Cannot get Wireless connect with RHE
 

Hi Everyone,

I am running Redhat Ent 4 on my Dell D610 and I cannot get it to work. Wireless NIC is Broadcom 1370 WLAN Mini-PCI Card, 4318 chipset. I tried using NDISWRAPER along with XP driver but system failed to detect my NIC. Anyone got this to work in Redhat? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Yes, infact my Acer Aspire 5100 has the broadcom 4318 wireless interface;

06:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

It is best to use the Windows drivers from here:

32-bit OS; ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/note...er/80211bg.zip

64-bit OS; ftp://ftp.support.acer-euro.com/note...bit/80211g.zip

Check the /etc/modprobe.conf file for the line entry; alias wlan0 ndiswrapper
(add if missing)

Check for the ifcfg-wlan0 file in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts directory which reads like;

# Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
# for the documentation of these parameters.
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=wlan0
HWADDR=
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
IPADDR=
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
GATEWAY=
DOMAIN=
ONBOOT=yes
ONHOTPLUG=no
USERCTL=yes
IPV6INIT=no
PEERDNS=no
ESSID=
CHANNEL=
MODE=
RATE=
KEY=

Verify the driver is installed for use with ndiswrapper:

$ ndiswrapper -l
bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4318) present

And that the bcm43xx module is blacklisted if need be, add to the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file the following lines at the bottom:

# wireless
blacklist bcm43xx

Reboot the system.

FYI: it is a good idea to install the dkms-ndiswrapper rpm package instead, it makes life a tiny bit easier for you after a kernel upgrade as the new ndiswrapper module is autobuilt for you on startup of the new kernel:

http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/dkms-ndiswrapper/

You will need to install the dkms package also;

http://dag.wieers.com/rpm/packages/dkms/

You should have the rest needed already in place (the kernel-devel rpm packages and such).

Thanks Lenard for the response. I finally got it working :), much appreciated...

Could use some help with this same issue
 

I have much the same problem as the user that created this thread.

I am using a Dell Latitude 110L with Red Hat Enterprise 4. The wireless card is a Broadcom 1370.

I followed the instructions listed here and everything went fine until I tried to start the wireless card. The device states it is not present.

I used the rpms listed at the bottom of the post to install ndiswrapper.

I have checked the files listed and updated them accordingly.

When I run ndiswrapper -l I get:
bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4318) present

But when I try to activate the device the system tells me.

ndiswrapper device wlan0 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization.

A reboot yields the same result.

The only thing in the tutorial I could not do was the part about blacklisting.

"And that the bcm43xx module is blacklisted if need be, add to the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file the following lines at the bottom:

# wireless
blacklist bcm43xx"

That file does not seem to exist in my install. From the way I am reading the post it seems this may not be an issue, is that correct?

Any help would be greatly appreciated as I am going bonkers.

Thanks,

Ean

How exactly are you attempting to activate the device?

What does the /etc/modprobe.conf file look like?

Show the output from the following typed commands;

cat /proc/modules | grep ndis
cat/proc/modeules | grep bcm
locate bcm43xx.ko

In some cases it one may need to use the physical switch on the laptop before the device can activate.

Thanks for the quick response.

I'm not near the laptop right now, I will get the output from those commands and post them later tonight.

There isn't a physical switch for the wireless on this laptop. I ran windows on it for a few years, so the hardware is familiar to me.

The one thing I need to do is I noticed last night the software config for the wireless never seems to stay "on" in the BIOS.

I want to rule this out as the issue before I start "blaming" anything else :)

There is a BIOS patch from Dell I'm going to apply tonight and see how that goes.

I will keep you posted and thanks for the help!

Ean

Hopefully the BIOS upgrade fixes the issue. FYI: in some cases the LED light is also the switch.

Just had a chance to work on it again.
 

The BIOS update did not fix the issue.

To answer your questions:

I am activating it through the network control interface in the xwindows gui.

My etc/modprobe.conf file looks like this:

The second issue is I ran the commands you mentioned, but I do not get an output.

First it told me I needed to run updatedb, so I did.

I ran the commands again and still I did not get an output.

Ean

The standard RHEL4 kernels do not have the bcm43xx modules available so I would not expect to see the module listed by the locate command, or loaded. The ndiswrapper module is not loaded either which need to be loaded, so I will ask:

How did you install ndiswrapper??? From an rpm package like Dag's (rpmforge) dkms-ndiswrapper package??

Try manually loading the driver(as root); /sbin/modprobe -v ndiswrapper
Then manually active the interface: /sbin/ifup wlan0

Show the output from: /sbin/iwlist scan