I've got CentOS 5 installed on my hp pavilion ze 5300 laptop and the network configuration UI says my wireless NIC has been correctly identified and assigned what appears to be the right Broadcom device driver on eth1. However, the inteface doesn't come up. Google doesn't find anything recent about using Linux with Broadcom except for someone's passing remark that Ubuntu 7 beta seems to work with it successfully. Everything else points to using ndiswrappers and the Windows drivers. Am I stuck going that route? Has anyone successfully used wireless with the stock drivers? Has anyone who had experience with ndiswrappers in earlier versions of CentOS (which I haven't) gone through the effort to get it working on CentOS5? Clues, troubleshooting suggestions, etc. appreciated.
Quoting Bart Schaefer <barton.schaefer at gmail.com>:> I've got CentOS 5 installed on my hp pavilion ze 5300 laptop and the > network configuration UI says my wireless NIC has been correctly > identified and assigned what appears to be the right Broadcom device > driver on eth1. However, the inteface doesn't come up. > > Google doesn't find anything recent about using Linux with Broadcom > except for someone's passing remark that Ubuntu 7 beta seems to work > with it successfully. Everything else points to using ndiswrappers > and the Windows drivers.Is it a bcm43xx card? check your dmesg output and see if it needs a firmware file. If so, that's where you start. If not, ndiswrapper works :) -- Steven Haigh Email: netwiz at crc.id.au Web: http://www.crc.id.au Phone: (03) 9017 0597 - 0404 087 474
On Wed, May 9, 2007 7:59 pm, Bart Schaefer wrote:> I've got CentOS 5 installed on my hp pavilion ze 5300 laptop and the > network configuration UI says my wireless NIC has been correctly > identified and assigned what appears to be the right Broadcom device > driver on eth1. However, the inteface doesn't come up. > > Google doesn't find anything recent about using Linux with Broadcom > except for someone's passing remark that Ubuntu 7 beta seems to work > with it successfully. Everything else points to using ndiswrappers > and the Windows drivers. > > Am I stuck going that route? Has anyone successfully used wireless > with the stock drivers? > Has anyone who had experience with ndiswrappers in earlier versions of > CentOS (which I haven't) gone through the effort to get it working on > CentOS5? > > Clues, troubleshooting suggestions, etc. appreciated.Wireless (Broadcom) appeared to work fine on my Compaq Presario V2000, but the connection kept dropping every hour or so, so I gave up and reinstalled Fedora.
"Bart Schaefer" <barton.schaefer at gmail.com> wrote:> SoftMAC: Scanning finished > > SoftMAC: Queueing Authentication Request to 00:aa:bb:cc:dd:ee > > SoftMAC: Cannot associate without being authenticated, requested authentication > > SoftMAC: Already requested authentication, waiting... > > SoftMAC: Sent Authentication Request to 00:aa:bb:cc:dd:ee. > > SoftMAC: Open Authentication with 00:aa:bb:cc:dd:ee failed, error code: 13 > > bcm43xx: Radio turned offThat was as far as I got several months ago under FC6 when the native bcm43xx driver came out. There is (was?) a bugzilla for bcm43xx problems. I was able to get it to work only as long as I turned off authentication at my WAP. I recently tried bcm43xx with CentOS5 and the system froze during boot. This was with an x86_64 kernel. I went back to ndiswrapper which seems to work. I had an odd lockup/panic problem that was resolved with the 1.43 version of ndiswrapper. Cheers, Dave -- Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. -- Ambrose Bierce
"Bart Schaefer" <barton.schaefer at gmail.com> wrote:> Is wpa_supplicant installed? > > > It is, and I tried enabling it as well, but it spews a bunch of errors > at boot time and exits. It's apparent I need to edit > /etc/sysconfig/wpa_supplicant, but if I'm *not* using ndiswrapper I > don't know what to use in the DRIVERS= assignment. So that's > chkconfig'd off again.Try: DRIVERS=wext This actually worked better for me than DRIVERS=ndiswrapper when I use ndiswrapper. I think it tells wpa_supplicant that the kernel driver supports the generic wireless extensions. As an example, I can get WPA-PSK authentication to work with DRIVERS=wext but not with ndiswrapper even though I'm running ndiswrapper. I also did some googling and it looks like quite a bit of bcm43xx work has gone into kernels after 2.6.18. No idea if these changes have been back ported by upstream to the current 2.6.18 kernel. I have some friends visiting now but I'm planning on giving bcm43xx a whirl again with the 2.6.21 kernel. Cheers, Dave -- Politics, n. Strife of interests masquerading as a contest of principles. -- Ambrose Bierce
On Friday 11 May 2007, Mogens Kjaer wrote:> This is what I saw as well. Broadcom wireless works in FC6, > not in Centos 5.FC6 is on kernel 2.6.20 currently, and CentOS 5 is at 2.6.18. It is highly likely that the 2.6.20 bcm43xx driver will not be backported to 2.6.18 by RedHat; whether it even CAN be backported to 2.6.18 is questionable. And, no, CentOS 5 for its entire 7 year life will not have a kernel version bump; it is forever on 2.6.18, following the upstream's model. Thus CentOS 5 will not be a good choice (RHEL5 for that matter neither!) for folks needing a good bcm43xx driver (that includes me, by the way). If you want to stay with an RPM-based system, you might very well want to track Fedora for the laptop; if you're not married to the idea of RPM-based distributions, you might want to check out a late ubuntu version, which has a late kernel. Before you make the attempt to run the 2.6.21 kernel in CentOS 5, understand that there can be fairly large differences in the kernels; the changes from 2.6.18 to 2.6.21 are in some areas non-trivial and could break you system in odd and intermittent ways; not to mention that by installing a custom kernel you loose the primary advantages of running CentOS in the first place. And the CentOS developers will not (and really cannot) give you any support of any kind if you run a custom kernel. If the Linux kernel developers would just make things backwards compatible, this wouldn't be an issue. But the kernel developers as a group care nothing for backwards compatibility, and regularly break things in weird and sometimes devious ways. -- Lamar Owen Chief Information Officer Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute 1 PARI Drive Rosman, NC 28772 (828)862-5554 www.pari.edu