No WIFI since addition of this week's updates - SOLVED

[kle]

After tinkering a bit, and even losing my eth0, I gave up and
reinstalled from a partimage backup, downloaded the 107 updates and: still no WIFI.

So I downloaded a fresh Hardy (!), taking care to check the MD5sum, and made a clean install. I downloaded the 21 updates and: no WIFI

What am I doing wrong? WIFI was fine until this week, when the WPA2 support suddenly vanished. I have now disabled all encryption on my router, and Windows XP connects.

lshw -C network
-network
description: Network controller
product: BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=0 module=ssb
*-network
description: Wireless interface
physical id: 1
logical name: wlan0
serial: 00:14:a5:c3:b8:4c
capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g

[Snowhog]

Re: No WIFI since addition of this week's updates

May one safely assume, that the updates you got (before you did your reinstall) included a kernel update? If 'yes,' and given that your wireless card/chip set is a Broadcom, did you originally have to configure ndiswrapper in order to get it to work? If 'yes,' then I think you have to redo this each time a new kernel is installed. This is a guess on my part, as I don't need ndiswrapper for my chip set, so have never had to deal with it.

[kle]

Re: No WIFI since addition of this week's updates

May one safely assume, that the updates you got (before you did your reinstall) included a kernel update?

Indeed I suspect it did, though I usually just automatically accept updates, because I was asked what I wanted done with the grub menu list.

But I never needed ndiswrapper before. Maybe I shall have to try that.

[Snowhog]

Re: No WIFI since addition of this week's updates

But I never needed ndiswrapper before. Maybe I shall have to try that.

If you never needed it before, then you should not have to use it now. Something else is affecting your wireless.

[kle]

Re: No WIFI since addition of this week's updates: SOLVED

Well, I did install ndiswrap and it now works!!
To install, I
1) scrupulously followed the instructions here (except that I did not blacklist B43 - I uninstalled it.):
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...er/Ndiswrapper

2) then tested - wlan0 was not detected (but I had halfway expected that)

3) then inserted the neat little fixit script here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=734003
(thanks to Mazza558 in Ubuntuforums)

(It would appear that I should never have had any success with the Broadcom in the first place, though, oddly, it worked beautifully for 3 months.)

[Snowhog]

Re: No WIFI since addition of this week's updates

Well, the good news is that you did get the problem resolved. Good job. Please return to your initial post in this thread and click he modify button and add SOLVED to the subject.