WiFi
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WiFi

Wireless networking has gotten better with Kubuntu 7.04, however there are still problems for users who do not have a card supported natively. These issues are at times easy to overcome using utilities such as the bcm43xx-fwcutter for some Broadcom devices, or NdisWrapper for other non-native wireless adapters. The following help sections will follow a generic route for getting wireless to work with either NdisWrapper or bcm43xx-fwcutter. If neither of the following sections help with your issue, then it is recommended that you use another connection source to the Internet and read through the many topics for wireless connections. The following are just a couple locations to review.

How do I...

...figure out which wireless card my system uses?

KInfoCenter: (KMenuSystemKInfoCenter Info Center) A KDE utility that provides information about your computer system. Once KInfoCenter is opened, select PCI from the left hand window. This will display all of the PCI information about your system. Scroll down until you see Network controller:. This will provide information about your wireless adapt or.

Command line: (KMenuSystemKonsole Terminal Program) This will open up Konsole providing you with a terminal or the command line. Once you are sitting at the command prompt simply type lspci and press the Enter key. Locate the Network controller: line as this swill provide information about your wireless adapt or.

...get my Broadcom wireless adapt or to work?

Since kernel version 2.6.17, support for Broadcom wireless devices were included. This means that there are some Broadcom devices that work out of the box, however there are still many that don't. If your Broadcom wireless device isn't working then you have one of two choices; bcm43xx-fwcutter or NdisWrapper. With the bcm43xx-fwcutter utility there are only a select few devices that actually work. To see the devices that are currently supported please review http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/?go=devices. If your device is not supported then it is advised that you use the NdisWrapper utility. For information on configuring your device with the bcm43xx-fwcutter utility please see the section called “Broadcom” and for configuring your device with NdisWrapper utility please see the section called “NdisWrapper”.

...configure encryptions such as WEP or WPA

With KNetworkManager you simple click the application icon in the system tray and select the wireless network you want to connect to. When you click on a network that has encryption enabled, you will get a pop-up dialog to enter this information. Once entered, this information is stored within the KWallet utility. This allows you to connect to that network in the future just by entering your KWallet password.

NdisWrapper

Command Line Intensive

Configuration of NdisWrapper is command line intensive. There are currently no graphical clients to aide in this configuration. Even though it is command line oriented, the instructions are easy to follow.

NdisWrapper is considered the wireless fix-all for Linux. A great percentage of wireless adapters that are not supported natively or with other utilities are supported with NdisWrapper. Installation is the same as it is for any other application in Kubuntu. If you are uncomfortable with installation practices then it is advised that you review the Adding Applications document.

Once you have installed NdisWrapper your next step would be to locate the Windows drivers either on a CD or the Internet. Drivers for Windows XP are preferred, however Windows 2000 drivers will usually work just as well. Once you have located the CD or the drivers on the Internet, you will want to copy them to a local folder on your system. In some instances, you may have your drivers in a driver.zip or a driver.exe file. If it the file is in a .zip format, you can unzip the file by either right clicking on the file and selecting Extract from the pop-up menu. If the file is in a .exe format, then you will have to install the cabextract utility and open up Konsole to navigate the correct directory. Once you have navigated to the directory storing the .exe file, you would type cabextract filename.exe. This will extract or unzip the file to the directory you are in. The driver will be in the .inf format, so what you will want to do is type sudo ndiswrapper -i filename.inf and press Enter. If successful you shouldn't receive any errors. This command has gone ahead and loaded or installed the drivers in the NdisWrapper module. To see if these drivers worked, simply type sudo modprobe ndiswrapper and press Enter. Test to see if you have a network and/or Internet connection.

If everything went well then the final step would be to load the NdisWrapper module by default. To do this simple type sudo sh -c "echo ndiswrapper >> /etc/modules" and press Enter. This will automatically start NdisWrapper at boot time.

If everything didn't go so well, the issue may not be with NdisWrapper but possibly with KNetworkManager. To see if in fact that KNetworkManager was at fault, simply click the system tray icon and select Quit. Once KNetworkManager has closed, go back to the command line and type sudo modprobe -r ndiswrapper && sudo modprobe ndiswrapper and press Enter. This will unload NdisWrapper and then reload it. After you have reloaded it, test your network and/or Internet connection again.

Broadcom

Since the 6.10 (Edgy Eft) release, the kernel has included driver support for some Broadcom cards utilizing the bcm43xx-fwcutter utility. Currently there are not that many supported cards, however development continues. To see if your card is supported please review the list at http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/?go=devices. If your card is not included in the list, then refer to the section called “NdisWrapper”.

To get started, the first thing you will need to do is install the bcm43xx-fwcutter utility. For more information on installing extra applications, please refer to the Adding Applications section.

Once you have bcm43xx-fwcutter installed you can read through a list of links to various drivers for your Broadcom device. To do this open up Konsole (KMenuSystemKonsole Terminal Program) and type at the prompt zless /usr/share/doc/bcm43xx-fwcutter/README.gz and press Enter. You have the choice of picking a driver from that list, driver CD, or manufacturer's website. The file you are interested in using is the bcwl5.sys file. If you have the drivers in a .zip format, unzip the files to a local directory. If the drivers are in a .exe format, you will need to install Cabextract. With Cabextract, at the command line locate the directory where you downloaded or copied the file to. Once there type at the prompt cabextract filename.exe and press Enter. This will extract the file into the directory you are in.

Now that you have the driver files extracted, navigate with Konsole to the directory with the driver files. Next you will use the bcm43xx-fwcutter utility to install the drivers. To do so, at the prompt type sudo bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware/$(uname -r) bcwl5.sys. You may receive a couple of warnings which are nothing to worry about. If it didn't work, it will provide an error that states either driver isn't supported or the driver is to old. If this is the case, you would repeat this step using one of the drivers from the list in the README.gz file shown above. If you continue to have issues, connect to the Internet with another source and review the following sites:

If you continue to have issues with loading the drivers, then you may need to use the NdisWrapper utility.

Now if you went through the driver installation without any major errors or issues, the next step would be to load the new module you created in the previous step. At the command line type sudo modprobe bcm43xx and press Enter. To see if the module loaded and is working, at the prompt type iwconfig and press Enter. If it works it should return the name of the interface as ethX where X is the number of the device. In most cases it may be eth1 if you have a CAT-5 Ethernet device already installed and configured. Also to test and see if your device can scan, at the command prompt type sudo iwlist ethX scan and press Enter. Don't worry if it reports no networks found as your connection may still be working. Test and see if you can connect to your network and the Internet. If everything has worked then you will want to add the module so it will load at boot. To do so, at the command prompt type sudo sh -c "echo bcm43xx >> /etc/modules" and press Enter.

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