AntiX 8.5 Wireless Help

jpb · posted: 2010-07-20 10:48

I'm a complete newbie to Linux - been a Windows guy for years and years, make my living using MS dev tools, in fact - but I've been meaning to try Linux for years, since I don't mind tinkering and getting my hands dirty. So I've got this old laptop - a Dell Latitude D600 - that's had XP running on it for years, but XP runs like molasses at this point on this box, so I figured this would be the perfect opportunity to try out Linux. Did my research, saw that AntiX was lightweight and fairly noob-friendly, so I downloaded the 8.5-full distro and burned myself a LiveCD.

I wanted to try it out before repartitioning and installing, so I booted into the LiveCD and gave it a spin. Really like the look and feel of it, and even running from the CD it was fairly zippy. Then I went to wicd to get myself running on wireless, and this is where I've stumbled.

This laptop has both a wired ethernet NIC and a wireless card in it. Wicd sees the NIC just fune at eth0, but nothing appears at all in the wireless box. Same with ceni - eth0 is configured for the wired NIC, but nothing for the wireless (which, if I've been reading the various forum posts and blog entries right, should normally be sitting at wlan0).

The wireless card is an Intel TrueMobile 1450 MiniPCI on the Broadcom BCM4309 chipset. As I understand it, the Broadcom wireless chipset isn't natively supported (wireless being one of the harder devices to natively support because of the rapid pace of change in dirvers, among other things). I've seen conflicting (dare I say dueling?) blog and forum entries, stating either the b43 or wl drivers worked for them. As I understand it, the b43 drivers are community (open-source) and the wl drivers are proprietary, from Broadcom. But - and maybe this is simply years in MS dev land getting in my way - I cannot figure out, for the life of me, where to get the correct driver, how to load it or install it on my system, and whether or not ndiswrapper needs to be used for it or not.

Basically, my question is: how, in total noob-speak, can I get my AntiX to see my wireless card?

Before it's asked for, some info AntiX using ROXterm:

lspci -v:

...snip...
02:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4309 802.11a/b/g (rev 03)
Subsystem: Dell Truemobile 1450 MiniPCI
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 32, IRQ 11
Memory at fafee000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable)

inxi -F

System: Host: antix1 Kernel 2.6.32-1-mepis i686 (32 bit) Distro antiX-M8.5-486 Marek Edelman 11 April 2010
CPU: Single core Intel Premium M (UP) cache 2048 KB flags (see sse2) bmips 3198.99 clocked at 1600.00 MHz
Graphics: Card ATI Radeon RV250 [Mobility FireGL 9000] tty res: 80x24 Gfx Data: N/A for root user
Audio: Card Intel 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller driver Intel ICH at ports b800 bc40 BusID: 00:1f.5
Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture Version 1.0.21
Network: Card-1 Broadcom NetXtreme BCM5705M Gigabit Ethernet driver tg3 v:3.102 BusID: 02:00.0
Card-2 Broadcom BCM4309 802.11a/b/g BusID: 02:03.0
Disks: HDD Total Size: 40.0GB (-) 1: /dev/hda FUJITSU MHT2040AH 40.0GB
Partition: ID: / Size: 16M used: 100K (1%) fs: rootfs
Info: Processes 81 Uptime 36 min Memory 94.5/502.0MB Runlevel 5 Client Shell
inxi 1.4.9

As you can see, no driver is listed for the wireless Broadcom card.

iwconfig:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

ifconfig

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0f:1f:cc:a0:cb
UP 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:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt: 11

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 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:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

If anyone can help, that'd be awesome. Let me know if there's any other info I can provide.

