Need help w/ bcm43xx-mac80211 issues? (ndiswrapper considered harmful )

Gene Heskett gene.heskett at verizon.net
Tue Jun 5 15:18:06 UTC 2007


On Monday 04 June 2007, lee wrote:
>Had same problem, went to /etc/modprobe.d file blacklist and copy in  
> bcm43xx-mac80211 driver info. reboot and ndiswrapper worked
>
>Lee
>
>On Monday 04 June 2007, John W. Linville wrote:
>> >First, the issue that lots of people are having...if you are getting
>> >the "YOUR FIRMWARE IS TOO OLD" issue, I recommend that you follow
>> >this procedure:
>> >
>> >	# you need to be root
>> >	wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2
>> >	tar -xjvf broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2
>> >	bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware/ broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod/wl_apsta.o
>
>Since that was a newer driver than the 4.40.1 that came with xp, I did this.
>But the net result is still the same, dhcp times out.  The logged messages
>appear to be identical while its failing.  See my other, very lengthy post
>for those please.
>
Fix your quoting Lee, I wrote the above.

>> >That should fix things for most people.  However, some people still
>> >need/want to use the older driver even on devices that are (or should
>> >be) supported by the newer driver.  If you are in this situation,
>> >I recommend this procedure:
>> >
>> >	# save the file attached to this email as "bcm43xx-old-config"
>> >	# you need to be root
>> >	./bcm43xx-old-config
>> >
>> >The internals of that file look a little hairy, so I don't want people
>> >having to type the commands themselves...  :-)   Anyway, the second
>> >procedure is ONLY for those who have completed the first procedure and
>> >find the bcm43xx-mac80211 driver to be unacceptable.  This includes
>> >_some_ bcm4318 users and apparently a _few_ bcm4306 users.  This should
>> >keep most of you from having to use an unsupportable alternative
>> >like ndiswrapper.
>
>It would be nice indeed if ndiswrapper would work, but its lsmod displayed
> use count is 0.  If someone who has it working would please post that
> snippet of their lsmod report so I could compare, I'd appreciate it.

Someone did, it looked just like mine.

Here may be the secret!  Although I had told the installer to disable selinux, 
I just found this morning that the grub command line did NOT have an 
selinux=0 appended to it!  Added that by hand for a test reboot and it all 
works.  with ndiswrapper and the bcm43xx-fwcutter src file from a link John 
Lineville posted, I'm connected at 54mb/sec in the clear right now.

Needless to say that option is now in grub.conf, and the rest of the selinux 
related stuff has been stopped, probably forever.

4 damned days of beating my head bloody on these keyboards trying to make it 
work, that's a pile of that warm, smelly, greenish brown stuff on the ground 
behind the male of the bovine specie.  I even posted the logs & nobody caught 
it.

Take selinux someplace and play the "I've got a shotgun and a shovel, any 
questions?" scene with it please.  Use a whole box of shells, I don't want 
that puppy to be reviveable. Ever.

Now I have to put it on a good channel, and setup some security, at least WEP.

>> >Hth!
>> >
>> >John



-- 
Cheers, Gene
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author)
<Culus> Saens demonstrates no less than 3 tcp/ip bugs in 2.2.3




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