Wireless and Wired help

[jwbryan]

Hey all!

Tho' I've dabbled in Linux for a number of years, I'm a novice at fairly complex tasks in the system. To remedy this, I've decided to install FC6 on my laptop. During and post-installation, there were three problems:

1. Graphics card problems: Temporarily remedied with by installing with 'linux vesa'.
2. Wireless card not installed.
3. Wired card not working.

My laptop is a Dell Inspiron e1405 with the following (note the NONSTANDARD wireless):

1. Graphics: Intel 945GM.
2. Wireless: Dell Wireless 802.11n 1500 (also a Broadcom 43xv or BCM43xv)
3. Wired: Broadcom 440x (probably a 4401)

The problems with the graphics isn't a big deal. I've read that once I get the updated drivers, my video should be in good shape. The problem now is getting those drivers!

To get the network to go, I've tried the following:

Troubleshoot wireless:
1. Add another broadcom card to ETH1. This didn't work
2. Copy Windows copy of the BCM driver and run FWCUTTER (v6). This didn't work; fwcutter complained that it didn't recognize the MD5 hash on my driver (BCMWL6.SYS).
3. Further research turned up very little.

I then moved to working on the wired connection.
1. Tried plugging up to a network; no go. Rebooting didn't help.
2. Tried activating the connection, again nothing
3. Researched the problem here (and elsewhere). It seems the solution thus far is to recompile the Kernel because of a problem with XEN support. This is too much work when I will only use the wireless connection anyway.

So, at this point, I have no solutions. My main goal is to get the wireless working, but I'll take anything at this point just to get a network connection so I can get updates. Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance!
Jason

[stevea]

There is some question about which devices occur on your laptop. Please type "lspci" from a root shell and post the results.

The website http://www.linux-on-laptops.com is alwas a good starting point (and www.google.com/linux the best search engine).

This guy http://mikey.com/mikey/personalinfo/...ron_1405E.html says his dell 1405e has an Intel3945 wireless (but I guess you have the optional 802.11N) , and a 950GM. YMMV.

Here is a thread of someone getting this wireless up on Ubuntu. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=342558
You can do the same on FC6, but use "yum install kernel-devel" instead of the apt-get command. Many people here (not me) are familia with ndiswrapper.

I think your wired network (bcm440x) should be handled by the b44.ko driver that comes with FCn.

Does "lsmod | grep b44" show anything ? If not type "modprobe b44
Does "ifconfig -a" show any interfaces ?
Are there any messages in "dmesg | less" what indicat ehte driver failed ?

I'd suggest you remove the XEN kernels and use the non-virtualized ones unless you are urgently trying to use the virtualization. The reason is that I believe that XEN project on Linux is going away - the kernel based KVM appears in the 2.6.20 and appears much better on the surface.

[stevea]

Also it looks likie the i810 driver comes w/ FC6 and supports the 945GM.
Try System->administration->Display
Select the second tab (hardware) and click "videocard", then select the i810. Youll have to logout & login to test this.

You may want to do this "cp /etc/X11/xorg.conf /etc/X11/xorg.conf.vesa" as backup before running the display command above.

[jwbryan]

Thanks Steve!

I'll play around with the wireless later this morning and see what I can get based on those websites. I'll also report back what I find from the commands. If I continue to have problems I'll punt and reinstall without XEN support.

As for video, my understanding is that the drivers that I have are a little flakey and work much better once updated...of course, updating is the problem right now. :-) Finally, I agree about backing-up the xorg.conf. I had actually intended to edit it by hand and change out the reference from VESA to I810...but the GUI way is probably much better. All the configurations being in GUI are strange to me, and - thus - not the first place I look. :-)

Again, thanks so much for your help. I'll report back what I find today!
Jason

[jwbryan]

I couldn't wait, so I went ahead and gathered the information Steve asked for:

lspci reports:


00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
02:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0832
02:01.1 Class 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
02:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 01)
02:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 0a)
02:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 05)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Unknown device 4328 (rev 01)



I can tell you that the device ID for the BCM (4328) can't be right. The version I have also has N compatability. Broadcom's site reports that the 4328 only has the a/b/g...no N.

lsmod reports:



b44 32973 0
mii 9665 1 b44


and ifconfig reports:


lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:1845 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1845 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:4095204 (3.9 MiB) TX bytes:4095204 (3.9 MiB)

sit0 Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4
NOARP MTU:1480 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

veth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

veth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

veth2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

veth3 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

vif0.0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr FE:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

vif0.1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr FE:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

vif0.2 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr FE:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

vif0.3 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr FE:FF:FF:FF:FF:FF
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

xenbr0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:00:00:00:00:00
inet6 addr: fe80::200:ff:fe00:0/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING NOARP MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)


It is interesting to me that there isn't a ETHx here. I'm guessing this all has to do with XEN since the VETH appears with the XENBR. I'm guessing these are the virutalized layers that XEN uses to provide access back to the physical hardware...but this is only a guess. I'm no XEN expert. :-)

Anyway, at this point, I'm still without wireless or a wired connection. I'm not certain what's up but definately appreciate the help!

Thanks!
Jason