KDE Mint 7 and Broadcom

[penguinpete]

I have a Dell 11Z netbook with Broadcom wifi. I installed Mint 7 gnome and wifi worked great. I installed Mint 7 KDE and no wifi. I installed Mint 7 gnome again and then installed KDE through gnome, I have wifi in gnome and no wifi in KDE??!! Any ideas how I can get wifi working in KDE?

[Husse]

So you first made a normal install of Gloria KDE and then installed KDE as an option in your gnome system?
Gloria KDE uses the gnome Network Manager because the KDE one is really hopeless
Be careful now so you don't do something that stops it working in gnome
If it is a pci device please post lspci -vvnn for the Broadcom both for Gnome and KDE (only the wifi please)

[alanstanley]

Hi. I think I have the same problem. Wi-fi has never worked for me with Mint 7 KDE, but no problem at all with the Main edition.

I hope I have understood your instructions correctly Husse, but when I run the command 'lspci -vvnn' in terminal under Gnome and then KDE - this is what I get;

04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device [105b:e003]
Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 17
Region 0: Memory at f8000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: wl
Kernel modules: wl
(GNOME)

04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device [105b:e003]
Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-
Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR+ <PERR- INTx-
Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 11
Region 0: Memory at f8000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: <access denied>
(KDE)

I hope this sheds some light on things!

[Husse]

I sure sheds some light
In the KDE alternative the STA driver is not loaded, in fact no driver is loaded
You have to help the STA driver to get loaded

Code: Select all

echo "wl" | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

Reboot
You might try " sudo modprobe wl " followed by a restart of networking but I think a reboot is the best in this case

[alanstanley]

Thanks for your help, but it didn't work. I ran the command which gave me the reply 'wl', rebooted, but still no network. So I ran the command
" sudo modprobe wl " which gave this reply;

WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper, it will be ignored in a future release.
FATAL: Module wl not found.

Any more ideas???

[Husse]

" sudo modprobe wl " which gave this reply;

WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper, it will be ignored in a future release.
FATAL: Module wl not found.

Are you kidding me?
That's absurd - the wl module (the STA driver) is a Linux kernel module - it has nothing to do with ndiswrapper and Windows drivers
Perhaps you have tried to use ndiswrapper and something went wrong
I would check the md5sum of the ISO and burn again slowly and make a new install
Is this the KDE desktop on the same system or a separate install, I don't really follow you there

[alanstanley]

No - no kidding!

I haven't touched ndiswrapper or any windows driver. It is a separate installation on it's own partition.

Maybe the problem is the iso. I'll run the check sum and get back to you.....

[alanstanley]

The md5sum of the iso i used is correct. I can't find the cd I used for the installation, but when I get a chance I'll write another, check it's md5sum, and try another installation.

[alanstanley]

Ok. Burned a new DVD. Haven't installed it but when running as a live dvd no wireless network found... I seem to remember now also that I had the same problem when trying out the RC. What is going on??? Wish I had the knowledge to work it out for myself!

[Husse]

I installed the Gloria KDE a few days ago and it seems that the STA driver is not included as it is in other editions
Use ethernet and let "Hardware Drivers" look for a driver - it will hopefully install STA (wl) and problem solved