Thanks,
Josh

oldhoghead · posted: 2010-07-20 14:04

Josh,

Welcome to antiX, see if we can get you going,

how bout in terminal & post the output of :

lsmod

If you want you can try as root in terminal, use su or sux, not sudo

modprobe -v b43legacy

then try ceni again

cheers,
oldhoghead

jpb · posted: 2010-07-21 00:44

oldhoghead:

Thanks for the quick reply. Here's the output from lsmod:

Code: Select all

Module                  Size  Used by
radeon                398575  2 
ttm                    26450  1 radeon
drm_kms_helper         16943  1 radeon
drm                   106180  5 radeon,ttm,drm_kms_helper
i2c_algo_bit            3457  1 radeon
i2c_core               12377  3 radeon,drm,i2c_algo_bit
ppdev                   3954  0 
lp                      5350  0 
acpi_cpufreq            3522  0 
cpufreq_userspace       1228  0 
cpufreq_stats           1641  0 
cpufreq_powersave        578  0 
cpufreq_conservative     3854  0 
fuse                   44557  1 
snd_intel8x0           19735  0 
snd_intel8x0m           8064  0 
snd_ac97_codec         79168  2 snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m
ac97_bus                 682  1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm_oss            27857  0 
snd_mixer_oss          10229  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                46372  4 snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_midi            3276  0 
snd_rawmidi            13381  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_midi_event      3924  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq                36185  2 snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_timer              13350  2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
yenta_socket           16255  4 
ide_gd_mod             16799  0 
snd_seq_device          3613  3 snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
tg3                    87857  0 
rsrc_nonstatic          5714  1 yenta_socket
pcmcia                 16002  0 
snd                    33112  10 snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
libphy                 10862  1 tg3
joydev                  6920  0 
pcmcia_core            20006  3 yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic,pcmcia
soundcore               3506  1 snd
thermal                 9114  0 
video                  14545  0 
processor              23139  2 acpi_cpufreq
dcdbas                  3860  0 
parport_pc             15579  1 
shpchp                 20956  0 
serio_raw               2916  0 
output                  1116  1 video
parport                22238  3 ppdev,lp,parport_pc
button                  3490  0 
battery                 3686  0 
ac                      1552  0 
evdev                   5733  17 
intel_agp              19027  1 
pci_hotplug            17929  1 shpchp
psmouse                31935  0 
snd_page_alloc          4729  3 snd_intel8x0,snd_intel8x0m,snd_pcm
thermal_sys             9294  3 thermal,video,processor
rng_core                2194  0 
uhci_hcd               16613  0 
aufs                  108406  1 
exportfs                2710  1 aufs

And I gave the modprobe -v b43legacy, which crashed and burned with the following:

Code: Select all

insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-1-mepis/kernel/drivers/leds/led-class.ko 
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-1-mepis/kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko 
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-1-mepis/kernel/net/wireless/cfg80211.ko 
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-1-mepis/kernel/net/mac80211/mac80211.ko 
install true
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.32-1-mepis/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/b43legacy/b43legacy.ko 
FATAL: Error inserting b43legacy (/lib/modules/2.6.32-1-mepis/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/b43legacy/b43legacy.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

So, I looked at dmesg; here are the relevant entries:

Code: Select all

b43legacy: Unknown symbol ssb_device_is_enabled
b43legacy: Unknown symbol ssb_pcicore_dev_irqvecs_enable
b43legacy: Unknown symbol ssb_bus_may_powerdown
b43legacy: Unknown symbol ssb_dma_free_consistent
b43legacy: Unknown symbol ssb_set_devtypedata
b43legacy: Unknown symbol ssb_device_disable
b43legacy: Unknown symbol ssb_dma_alloc_consistent
b43legacy: Unknown symbol ssb_dma_set_mask
b43legacy: Unknown symbol ssb_device_enable
b43legacy: Unknown symbol ssb_driver_unregister
b43legacy: Unknown symbol __ssb_driver_register
b43legacy: Unknown symbol ssb_bus_powerup
b43legacy: Unknown symbol ssb_dma_translation

So, I kinda-sorta know what's going on here. lsmod is showing that no module for the b43 drivers are loaded in the system. I'm guessing"modprobe" is a module loader (amd the -v switch is to turn on verbose messaging), and that I was trying to load the b43legacy module that should be present on the system, just not yet loaded. I'm unsure as to what exactly all the"unknown symbol" entries in dmesg are, but they can't be good.

