Broadcom network card problem

Hugh Newbury · External Since: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 31

Hi:

This seems to be a well known problem, but I've yet to see a proper
answer to it.

I have an Acer Aspire 3692WMLi laptop which has on board a Broadcom
BCM94318MPG netwwork card. This works fine in Windows XP, but I (and
others) can't get it to run in Suse 10.1. The kernel 2.6.16.13 has what
is said to be the necessary driver (b44), but it won't work on my machine.

I've modprobed till I'm blue in the face, without result. Has anyone
here got it working and if so how?

All suggestions gratefully received.

TIA

Hugh

--

Hugh Newbury

Running Linux Suse 10.1 in deepest Dorset

Hugh Newbury · External Since: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 31

Whiskers wrote:
> On 2007-07-19, Hugh Newbury <hugh.TakeThisOut@hnewbury.uklinux.net> wrote:
>> Hi:
>>
>> This seems to be a well known problem, but I've yet to see a proper
>> answer to it.
>>
>> I have an Acer Aspire 3692WMLi laptop which has on board a Broadcom
>> BCM94318MPG netwwork card. This works fine in Windows XP, but I (and
>> others) can't get it to run in Suse 10.1. The kernel 2.6.16.13 has what
>> is said to be the necessary driver (b44), but it won't work on my machine.
>>
>> I've modprobed till I'm blue in the face, without result. Has anyone
>> here got it working and if so how?
>>
>> All suggestions gratefully received.
>>
>> TIA
>>
>> Hugh
>
> My HP laptop has a BCM94306 802.11g NIC which works well using the Windows
> driver via NDISwrapper for my Mandriva system (Mandriva 2007.0,
> 2.6.17-14mdv). The open-source Linux driver supplied by Mandriva doesn't
> work for me.
>

I have installed ndiswrapper using YAST. It turns up quite deep down in
/lib, where ls finds it. But putting ndiswrapper in the root command
line, even with the complete path, just produces a Can't Find. I really
don't see what I'm doing wrong.

Any help anyone?

Hugh

--

Hugh Newbury

Running Linux Suse 10.1 in deepest Dorset

Nick Leverton · External Since: Dec 24, 2004 Posts: 54

In article <5gomuiF3hm10gU1.TakeThisOut@mid.individual.net>,
Hugh Newbury <hugh.TakeThisOut@hnewbury.uklinux.net> wrote:

>I have installed ndiswrapper using YAST. It turns up quite deep down in
>/lib, where ls finds it. But putting ndiswrapper in the root command
>line, even with the complete path, just produces a Can't Find. I really
>don't see what I'm doing wrong.

I've only used ndiswrapper once, and don't have it installed at the
moment, so am relying on memory ! From what I recall the one in /lib
will be the ndiswrapper kernel module, probably called ndiswrapper.ko.
This wraps the foreigh driver and calls it as needed. If all is setup
OK the startup script should load it for you.

The program you actually need is probably /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper. I
don't know YAST so can't help much with how it sets things up.

Nick
--
http://www.leverton.org/blosxom ... So express yourself

Hugh Newbury · External Since: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 31

Nick Leverton wrote:
....

> The program you actually need is probably /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper. I
> don't know YAST so can't help much with how it sets things up.

You're right. I tried again with YAST and installed a different
ndiswrapper. This time it turned up in /usr/sbin. So far, so good. Then
I did "ndiswrapper -i /media/sda1/bcmwl5.inf" (the .inf file of the
Windows driver that works) and got "couldn't copy /media/sda1/bcmwl5.inf
at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper at line 135." So I tried "ndsiwrapper -l" and
got "Installed drivers: bcmwl5 invalid driver!"

I feel inclined to give up!

Unless you have any other suggestions. It seems I've got quite close,
but the last step eludes me.

Hugh

--

Hugh Newbury

Running Linux Suse 10.1 in deepest Dorset

ian · External Since: Nov 07, 2006 Posts: 2

On Wednesday 25 July 2007 4:07 pm, in MID
<5gp78vF3fraigU1.RemoveThis@mid.individual.net>, Hugh Newbury
(hugh@hnewbury.uklinux.net) wrote:

> Nick Leverton wrote:
> ...
>
>> The program you actually need is probably /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper. I
>> don't know YAST so can't help much with how it sets things up.
>
> You're right. I tried again with YAST and installed a different
> ndiswrapper. This time it turned up in /usr/sbin. So far, so good. Then
> I did "ndiswrapper -i /media/sda1/bcmwl5.inf" (the .inf file of the
> Windows driver that works) and got "couldn't copy /media/sda1/bcmwl5.inf
> at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper at line 135." So I tried "ndsiwrapper -l" and
> got "Installed drivers: bcmwl5 invalid driver!"

I had that recently with a Broadcom USB wireless thingy.

The solution, IIRC, was to copy the .cat & .sys files to the same location
as the .inf file, which resulted in the desired "driver present hardware
present".

Still didn't work though - I gave up and bought a Ralink one in the end...

regards,
--
Ian...

Geoffrey Clements · External Since: Apr 09, 2004 Posts: 75

Hugh Newbury wrote:

> Nick Leverton wrote:
> ...
>
>> The program you actually need is probably /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper. I
>> don't know YAST so can't help much with how it sets things up.
>
> You're right. I tried again with YAST and installed a different
> ndiswrapper. This time it turned up in /usr/sbin. So far, so good. Then
> I did "ndiswrapper -i /media/sda1/bcmwl5.inf" (the .inf file of the
> Windows driver that works) and got "couldn't copy /media/sda1/bcmwl5.inf
> at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper at line 135." So I tried "ndsiwrapper -l" and
> got "Installed drivers: bcmwl5 invalid driver!"
>

I don't use ndiswrapper any more but I remember that I had trouble
installing the windows driver when running ndiswrapper in another directory
from the one where the .inf file was. In other words try:

$ cd /media/sda1/
$ ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

Don't know if it will work but it's worth a try.

--
Geoff Registered Linux user 196308
Replace bitbucket with geoff to mail me.

Hugh Newbury · External Since: Jul 02, 2004 Posts: 31

Thanks all. I think I'm just going to go with the flow and run that
computer on WXP. I have some weather hardware from US which refuses to
recognise that there are other OSes. So it can sit in a corner and play
on its own, while the other computers get on with their lives.

Thanks again.

Hugh

--

Hugh Newbury

Running Linux Suse 10.1 in deepest Dorset