Help w/Wireless Adapter Setup

[pearsonbe]

I've had many problems installing and configuring my wireless adapter. The device uses a Broadcom 43xx driver. I believe I have:

1. ndiswrapper 1.35 and the driver installed correctly
2. assigned the correct network settings - ESSID and WEP key

The data light on the card is lit; however, when I run iwconfig, I still do not see the correct ESSID and it doesn't appear to be connected. In Network Settings, the device is enabled but there are two red "towers" displayed in the icon. Does this mean the network manager can not detect the network?

I have diligently searched for a solution, but have not found one yet. Prior to installing ndiswrapper 1.35, I tried 1.28, but it didn't make a difference.

Greg

[tdwester]

Re: Help w/Wireless Adapter Setup

Could you go to the konsole and type iwconfig and paste the output.

[pearsonbe]

Re: Help w/Wireless Adapter Setup

Thanks for responding tdwester. I will when I get home this evening. Do you have any guesses?

[tdwester]

Re: Help w/Wireless Adapter Setup

My guess is that you have a broadcom 4318 chip. They do not play nice with the Broadcom 43xx driver.

[pearsonbe]

Re: Help w/Wireless Adapter Setup

Here is the output from iwconfig:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSIDff/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.462 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power:32 dBm
RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B
Power Managementff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

[pearsonbe]

Re: Help w/Wireless Adapter Setup

Here is the output from ndiswrapper:

greg@greg-laptop:~$ ndiswrapper -l
bcmw15 : invalid driver!
bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4318) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx)
bcmwlf : invalid driver!

Also, relevant info from /etc/network/interfaces:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
address 127.0.0.1
netmask 255.0.0.0

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto wlan0

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid pearson
wireless-key s:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

I removed the WEP key for the post. I doesn't get get saved between boots. I have to manually enter in Network Settings each time.

[tdwester]

Re: Help w/Wireless Adapter Setup

It looks like you have the 4318 chipset in it. Run this in the konsole

lspci | grep Broadcom\ Corporation

If it looks like this 0000:05:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

Then here is the guide I used to get mine to work. http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthre...highlight=4318
I hope this helps.

[pearsonbe]

Re: Help w/Wireless Adapter Setup

Thanks. I tried that and another page by Raven. Should I have green bars in toolbar if connected to the router?

[pearsonbe]

Re: Help w/Wireless Adapter Setup

Finallly got it working. Here is the output now from iwconfig:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"pearson"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:18:39:97:F1:FB
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power:32 dBm
RTS thr:2347 B Fragment thr:2346 B
Power Managementff
Link Quality:71/100 Signal level:-50 dBm Noise level:-96 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

The problem was not Kubuntu; it was my Wifi configuration. My gateway was reset and lost all information. I also needed to change my WEP key from ASCI to HEX. A couple of boots later and it worked.

Thanks for your help.