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Help with BCM4306 Wireless

kaioshadekaioshade Posts: 4
in Debian

I have been hitting my head against a wall trying to get the wireless working with this card. Unfortunately i use a HP laptop which locks to this card, so simply putting another one in is not a very feasible option.

I installed the b43-fwcutter, extracted the firmware, rebooted the machine. I am still unable to connect to anything, and nothing shows up in nm-applet for wireless networks. I am beyond confused.

I am still very much new to this so any help is appreciated.

Comments

  • atreyuatreyu Posts: 216
    kaioshade wrote:
    I have been hitting my head against a wall trying to get the wireless working with this card. Unfortunately i use a HP laptop which locks to this card, so simply putting another one in is not a very feasible option.

    I installed the b43-fwcutter, extracted the firmware, rebooted the machine. I am still unable to connect to anything, and nothing shows up in nm-applet for wireless networks. I am beyond confused.

    I am still very much new to this so any help is appreciated.

    Wireless networking in Linux is not exactly smooth sailing, but it has improved. I'm not Debian-savvy, but I am familiar with wireless in general. A couple questions:

    1. Are you sure the firmware is in the right directory / getting loaded? (check dmesg,/var/log/messages)

    2. what does iwconfig report?

    I bow to the Debian Overlords...
  • kaioshadekaioshade Posts: 4
    iwconfig reports wlan0 as being there. and dmesg shows the bcm43xx driver being loaded.

    yet when i go to network management i only see wired.

    this is driving me crazy. ive been at it for 6 hours now.
  • atreyuatreyu Posts: 216
    kaioshade wrote:
    iwconfig reports wlan0 as being there. and dmesg shows the bcm43xx driver being loaded.

    yet when i go to network management i only see wired.

    this is driving me crazy. ive been at it for 6 hours now.

    sorry , i'm not familiar with nm-applet and "network management" tools. maybe try the following, to help diagnose the problem.

    can you configure an IP for your device manually? e.g.
    ifconfig wlan0 192.168.1.2 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

    then attempt to associate with your SSID? e.g.
    iwconfig wlan0 essid linksys

    also, are you trying to connect to an AP or what? If a router/AP, and it has WEP/WPA encryption enabled, I would turn it off temporarily, until you can connect successfully.
  • ZanpaktouZanpaktou Posts: 30
    Concise instructions here :

    http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
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