So, that's where I'm at. At this point, I feel like I know just enough to be dangerous. Kinda fun, in a weird way. Glad that I'm figuring this out on LiveCD.

Thanks for your help so far, and any suggestions you might have in the future.
Josh

oldhoghead · posted: 2010-07-21 03:15

jpb,

Ok, lets try a different tack,

you will need to comment out these lines: in /etc/modprobe.d/b43.conf as root.

ssb true b43 true

then: modeprobe ssb && modprobe b43

then restart ceni.

and see if it picks up your wireless

btw- I like to use rox-filer to do my editing, so in terminal I type
sux
(enter root pw)
then
rox

that will open rox as root and make your edits, also when I said to comment out the lines like this:

not commented out
install b43 true
install b44 true
install ssb true

b43 and ssb are commented out
#install b43 true
install b44 true
#install ssb true

cheers,
oldhoghead

jpb · posted: 2010-07-21 15:58

Success! That did the trick. Ceni now has wlan0 in its list of connections to configure, and if I open wicd and specify the wireless setting to use wlan0, I can see available networks (I'm at work right now, so I obviously can't see my home network and connect, but I have confidence I'll be able to do that @ home tonight.

Thanks for the assist, oldhoghead. I think I'm just about ready to make the jump and install antiX for real.

Just to satisfy my curiosity: why would commenting out the install lines in b43.conf for ssb and b43, then manually loading ssb and b43, work in this case?

oldhoghead · posted: 2010-07-21 20:16

Great, just do the same when you install and you should be good to go.
As for commenting out the lines, it is the way it was setup, removing the '#' at the beginning of a line in order to disable the driver, thus commenting it out to enable!! I know backwards in my mind too!!

cheers,
oldhoghead

eriefisher · posted: 2010-07-21 22:02

I believe by default Mepis is set up to use a different driver(wl or ndiswrapper). Editing that file just tells the kernel to not use one driver but use the other.

At the top of that file you should see reference to ndis=no as well in /etc/defaults/mepis-network. I would edit it as well.

aphid69 · posted: 2010-07-22 05:01

This procedure worked for me as well, for a Dell Wireless 1370 card on a Broadcom BCM4318 controller in an old Dell D810 (2.13 GHz Pentium M, 512 MB RAM) that my father has received. He currently uses XP Pro (since that's what was loaded, and no easy clean install w/o disks), but--as noted in another thread--that's slow as molasses these days, so I'm trying to encourage him to migrate to Linux before he gets too exasperated and flings the thing against a wall.

Thanks a lot to oldhoghead for rapid and thorough troubleshooting/solution!

And thanks also to jpb for raising the issue in such a succinct and clear manner.

Cheers.

Will

oldhoghead · posted: 2010-07-22 13:40

aphid69,

Glad it worked for you, hope your Dad converts, I did 4 years ago, and was the best move I ever made, getting away from MS.

cheers,
oldhoghead

jpb · posted: 2010-07-22 13:52

eriefisher wrote:At the top of that file you should see reference to ndis=no as well in /etc/defaults/mepis-network. I would edit it as well.

Odd. The b43.conf file does not have"ndis=no" at the top, nor does /etc/defaults/mepis-network exist. In fact, there is no"defaults" directory under /etc - there is a"default" directory at /etc, but no"mepis-network" underneath that.

I've seen this advice a couple of times in my meanderings as I've been playing around with antiX and trying to get the wireless working. Is this something that was present in previous versions and got ripped out in 8.5? Just curious...

secipolla · posted: 2010-07-29 20:26

jpb wrote: Odd. The b43.conf file does not have"ndis=no" at the top, nor does /etc/defaults/mepis-network exist. In fact, there is no"defaults" directory under /etc - there is a"default" directory at /etc, but no"mepis-network" underneath that.

I've seen this advice a couple of times in my meanderings as I've been playing around with antiX and trying to get the wireless working. Is this something that was present in previous versions and got ripped out in 8.5? Just curious...

Yes, mnetwork (MEPIS Network Assistant) didn't come in antiX 8.5.