Re: [BLUG] help desperately needed for wireless on Debian

This would be another reason why I favor Ubuntu to Debian.

Most wireless firmware is closed source. The reasons for this are
related to FCC regulation. However, being closed source also means
Debian won't normally ship with it. (Someone please correct me if I am
wrong. -- I may well be wrong. Last time I used Debian on a laptop I
didn't use wireless.)

You need to download and install the firmware.

http://www.langerland.de/linux/bcm43xx/firmware.html

Unfamiliar with firmware? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firmware

Let us know the results with the firmware installed. :)

Cheers,
Steven Black

On Wed, Apr 14, 2010 at 9:33 PM, Loren Serfass
<lorenserfass331@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>     I've been trying for about 12 hours to get my wireless internet
> connection working, using my old laptop and a new PCMCIA card.  I've
> followed directions from several websites (some are listed in this
> email), installed lots of tools, and read lots of user forums where
> people with the similar problems are going around in circles and
> occasionally stumbling by luck on a solution that happens to work for
> their specific situation.  Before I give up, perhaps the solution will
> be obvious to someone in a local group.
>     In brief, the websites say my card should work, and my wireless
> interface is now "configured" and "active."  But the "link" light on
> the card is still off, and when I try wpa_supplicant the PING fails.
> The iwconfig command shows that there is still no ESSID and the Access
> Point is "Invalid."  When I run dmesg, it shows the following messages
> over and over:
> bcm43xx: Error: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed.
> bcm43xx: core_up for active 802.11 core failed (-2)
>     I don't quite understand what these terms mean.
>     If someone could help, I would appreciate it tremendously!
>
>     Here are some details to explain some of the steps I've taken.
> According to linuxwireless.org, my PCMCIA card should work with a b43
> driver (my card is a Linksys WPC54G ver. 3 with a BCM4318 chipset), so
> I've followed their directions at
> http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
> The b43-fwcutter program runs automatically when I install it using
> synaptic.  Afterwards, there are b43 and b43legacy folders in
> /etc/firmware/, which seems to be correct.  But the connection doesn't
> work.  I don't know how to verify that the firmware has actually been
> loaded onto the device, which the page claims is necessary.
>     There's a completely different set of directions at
> http://www.tuxmagazine.com/node/1000167
> This approach uses ndiswrapper to translate between a windows driver
> and the operating system.  I've tried installing it and I successfully
> loaded the module into the kernel.  Everything went OK until the
> section entitled "Set up networking."  I used the "Network Settings"
> GUI, which takes a long time but eventually says that the wireless
> interface is active.  When I say "ifup eth2" to the terminal, it says
> "interface eth2 already configured."  However, this doesn't solve the
> ESSID and Access Point problems, and the directions don't help.
>
> Thanks,
> Loren
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> BLUG@linuxfan.com
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>

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