Need Help With Wireless LAN Using SUSE 10.0

[zenarcher 0]

Okay, I need some help from one of you wireless experts! Through perserverance and talking my wife into sitting with me in the aisle of the local Wal-Mart, from midnight until 5 a.m., the day after Thanksgiving, I managed to get one of the 15 HP notebook computers they advertised for $378.00. And, unlike Florida and a few other places, I managed to get it without a fistfight. Actually, I got Number 2 and all were spoken for by 3:30 a.m., although could not be sold until 5 a.m.

 

Being a good Linux user, I didn't even start it up with Windows. Immediately inserted my SUSE 10.0 DVD and did a complete wipe of Windows and did a straight Linux install. Everything was recognized beautifully, I did all updates and the system is working great! Almost.

 

Here's the question. I'm completely stupid regarding the wireless LAN setup. Doing the install, I merely connected a LAN cable from my router to do the work. Now, since the notebook comes with built in wireless, I'd like to take advantage of that. I don't have even a basic clue as to how to activate the wireless nor get it working. The HP manual is geared to a three year old using Windows. About the only thing mentioned about wireless is to identify a button, above the keyboard which is for the wireless.

 

Here is the hardware:

Hewlett Packard Pavilion ze2308 wm Notebook PC

(Using AMD Sempron Processor 2800+, 256M DDR SDRAM

 

The internal wireless is:

54g 802.11b/g WLAN with 125HSM/SpeedBooster Support

Going into YAST and looking at hardware, it is identified as:

BCM 4318[Air Force One 54G] 802.11G Wireless LAN Controller

(I have a PCMCIA slot on the notebook, in case I have to go that way with a wireless card, however a Google search seems to indicate that I should be okay with SUSE and this internal wireless, unless I read something wrong)

 

My router is a basic Linksys BEFW11S4. That would be a 802.11b router. My other boxes run of LAN cables to the router, so I have never used it wireless. As I recall, when I set it up, I did set up a password to protect the wireless access and I don't remember the channel I set it up on. But, I'm sure I can go into the router configuration and get that info.

 

So, hoping I have remembered everything I need to mention on hardware, could someone offer some help as to how I set up this internal wireless notebook to work with my router? I'd really appreciate some help, as I don't even know where to begin to set it up.

 

Regards,

zenarcher

[danleff 0]

Wow, you really did that at Walmart? Good for you! I never would have.

 

This broadcom wireless should run with ndiswrapper. Install that package off the SuSE cds using yast. You then need the Windows XP drivers for it.

 

Yes, I said the Windows XP drivers!

 

I hope drivers came on a cd, but I bet not. If you have the drivers cd, look for the broadcom drivers on it. Let us know if you find them. You will need the .inf and .sys files to compile the driver with ndiswrapper. I wrote an article about it on my web page, but not for this wireless card.

 

Let us know if you have them. If not, you will need to get them from another source. If you have trouble, I will take a look.

 

But...I hate these systems, because often they are legacy cards built for HP and may take some doing to get it going.

[zenarcher 0]

Originally posted by danleff:

Quote:

Wow, you really did that at Walmart? Good for you! I never would have.

 

This broadcom wireless should run with ndiswrapper. Install that package off the SuSE cds using yast. You then need the Windows XP drivers for it.

 

Yes, I said the Windows XP drivers!

 

I hope drivers came on a cd, but I bet not. If you have the drivers cd, look for the broadcom drivers on it. Let us know if you find them. You will need the .inf and .sys files to compile the driver with ndiswrapper. I wrote an article about it on my web page, but not for this wireless card.

 

Let us know if you have them. If not, you will need to get them from another source. If you have trouble, I will take a look.

 

But...I hate these systems, because often they are legacy cards built for HP and may take some doing to get it going.

 

 

You bet I got one, danleff! I got there at midnight...was number 2 in line...knowing they had 15 of them. My wife went with me so we could spell each other off for coffee and breaks. They would not sell them until 5 a.m. At 4 a.m. they handed out cards to the first 15 people in line. I was determined to get one! The only drawback is that it only has 256M of RAM. I'll get a 1 GIG RAM card for it, a bit later....that's all it really needs. I can't believe how slow everything is with 256M of RAM, but I'm used to 1 Gig, minimum in the system.

 

Okay, I think you just answered my problem, danleff!! Yes, the drivers came on a disk.

