Wifi on Dell mini 10 with Mint KDE Isadora

[echeddar]

Hi, all. I'm mostly new to Linux, and very new to KDE. I had the regular green version of Mint running on my Dell 10 mini, and things mostly worked really well, and wifi worked right off the bat.

But I couldn't get the Gnome panel to show me label names for open windows when the panel was arranged on the left side of the screen (text replaced by little dots,) and I saw some people on the forums saying Kicker did better. I tried a couple things, but couldn't get Kicker to install by itself, so decided to switch to KDE. Vertical real estate is key on these little screens.

Generally, I like KDE well. It might be a bit slower, but very pretty with lots of setting options all over the place. The hitch is that I can't seem to get the wifi to work. I'll post some basic specs before sharing some of the things I tried. I've only got a vague comprehension at best for most of this, but I've read a lot of wifi posts, and so here's some things I've seen shared...

The version of Mint KDE I have installed is Isadora.

Here's the wireless section of my lspci -vvnn result:
03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:000c]
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 f0100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel modules: ssb

The sticker on the bottom of the unit confirms that it's a broadcom 4312 in the machine.

The result of sudo modprobe wl is as follows:
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper, it will be ignored in a future release.
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper, it will be ignored in a future release.
FATAL: Module wl not found.
FATAL: Error running install command for wl

I started by messing with the network manager program. it could connect via wired connection, but not wireless.
I tried installing the drivers listed in the Hardware Drivers menu item, namely "fwcutter" (? This item has since disappeared from the menu, and I can't remember its name) and the Broadcom STA driver. I think, because my model number is listed under the STA driver, that that's probably the one I actually need. Neither would install, and both would either hang or eventually error out.

Following the advice of several posts, I proceeded through a lot of experiements:
1) I installed wicd. Then I read you have to uninstall the other network manager for it to work correctly, so I uninstalled network manager. Somehow, wicd didn't install correctly, and this basically hosed my ability to connect to the net at all.
2) I reinstalled mint KDE to get my ethernet working again.
2a) I noticed that having the netbook plugged in to the ethernet jack while I ran the unetbootin usb drive install made some things work better. Note to self.
3) I somehow got wicd working, and uninstalled network manager, and now am able to use wicd to surf on the ethernet wire.
4) I was still unable to get the hardware drivers to install. I can't see the error anymore, but it said something about a jocky being unable to find the files in the default repository. I did keep the contents of /var/log/jocky.log, and can post it if it would help, but it's LOOOONG, so I don't want to needlessly clutter the forum.
5) I read that ndiswrapper can cause difficulty, so I uninstalled it.
6) I read that sometimes settings can cause problems when the wireless.state file doesn't get overwritten properly, so I removed it and restarted.
7) I found this forum thread http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=109&t=52358&p=301012&hilit=wireless+broadcom+sta#p301012 which said that doing something to your audio drivers can accidentally cause your wifi to start working, so I tried it. It didn't fix the issue, but it didn't apparently break the audio, and the post made me laugh, which was badly needed.
I found a thread that showed me how to use -fix-missing with apt-get in the terminal, and I think that may have actually installed the driver, and yet, no joy.
9) I learned of sudo modprobe wl and read in its output that ndiswrapper was needed,
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper, it will be ignored in a
future release.
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper, it will be ignored in a
future release.
FATAL: Module wl not found.
FATAL: Error running install command for wl
so I reinstalled ndiswrapper. No dice.

I'm trying to be thorough here, because I've appreciated the other thorough posts I've read, and hope someone can learn from my misadventures. Apologies, though, for the lack of brevity. Also, I've been messing with this for a week, mostly late at night, and my memory is getting foggy, so some details may be off.

Any other suggestions? Thanks in advance.

[inktitan]

I have been able to get my wireless to work properly on only one distro Linux Mint 9 XFCE. If KDE is any thing similar, and I believe mostly it is not, Look for a program called Windows Wireless Drivers. This program uses the .INF driver file for Windows XP and makes them usable with Ndiswrapper. You may have tried this but i didn't see it posted specifically. When the driver is installed properly, assuming you can run said program, you should see ndiswrapper under lsmod. Also run iwconfig or ifconfig and mintwifi in the terminal will give you the same diagnostics. With ndiswrapper working properly inxi -N will show it as your driver for your wifi card. How much any of this will help you I am not sure but I had a most difficult time getting wifi to work for me. I had to switch from a 802.11/n usb adapter to a slower 802.11/g pci adapter and had to do most of the troubleshooting myself by reading vaguely similar problems. I hope you can get it working and I will do my best to provide assistance.

P.S. I try to avoid the wicd. I find the default manager to be adequate when you get it to work. But this is just preference.

[punch_t]

I have been able to get my wireless to work properly on only one distro Linux Mint 9 XFCE. If KDE is any thing similar, and I believe mostly it is not, Look for a program called Windows Wireless Drivers. This program uses the .INF driver file for Windows XP and makes them usable with Ndiswrapper. You may have tried this but i didn't see it posted specifically. When the driver is installed properly, assuming you can run said program, you should see ndiswrapper under lsmod. Also run iwconfig or ifconfig and mintwifi in the terminal will give you the same diagnostics. With ndiswrapper working properly inxi -N will show it as your driver for your wifi card. How much any of this will help you I am not sure but I had a most difficult time getting wifi to work for me. I had to switch from a 802.11/n usb adapter to a slower 802.11/g pci adapter and had to do most of the troubleshooting myself by reading vaguely similar problems. I hope you can get it working and I will do my best to provide assistance.

P.S. I try to avoid the wicd. I find the default manager to be adequate when you get it to work. But this is just preference.

I have just installed Linux Mint 10 KDE SC 4.6.2 version and had the same problem with my broadcom wlan. The I remembered that in Ubuntu 10.1 there is an option for additional drivers in Applications/System. Lo and behold it is in this version of Mint. If you can connect to the net using ethernet or a wireless dongle then you can choose the Broadcom STA driver and activate it. This works fine.

[TBABill]

Wow...you have gone through a lot to get that thing working! If this is Mint 10 KDE, you and I share some frustration. But first you must get the driver to actually install.

I have the exact same wireless device as you. What I did was plug into ethernet, update my system, then let the system activate the driver. Since you have already tried and failed to install the driver completely, that's first. Can you

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install --reinstall bcmwl-kernel-source

If that goes ok, then go back and try to let the system activate the STA driver again just as you tried the first time. It'll take care of firmware, blacklisting the b43 driver, setting up the wl driver, etc.

Once that is done, if you still cannot connect (which I could not) you may need to go into the control center and I think it's under the user administration or one of the icons in the top set of them (I'm on Gnome now). Find the application for KDE wallet and enable it, and MAKE SURE you know that password once you set it up. If you get it setup then wireless should not be an issue and connection should be fine. It's just completely non-intuitive that you need to do that step and I about threw the machine out the window till I figured that out.