netbook remix 9.10 wireless doesn't work on dell mini 10v

[Simon Josefsson]

I have installed netbook remix 9.10 on a dell mini 10v, and wireless didn't work out of the box. Selecting the "hardware drivers" says I can install two additional drivers, first the b43-fwcutter driver which installed fine but not improve anything. When selecting the other driver (broadcom something) it just says installing, then the window exits without any prompts (crash?).

I recall using wireless on this machine with 9.04 before.

[Simon Josefsson (simon-josefsson)]

Some additional information:

I reinstalled netbook 9.10, and instead of first selecting to install the b43-fwcutter driver, I selected "Broadcom STA wireless driver", and then wireless worked fine.

I uninstalled the broadcom driver, restarted the system and used the "Hardware drivers" tool to install the b43-fwcutter driver. It installed fine. I restarted the system, and wireless did not work. Running "Hardware drivers" again says that b43-fwcutter is activated alright, but also offers to install the original "broadcom STA wireless driver". I selected the broadcom driver, and it says "Downloading and installing driver..." for a while and then the window quits and wireless starts to work (even though it says I have to restart the system). My system crashed at this point (black screen and not responsive), before I had a chance to actually restart the machine.

Restarting the system and wireless works. Running the "Hardware drivers" tool now only shows the "Broadcom STA wireless driver" and not the b43-fwcutter driver?!

So the workaround appears to never install the b43-fwcutter driver.

I will do a complete reinstall another time to really confirm that selecting the b43-fwcutter driver first results in unusable wireless.

[Simon Josefsson (simon-josefsson)]

I have now reinstalled. I selected b43-fwcutter, wireless did not start working. I selected the broadcom driver, and didn't restart the system but tried to connect to a wireless network which worked. Within a minute, the machine crashed in the same way as before. Restarting the system and wireless worked.

So I'm somewhat puzzled. I'm re-installing the system now in Swedish, which I did in my original installation, to see if I can manage to reproduce the original problem. I'll also restart the system between installing b43-fwcutter and the broadcom driver.

[Simon Josefsson (simon-josefsson)]

Reinstalled 9.10 remix in Swedish, installed b43-fwcutter, restarted machine, installed Broadcom driver, restarted machine, and wireless worked.

Ok, so I cannot reproduce this. :-( Closing, and sorry for the noise.

[mdye (mathewtdye)]

dell mini 9 clean install 9.10 desktop wirless drivers show but when i try to activate I get error you do not have rights for this operation or something close to that. I have done 3 clean installs and get the same error each time with desktop 9.10 but with the netbook remix 9.10 I am able to activate drivers but still have wireless problems????

[Chih-Hsyuan Ho (chih)]

mdye, you might want to file a new bug regarding the anomaly you found instead of piggybacking on this seemingly unrelated thread. In the meantime, since I also have a Dell mini 9 at hand and I would try to see if I have the same issue shortly. Thank you.

[Chih-Hsyuan Ho (chih)]

mdye, I did not notice error message on a freshly installed 9.10. However, the built-in Broadcom wireless modules did not work out of box nor were any hardware drivers available in System->Administration->Hardware Drivers. The dmesg is included for your reference. After installing the linux-backports-modules-wireless-karmic-generic packages and activate the "Broadcom B43 wireless driver", wireless started working after rebooting! Don't know why it did not work with the original b43 module that 9.10 comes with though.

[Chih-Hsyuan Ho (chih)]

CORRECTION: The wireless actually did NOT work. The wireless interface (wlan0) can be seen but the connection would always fail with "wpa_supplicant[1554]: Failed to initiate AP scan." message in /var/log/daemon.log

[Chih-Hsyuan Ho (chih)]

From a freshly installed 9.10:
1. Installed dkms package found in /pool/main/d/dkms/ of the installation media.
2. Followed the instructions stated in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/+source/jockey/+bug/443185/comments/35
3. Tried to activate "Broadcom STA wireless driver" in System->Administration->Hardware Drivers and make sure it is "activated" and is in use afterwards.
4. Got stuck in the "Authenticate" dialogue box. Input the password and the driver downloading did not seem to do anything.

[Chih-Hsyuan Ho (chih)]

Ok. It turns out that the failure in installing STA driver was caused by missing "patch" package. After manually installing it and STA driver could be activated successfully and wireless worked since.

[Doug Whitfield (douglasawh)]

Chih, What is the "patch" package of which you speak?

[Chih-Hsyuan Ho (chih)]

Douglas, the patch_2.5.9-5_i386.deb that could be found in Karmic installation media (pool/main/p/) but does not seem to be installed by default at initial installation.