 

Here's what I did. I went to the SUSE Forum, where Andrew has a wireless walkthrough for NDISwrapper. I followed all his instructions and everything went perfectly, just as he said it should...I even removed the old NDISwrapper in the system and installed the latest stable, (version 1.5) from SourceForge....BUT he wasn't clear on one thing, apparently. He ONLY mentioned getting the .inf file off the HP disk! There were two on the disk...bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5a.inf. So, after doing all, when I run ndiswrapper -l from a terminal, I get: Installed NDIS Drivers...followed by: Invalid Driver. Bet that is why...I don't have the SYS file! I remember seeing it on the disk, too.

 

Now, what do I do, danleff? I have done everything...but don't have the SYS file in the folder. I can get it off the disk....no problem....and put it in the folder with the .inf file. BUT, can I just run ndiswrapper -i /home/zenarcher/broadcom/bcmwl5.inf again, or will I have to remove something I've done first?

 

If you can help me from where I am, I'd sure appreciate it!

 

Also, what would you suggest as to the .inf file? The bcmwl5.inf or the bcmwl5a.inf?

 

If I have to, I can always get a PCMCIA wireless card that will work with SUSE 10.0, as I have a PCMCIA slot, but I'd sure rather use the internal, if I can.

Regards,

zenarcher

[martouf 0]

copy the directory with the .inf files -and- all subdirectories (if any)

or associated files in the same directory to any convenient place

in the linux filesystem.

 

Then run the install utility again.

 

[danleff 0]

According to the ndiswrapper wiki, here, you have the correct driver. Try martouf's suggestion and install it again.

 

You may need to remove the original XP driver install first. Just type in ndiswrapper at the command line to get a list of command usage.

[zenarcher 0]

Thanks so much for the help, martouf and danleff! I followed your instructions exattly, first removing both the bcmwl5 and the bcmwl5a drivers that I had installed. Next, I ran the Windows Driver disk, which came with the HP notebook and copied the entire WLAN folder into my Home directory. That was all the files, related to the Broadcom. I then ran the ndiswrapper -i command, to my home directory, using the bcmwl5.inf file. Following that, I ran ndiswrapper -l and there it was! The bcmwl5 was shown as installed and working, along with the hardware! Just as it should be! Now, another question and maybe I should leave well enough alone at this point, but I'm sort of comfortable with this ndiswrapper command, after spending all day with it. On that driver disk and in the WLAN folder, there are two different .inf files. I used the bcmwl5.inf, however there is also a bcmwl5a.inf. I'm wondering...what do you think that is? Possibly an updated driver, would be my guess. I'm wondering if I should have installed it, instead of just the bcmwl5.inf? When I did the incorrect install, I tried both and I noted that it did install both, but I just didn't have all the files, as you showed me here to run it. Any thoughts on if I should uninstall the bcmwl5.inf and install the bcmwl5a.inf, or just leave it alone?

 

Anyway, I have a few steps to go in YAST yet to get this Broadcom wireless installed, but wanted to update you. I will let you know, as soon as I make further progress or need further help!

 

Regards,

zenarcher

[danleff 0]

I bet the one that is installed is correct. My guess, these systems came with either your card or the BCM4306 Board.

 

Look and see what the pciid is for your card, by typing in;

 

lspci -n

 

in a console, as root user.

 

If the card comes up as 14e4:4318 your good.

 

If it comes up as 14e4:4320 then it is the BCM4306 card with a Belkin or related chipset, which the bcmwl5a.inf would be used for.

[zenarcher 0]

Okay danleff, I get a whole string of stuff when I type that command, but the second from the bottom is the 4318, so I'm guessing I'm good.

 

I did go into YAST and try to set up the network card for the wireless, which seemed to go fine. I named it wlan0, during that process. Everything seems fine, but I do not have wireless connect.

 

If I look at the little applet on the taskbar...(I'm using KDE...I see eth0 and wlan0 appearing in the list...with eth0 connected.

 

Right now, with my Linksys BEFW11S4 router, I don't have it configured with any sort of security or anything, while I try to get this all set up and working. I merely have wireless active. But, I don't think this wlan0 is active in the notebook, so I'm not far enough to try to connect to the router, anyway, as of yet.

 

I'm not sure where to go at this point. I went to YAST>Network Devices>Network Card. I clicked the Add button, changed Device type to Wireless. I left Configuration Name at 0. In Kernel Module, I inserted ndiswrapper. At Hardware Configuration Name, I entered wlan0. In the Setup WIFI settings, I set to DHCP, which is what I'm using. From there, I pretty much left everything as Default. I then typed ifstatus wlan0 in a terminal, but get: Interface wlan0 is not available.

 

Right now, I have nothing in the box for ESSID and such, but think perhaps I need those filled in, but don't know where to get the information, or what..

 

Any help?

