Any hope of getting my laptop's Broadcom BCM94311 wireless running
on CentOS 5? I find lots of references to using fwcutter to get
the needed firmware from Windows drivers, but there's a Catch-22:
Version of fwcutter that generate files for the bcm43xx driver
in CentOS 5 don't recognize the md5sum of any currently
available Windows driver.
Newer versions of fwcutter do recognize my Windows XP driver
files, but generate output in a newer format that is not
compatible with the bcm43xx driver.
I've been searching and fighting this for quite some time. I
have a Fedora 10 installation that runs the wireless just fine
on that laptop (Lenovo 3000 N200), but I really hate the churn
and instability of Fedora. I was hoping that CentOS 5.3 might
include a backported b43 driver, but I grabbed a preliminary
version of the new kernel (2.6.18-132), and it still has the
old bcm43xx.ko driver.
--
Bob Nichols "NOSPAM" is really part of my email address.
Do NOT delete it.
Robert Nichols wrote: Hello,> Any hope of getting my laptop's Broadcom BCM94311 wireless running > on CentOS 5?I have had that working on CentOS 5.2 on a acer extensa 5220 notebook with a BCM94311MCG wlan device and the following combination of software and firmware. - bcm43xx-fwcutter-006-3.fc8.i386.rpm - wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o Also take a look at http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43. But the maximum connection speed for that setting was 24 Mbit/s with wpa_supplicant and WPA2. Now I am using a ralink rt61 pcmcia card with CentOS 5.2 and the original driver from the ralink homepage (54 Mbit/s, WPA2). regards Olaf
At Tue, 03 Mar 2009 10:29:48 -0600 CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org> wrote:> > Any hope of getting my laptop's Broadcom BCM94311 wireless running > on CentOS 5? I find lots of references to using fwcutter to get > the needed firmware from Windows drivers, but there's a Catch-22: > > Version of fwcutter that generate files for the bcm43xx driver > in CentOS 5 don't recognize the md5sum of any currently > available Windows driver. > > Newer versions of fwcutter do recognize my Windows XP driver > files, but generate output in a newer format that is not > compatible with the bcm43xx driver. > > I've been searching and fighting this for quite some time. I > have a Fedora 10 installation that runs the wireless just fine > on that laptop (Lenovo 3000 N200), but I really hate the churn > and instability of Fedora. I was hoping that CentOS 5.3 might > include a backported b43 driver, but I grabbed a preliminary > version of the new kernel (2.6.18-132), and it still has the > old bcm43xx.ko driver.If the wireless card is on a miniPCI card, it is possible to replace it with an Intel ipw2100 type card. Going to the Intel wireless means you can use the fully supported open drivers that come with the kernels and not have to message with dealing with MS-Windows drivers or closed source drivers.>-- Robert Heller -- 978-544-6933 Deepwoods Software -- Download the Model Railroad System http://www.deepsoft.com/ -- Binaries for Linux and MS-Windows heller at deepsoft.com -- http://www.deepsoft.com/ModelRailroadSystem/
Robert Nichols wrote:> Any hope of getting my laptop's Broadcom BCM94311 wireless running > on CentOS 5?...> I was hoping that CentOS 5.3 might > include a backported b43 driver, but I grabbed a preliminary > version of the new kernel (2.6.18-132), and it still has the > old bcm43xx.ko driver.Not looking good. On the Linville test kernels page the b43 patch is listed as "discarded". http://people.redhat.com/linville/kernels/rhel5/ Might try a request at ATrpms or RPMforge for a kernel module.