NOOB - Wireless connection question

Jeep71

Just downloaded Linux fro Fedora to my USB stick. I am able to boot with issues but am unable to connect to my wireless network. I receive "Firmware missing" when I try to connect. Is this not available when booting from a USB stick?

Goineasy9

Depends on what wifi chip you're using. If you did not set up the USB stick with persistence, you won't be able to save the wifi setup for later use, if you need to install a proprietary driver.
Are you using a LiveCD iso? What method did you use to install Fedora on the USB stick? What wifi chip are you dealing with? Broadcom drivers, for example need a driver from the rpmfusion repos. The rpmfusion repo is for drivers that aren't OpenSource, and so, cannot be included in most distros by default.

Jeep71

I am using a DELL 1397 WLAN mini card (Broadcom)
I used LiveUSB Creator program for Windows from http://fedorahosted.org/liveusb-creator.

Goineasy9

On a live USB, without persistence, you could enable the rpmfusion repos, then "yum install broadcom-wl", then "modprobe wl" as a temporary way of activating your wifi card.

Enable rpmfusion repos with:

su -c 'yum localinstall --nogpgcheck http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm'

then:

yum install broadcom-wl

then:

modprobe wl

This should activate the card.

Fedora uses kmod's and akmod's to install and build kernel modules for the driver, but, once you turn off your computer everything you installed goes away while using the Live USB. So, if you just install the driver and modprobe it, it should work. I haven't tried this on any live install for a while, so I can't guarantee it working, but, it's the first thing I would try.

Once you have Fedora up and running, you could do:

lspci

in a terminal. Look for the line that has wireless or wifi in it and it should also contain what wifi chip is being used. There are some broadcom chips that use different drivers than wl, but wl is the most common.