 

Regards,

zenarcher

[zenarcher 0]

Okay, further update. I went really searching deeply on the SUSE Forum for some help. Especially since I'd followed Andrew's instructions there for setting up NDISwrapper.

 

I found an interesting post. Someone was having the same problem that I am having....using the same Broadcom BCM 4318 wireless, same bcmwl5.inf driver, same ndiswrapper and the same SUSE 10.0

 

Here are the exchanges from those posts on that forum:

 

Well, no progress up to this point and no responses to the query. I went looking deeper into this forum and found a much earlier group of posts....with the same Broadcom BCM 4318, same driver bcmwl5.inf with ndiswrapper....and SUSE 10.0. In that group of posts, the person had to run modprobe ndiswrapper, which you will see he was advised not to do.

 

So, I tried by running modprobe ndiswrapper and immediately, I got a wireless light and in fact, my wireless connection is working perfectly! Now, he talked about adding some info to files, which I'm not sure exactly what to do yet.....But, here is the group of posts to which I refer....

------------------------------------------------------------------

Went back and read the version 9.x instructions and had left out

 

modprobe ndiswrapper

 

I keyed that it and my wifi light lit on my laptop and I indeed have a wlan0 setup now.

 

 

Will have to verify that it works when I get home to my wifi network.

 

Um... if you're using SuSE 10, you shouldn't do this:

QUOTE

I then ran ndiswrapper -m and this inserted the following into /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper

alias wlan0 ndiswrapper

 

 

Which is why I left it out. I don't know if it will hurt anything, but it's kind of contrary to the new setup that SuSE made in 10.0. Just a thought.

 

~~ Andrew D.

 

Well, that was the only way that I could get it working.

 

I formatted again just for fun and reloaded SuSE 10 and went through my instructions. Unless I did the ndiswrapper -m and also modprobe ndiswrapper, I could not get the wlan0 interface to come up.

 

Thanks for the guide, it was quite helpful. It was very similar to Fedora Core which is what I typically use, but I wanted to try SuSE 10 on my laptop. So far, so good.

 

-----------------------------------------------------------------

 

NOW BACK TO ZENARCHER:

 

Believing that having it work is more valid than "You Shouldn't Do This," I ran modprobe ndiswrapper as su in a terminal. No sooner did I do this than my wireless light came on and I was able to connect, wireless.

 

Okay, I have it working now...but reading what the fellow who got it working had to say, it seems that perhaps I have to add some info to files.

 

Could someone possibly translate for me, as to what I should do at this point so I can get my wireless to stay working properly??

 

Thanks much,

zenarcher

[zenarcher 0]

Here is the response I received on the SUSE forum. Now, I would guess that since I ran the modprobe ndiswrapper, I should not have to run it again, after I reboot the system. If anyone can explain, I'd appreciate it.

 

Regards,

zenarcher

[danleff 0]

Running modprobe ndiswrapperloads the module manually.

 

Unless you do this manually at each boot, the module does not get loaded. You can insert the module in /etc/modprobe.conf or /etc/modules.conf (depending on what distro that you are using) through the ndiswrapper -m command.

 

However, depending on what distro you are using and how it is set up to load modules, this may or may not work. I bet that is what he is referring to. If you use that command, it is not inserted properly, or into the right conf file to load at boot.

 

I ran into this issue with Fedora and SuSE. I had to write a short script to load the module and the network card settings. I would invoke this when I wanted to bring up the wireless card.

 

I'm just testing out SuSE 10.1 alpha and have run into a couple of issues like this with madwifi for my atheros chip.

 

If you look at the ndiswrapper wiki page for SuSE, located here, you see that there are no instructions for SuSE 10. They must have changed the structure for auto loading modules somewhat. I'll have a look at mine and let you know what I find.

[zenarcher 0]

Great, danleff. Here is the information I got on the automation:

 

If you're using the automation script on my page, it already has a modprobe line in it. Otherwise, find the /etc/init.d/somethingsomething script that corresponds to your WIFI card, and add a modprobe ndiswrapper line before the other commands.

 

 

HERE IS THE SUGGESTED SCRIPT:

 

#!/bin/sh

#

# Script to start/stop wireless

#

# Taken and modified from

# http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/phpwiki/index.php/StartupScripts

#

 

 

### BEGIN INIT INFO

# Provides: ndiswrapper

# Required-Start: $local_fs

# Should-Start:

# Required-Stop:

# Should-Stop:

# Default-Start: 2 3 5

# Default-Stop:

# Description: Configure WLAN cards with Windows-based NDIS drivers

### END INIT INFO

 

 

 

 

case $1 in

'start') echo "Starting ndiswrapper"

modprobe ndiswrapper

ifup wlan0

iwconfig wlan0 essid My_ssid

#

#Uncomment and modify the following line if you use WEP

# iwconfig wlan0 key open

# iwconfig wlan0 key 00000000000000000000000000

#

#Uncomment and modify the following line if you use static IPs

# ifconfig wlan0 My_ip

#

# route add default gw My_gateway

dhcpcd wlan0

iwconfig

;;

 

'stop') echo "Shutting down ndiswrapper"

ifdown wlan0

modprobe -r ndiswrapper

;;

esac

1.Either cut and paste this into your favorite editor, or download the file directly.

