Setting up wireless with Dell 1397 card

[charlese]

I recently installed Kubuntu on a Dell Inspiron 11z which has a Dell wireless 1397 WLAN mini card in it. Everything works fine apart from the fact that the wireless doesn't fire up. I tried to install the Broadcom drivers in the System Hardware applet and it just hangs. I tried to install the Windows drivers (only Vista drivers come with the machine) and although it installs it doesn't appear to work. When I plug in an external USB wireless card everything leaps into life and works perfectly. The internal card also works fine in Windows with the standard drivers. I've been through the problem solving steps in the help but they don't seem to remedy the problem. Can anyone help me with a solution to make Kubuntu work with the internal card?

Many thanks

Charles

[sithlord48]

Re: Setting up wireless with Dell 1397 card

the problem might lay in the install app for the restricted drivers, i would like you to try to install the driver with a different version of the same tool...first you need to get it,
[code=run in konsole]sudo apt-get install jockey-gtk[/code]
it might prompt you and ask if it can install some other file that jockey-gtk needs to run so do that.
after it finishes installing, run it press alt+f2 (krunner default hotkey) and type in jockey-gtk
the programs should look familiar try to install your "restricted" driver and profit.

when your all done you can remove the jockey-gtk package with
[code=run in konsole]sudo apt-get remove jockey-gtk[/code]

[charlese]

Re: Setting up wireless with Dell 1397 card

Many thanks for your suggestions, I tried running install jockey-gtk as you suggested but it just said that it was already at the latest version and when I tried to run it, it just hung without downloading the drivers as it did before. If anyone has any other ideas I'm sure this issue must affect quite a number of people using this common wireless card.

[jayhawk]

Re: Setting up wireless with Dell 1397 card

If I recall correctly, the Dell 1397 card is the 4312 model with the 14e4:4315 chipset (You can verify this in the Konsole by using lspci -nn).

If this is the case, you might try installing bcmwl-kernel-source. It seems like that is what most people are doing in the Ubuntu Forums right now. For some reason, installing it through jockey has been causing the system to lock up.

bcmwl-kernel-source is the new way that Ubuntu is installing the driver. It looks like it now patches and compiles the driver instead of packaging the driver itself.

[charlese]

Re: Setting up wireless with Dell 1397 card

Yes you are right, that is exactly the wireless card that I have. However when you said I might install bcmwl-kernel-source it went right over my head. How would I do that? I couldn't find any other reference to it in the forums.

[charlese]

Re: Setting up wireless with Dell 1397 card

OK I figured it out in the end. The reason the Broadcom drivers hang in the hardware install program is because the DVD / ISO file needs to be available for it to install from. Once this is available the correct drivers install and everything works fine, if not the thing just hangs and doesn't tell you why. It only took me a week to work that out!

[sithlord48]

Re: Setting up wireless with Dell 1397 card

glad to see you got it working please make this solved (edit the subject of the first post)

if any one else needs help installing that driver see below.

open a konsole(you can find it in the k menu)
[code=run in konsole]sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source[/code] you might be asked to install some other packages in order to install the kernel driver (i.e you will have to install the kernel-headers). just say yes when it asks.

if it says it can't find the package you have to enable the restricted section of the repos to do so,
open kpackagekit (in your kmenu)click Settings->edit software sources->kubuntu software. and be sure that there is a check mark next to "Proprietary drivers for devices (restricted)"
then go back to your konsole
[code=run in konsole]sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source[/code] that should set up the driver for you (you might have to restart before it works)