Connection to wireless network fails with manual configuration

[Ludovico Fischer]

I'm using ndiswrapper with a broadcom 43xx card pci card. I use WPA2 encrypted, closed (hidden)network If I open network-admin disable roaming, and set up a manual configuration, a box stating 'changing configuration' appears. There are no error messages, but the connection does not work (can't access the internet). If I reselect the wieless connection in network-admin and click 'Properties', the ESSID is still correct, but the encryption is set as 'WPA' instead of WPA2, and the password field has become empty.

[Ludovico Fischer (ludovicofischer)]

I'm on Gutsy Tribe 5

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

have you tried to use the bcm43xx driver?

Did you use previous gutsy tribes as well? Was it broken there too?

[Ludovico Fischer (ludovicofischer)]

If I remember correctly, I had considered the bcm43xx driver, but I have a card for which it does not work (I'm on the iMac core2duo)
I did not try it in the other tribes, as roaming mode seemed to work OK. I remember it did not work in Feisty Fawn, though, where roaming work worked much worse than now too (for me at least).

[Ludovico Fischer (ludovicofischer)]

Actually, this behaviour of reverting to WPA in the dialog box is in another bug I filed:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/127373

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

On Fri, Aug 31, 2007 at 03:43:08PM -0000, Ludovico Fischer wrote:
> If I remember correctly, I had considered the bcm43xx driver, but I have a card for which it does not work (I'm on the iMac core2duo)
> I did not try it in the other tribes, as roaming mode seemed to work OK. I remember it did not work in Feisty Fawn, though, where roaming work worked much worse than now too (for me at least).
>

Would be cool if you could give it a try.

Thanks,

 - Alexander

[Ludovico Fischer (ludovicofischer)]

Here is the output of lspci concerning the wireless card:
 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Unknown device 4328 (rev 01)

The good news is that bcm43xx now works with this card, although it's still unreported on their site. I used modprobe -r to unload ndiswrapper: wireless connection fell. Then loaded bcm43xx: roaming mode was available again, and worked as previously.

The bad news is I still can't use manual config. Each time I repeat the manual configuration I get a different result. Sometimes it reverts as previously to WPA and no password; once I managed to have the network appear with 'iwlist wlan0 scan', but there seemed to be no Intenet connection; another time when I tried to deactivate the wireless by unchecking the box and activated the wired connection, I could not connect with either anymore no matter what I did, I restarted to check in Mac OS X if it wasn't an ISP problem; it was not, and when I reeentered Ubuntu roaming mode was working again.

So , even with bcm43xx, Manual Configuration does not work here.

[Ludovico Fischer (ludovicofischer)]

Im' sorry, I think I do not know Linux sufficiently. I tried removing completely ndiswrapper-common, and ndiswrapper-utils, and the computer does not recognize the wireless card anymore. Does it mean that even after doing modprobe -r ndiswrapper, I was still using it for my connection, and I haven't tested bcm43xx at all?

Sorry if I have given you misleading info.

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

for me bcm43xx works pretty flawlessly on gutsy. Have you run bcm43xx-fwcutter recently?

[Ludovico Fischer (ludovicofischer)]

I have run it when you suggested I try the bcm43xx. I also tried it on the Dell driver that works with ndiswrapper, on the driver provided here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=185174; did modprobe bcm43xx; tried various rebootings etc.In fact, I ended alwways using the same piece of software, bcmwl5.sys. Here's the content of my /lib/firmware folder after these operations
bcm43xx_initval01.fw bcm43xx_initval06.fw bcm43xx_microcode2.fw
bcm43xx_initval02.fw bcm43xx_initval07.fw bcm43xx_microcode4.fw
bcm43xx_initval03.fw bcm43xx_initval08.fw bcm43xx_microcode5.fw
bcm43xx_initval04.fw bcm43xx_initval09.fw bcm43xx_pcm4.fw
bcm43xx_initval05.fw bcm43xx_initval10.fw bcm43xx_pcm5.fw

Iwconfig never lists any connection.
Things did not work for this guy either:
http://www.penlug.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/LinuxHardwareInfoAppleiMac24

Maybe ther's something I'm missing...

[Ludovico Fischer (ludovicofischer)]

I tried to configure with th ecommand line with ndiswrapper and wpa_supplicant. Everything works. I now think it's a duplicate of:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/50214