2.If you cut and paste, edit the file, and save it as "ndiswrapper". If you downloaded it, open it up with a text editor, modify it for your WIFI settings, and save it.

3.As root, copy the file to /etc/init.d/

4.mun the command chmod 755 /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper

5.To get this loaded on boot, run the following command: insserv -v -d /etc/init.d/ndiswrapper

If you get the output below, it's worked, and the interface should be loaded with your settings on boot.

 

insserv: enable service ../ndiswrapper -> /etc/init.d//rc2.d/S01ndiswrapper

insserv: enable service ../ndiswrapper -> /etc/init.d//rc2.d/K22ndiswrapper

insserv: enable service ../ndiswrapper -> /etc/init.d//rc3.d/S01ndiswrapper

insserv: enable service ../ndiswrapper -> /etc/init.d//rc3.d/K22ndiswrapper

insserv: enable service ../ndiswrapper -> /etc/init.d//rc5.d/S01ndiswrapper

insserv: enable service ../ndiswrapper -> /etc/init.d//rc5.d/K22ndiswrapper

insserv: creating .depend.boot

insserv: creating .depend.start

insserv: creating .depend.stop

[zenarcher 0]

Using KVim, I did a copy and past of the script I mentioned above and followed the instructions. Now, when I boot the system, the wireless starts up just as it should. Of course, the wired connection attmepts to connect first, which is fine with me, since I use both. I merely click to disconnect, then click on wlan0 and the wireless connection kicks right in and away it goes. Wireless problem solved!!!

 

zenarcher

[pythagoris 0]

Ok, this seems to be the most comprehensive forum thread related to this so I am posting here. I have done everything I have read about to get me wireless going. The only differance is that I dont get any lights on my card when I modprobe ndiswrapper. Regarding the steps that I have taken to get it going, refer to this entire thread (with the exception of the load scripting). So the question I have is HOW DO I GET THE THING TO ACTIVATE!!!???

 

 

UPDATE:

Ok, Ive got lights now, not sure what I did, but I have no connectivity (my router is saying that there are no connected devices othere than the PC) and the encryption is open for setup purposes. Also, the icon on the top bar still says that wireless is not activated....just the "X".

[zenarcher 0]

Well, this sounds pretty dumb, but something I didn't understand at first, so it's worth a try. I have a little network applet on the toolbar. If you don't have it there, go to Start>System>Desktop Applet>Network Selector Panel Applet and click on that, adding it to the toolbar. Once there, I clicked on the applet, opening a menu...and clicked "Disconnect." Then, I clicked on wlan0...and in a couple of seconds, the wireless showed active on the applet. Everything worked. It seems that at boot, the eth0 connects, whether a cable is plugged in or not, therefore, the wireless does not connect. I'm assuming that when you click on the applet you have eth0 and wlan0 both there. If not, there is obviously another issue. But, as simple as this is....it's worth a try.

 

zenarcher

[pythagoris 0]

Thanks for responding, but that applet came up by default. When I boot, nothing activates....but when I click on wlan0, my card lights up but I get no connectivity. Thats the only problem.

[danleff 0]

Are you using WEP or WPA encription? Also, did you set the essid to what the router is?

 

What wireless card are you using, make and model, as well as revision number? Some cards with different revision numbers have different chipsets. This determines what drivers to use and if ndiswrapper will work with your card.

 

[pythagoris 0]

I had it open encryption and I am using the same card as referenced in this thread prior only in a Dell Inspiron 600M. I believe that I had the SSID set as well. I will double check but Im pretty sure I did.

 

Again, when I click on wlan0 in the network applet, I get a sweries of beeps but the icon just stays as the red X.

[danleff 0]

Quote:

I get a sweries of beeps but the icon just stays as the red X.

A series of beeps? So this is not the same internal wireless card? Is this a PCMCIA card? If so, post the make, model and revision of the card.

[pythagoris 0]

No, it is the same internal mini pci card. It is the same sEries of beeps that I get when my NIC is activating. Only with my NIC, I get online.