compaq, and the other a Dell, so mileage may vary but there is a good chance that once its all running it will work. 

You will need to plug into a hard line connection to install ndiswrapper though.  Its module is compiled in the Ubuntu kernel but you still need to apt-get ndiswrapper (instructions for that below).

Here is how I got a Broadcom (yours is a Broadcom chipset too I think) based wifi card working on my HP Laptop.

First thing I did was open a terminal and look to see if the Broadcom chipset module was loaded.  If it is we are going to unload it because it doesn't work right without firmware, and obtaining that is tricky.  Also, in my experience the native driver in its current state is actually worse:

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lsmod | grep bcm43xx
if that command has no output then there is no module loaded.  But just to make sure lets blacklist that module so it doesn't load by accident.

first remove the module from running currently:

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sudo rmmod bcm43xx
then blacklist it (blacklisting simply means prevent the module from loading during startup.)

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sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
In that file add the line:

blacklist bcm43xx

save and exit.

Now plug yourself into the internet via an Ethernet cable.  Make sure to go to System ---> Administer ---> Networking  and disable the wifi and enable the wired Ethernet.  You HAVE to get this thing online to be of much use without lots of fun and interesting problems

Assuming you got internet access working via your wired connection, do the following:

Open a command terminal:  Applications ----> Accessories ----> Terminal  and do the following operations.

Code: [Select]

sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-utils-1.8
(note if you are on Ubuntu Feisty instead of Edgy use ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 instead)

now we need to go find those happy little drivers.

I took the liberty of downloading what I think are the drivers in some stupid 75 megabyte package, extracting them with wine and then cab extract, and putting them on my server:

Here is how I recommend using it:

Follow the following steps:

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sudo mkdir /opt/bcm43xx

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sudo chmod -R 777 /opt/bcm43xx

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cd /opt/bcm43xx

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wget -c http://vaalnor.mine.nu/Downloads/broadcomdriver.zip

Code: [Select]

unzip broadcomdriver.zip

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ndiswrapper -i /opt/bcm43xx/bcmwl5.inf
Now if everything worked and we enter the following command:

Code: [Select]

ndiswrapper -l
It should list your card and say "Device Present     Yes" or something similar.

Good good if that shows up then we're almost there.

Do the following to finish things up:

Code: [Select]

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

Code: [Select]

sudo ndiswrapper -m
Now go System ---> Adminster ---> Networking  and enable the new wireless device.  You may have to log out and back in for it to show up correctly. 

Your wireless networking should now work correctly.  If it doesn't, try to provide a detailed description of what you tried, and what errors you received, if any and I'll try to help figure it all out

[Araye]

You know why I like Induane?

Because if you need help, he takes the time to do a really good job explaining EXACTLY what needs to be done without attitude or expectations.   

This is a rare quality (as you can tell by my  rushed post).

Araye

[capetorial]

ok, but still got probs, first one:  i dont know what distro of ubuntu i got.  second, i am dual-partitioned and my 'nix and read my xp 'drive' but not vise versa, this could be good considering i cant do one thing that you said was essentual - i cant connect to itnernet from 'nix, i mean, if theres no other option, i can try for it but were looking at taking down the internet from my house for however long i need it (everyone in my house uses wi-fi and i cant be the host, dont ask why).  if theres an alternative, like d/l it in windows then have 'nix read from xp that can be done but otherwise, damn.

note:  windows xp pro is what i got and i have an ipod video that can act as an external hard drive

You know why I like Induane?

Because if you need help, he takes the time to do a really good job explaining EXACTLY what needs to be done without attitude or expectations.   

This is a rare quality (as you can tell by my  rushed post).

Araye

i second that man

[Induane]

You people are too nice

Anyways, first lets just start with the basics and figure out what distro of ubuntu you have.

To make this easier on you I wrote a simple script to detect it automatically since I cannot for the life of me remember a super quick way of doing it.  Probably someone will post back a much easier way of checking.  In the meantime what I'll have you do will be good linux practice

Step 1.  Boot into windows, and browse to this thread.

Step 2.  Download the file at the following link by right clicking on the link and choosing "Save Link As" or "Save Target As" depending on your browser, and save it in a location where you will be able to find it in linux.

http://vaalnor.mine.nu/Downloads/detect.sh

Step 3.  Now that it is downloaded, reboot into linux.  You may want to save the text of this thread to a text file for access under linux since you won't have net access there.

Step 4.  Open your windows hard drive in linux, and copy the file "detect.sh" to your linux desktop.

Step 5.  Right click on the file, and select properties - it should bring up a dialog box like this:



Step 5.  Click on the Permissions Tab, and look near the bottom.  There is a checkbox that reads something to the like of "Allow execution of file as a program".  Make sure that you check this checkbox.  When you are done it should look like this:



Step 6.  Click the close button to return to your desktop.  Now, double click on the file detect.sh - this will bring up a new prompt that looks like this:



Step 7.  Click on the button that says "run".  Upon doing so it will show a dialog similar to the one in the following image.  It will tell you what distro of Ubuntu you are running.



Once you have done this, come back to windows, and post in this thread which version of ubuntu you are running.  Once we have that information we can go from there.  Like I said before there are probably easier ways of figuring this out but this way is fun, I got to write a script, and I got to test more instructions skillz!

Also on another note,  most wifi routers have at least 1-4 wired connections on them as well just for routing purposes and redundancy.  I think if you take your PC or laptop (whichever it is) to the location where the wifi router is you should be able to plug in as long as you have a spare Ethernet cable, and it would not disrupt anyone in the houses internet connection.  Downloading all the packages needed in windows then installing in linux is "possible" but SUPER tricky.  I don't know enough about the various dependencies of each package to make sure to download everything you need.  I'm just not quite that good. I have another option that MAY work but its tricksy at best and I"m not  sure it works without a net connection either. 

Take care and good luck.  With a bit of patience we will be able to get this hammered out.

[capetorial]

you rule man.  i cant be doin this at this hr.  but ill make a note to do it by the end of this week.  your solution works completely (as long as i got a spare ethernet cable, which i probly do).

again man, you rule

[CalcProgrammer1]

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?s=b39b1e9309fde76785378f489f72ad92&t=185174&highlight=broadcom

This is how I set up my card, a Broadcom BCM43xx (maybe 48xx i forget), it was the "AirForce One 54g" chipset, and it works great.  This does NOT USE NDISWRAPPER, it uses the native Linux driver for the card, you just have to extract the firmware out of a "real" driver to enable the Linux driver to work.

[Induane]

He would still need to get the machine online in order to get fwcutter.  Also, the native driver for me would not connect at anything beyond wireless b speeds.  In addition I had frequent drops, and searches of the ubuntu forums confirm that this is a frequent problem for users of the native driver.  Combine that with crashyness for network encryption and its a good way of making life confusing and more difficult for someone just getting started.  Long semi complex instructions can be quite educational, but impossible to diagnose troubles are frustrating.  He may or may not have good luck with the native driver.  I have two laptops with the same card.  One is still using the native driver because it worked fine, for the other its impossibly horrible.  Same chipset, same OS.  For reasons of uncertainty I usually send people with this card the ndiswrapper route.