Wireless card not supported?

[sampson]

I've installed the latest version of mint on my Dell Inspiron E1405, but I cannot get my wireless internet to work. My wireless network is not being detected. I have the 'Broadcom STA' wireless card, and have downloaded and activated the driver for it (by plugging an ethernet cable into the laptop) which I was prompted to do.

Any idea how I can get my wireless internet working?

[Habitual]

What kind of router do you have?
Is it broadcasting?
Did you reboot after installing/activating the STA driver?

in terminal:

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sudo ifconfig

and then in terminal:
whereis iwconfig
then

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sudo /path/to/iwconfig

Paste the output here and we can debug further.

[sampson]

Thanks. The router is a Netgear WNR2000. It is definitely broadcasting as my cell phone is able to utilize the connection, and the same laptop is able to use the connection when booted into Windows.

I have also rebooted the system after installing/activating the driver.

Here is the other information you requested:

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 ______________________________________
/ What I tell you three times is true. \
|                                      |
\ -- Lewis Carroll                     /
 --------------------------------------
  \
   \   \_\_    _/_/
    \      \__/
           (oo)\_______
           (__)\       )\/\
               ||----w |
               ||     ||
sam@lappy ~ $ sudo ifconfig
[sudo] password for sam: 
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:15:c5:77:79:4d  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:17 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:20 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:20 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:1200 (1.2 KB)  TX bytes:1200 (1.2 KB)

sam@lappy ~ $ whereis iwconfig
iwconfig: /sbin/iwconfig /usr/share/man/man8/iwconfig.8.gz
sam@lappy ~ $ ^C
sam@lappy ~ $ sudo /sbin/iwconfig /usr/share/man/man8/iwconfig.8.gz
/usr/share/man/m  No such device

sam@lappy ~ $ 

[curmudgeon5]

After installing Mint 11 I had the same problem. In order to get things working properly I had to install the Windows driver that came with my D-Link Wireless Adapter.
Here is the step by step procedure I used.

a-- Copy the Windows wireless "inf" driver file ( that came with your computer ) to your home directory. Or go online and retrieve it from the Wireless device
manufacturer and save to your home directory.
b-- Open Control Center
c-- Under "System", open "Windows Wireless Drivers"
d-- Click "Install New Driver"
e-- Select the "Inf" file from your home directory.
d-- Finish installing the driver and you should be good to go.

If you want to connect automatically when your computer starts, go to "Edit Connections" select "Wireless", next select "Wireless Connection 1". Click on "Edit" and ensure that "Connect automatically" box is checked. This can be done at the same time you enter such parameters as SSID, Security etc.

Following the above setup;
My "Active Network Connections" now looks like this:

Wireless connection 1 (default)

General
Interface: 802.11 WiFi (wlan0)
Hardware Address: 00:18:E7:D9:F7:BB
Driver: ndiswrapper
Speed: 54 Mb/s
Security WPA/WPA2


IPv4

IP Address: 192.168.2.10
Broadcast Address: 192:168:2:255
Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0
Default Route: 192.168.2.1
Primary DNS: 192.168.2.1

IPv6

Ignored



Hope this helps.

[sampson]

All I can find are .img files. I cannot find an .inf driver file anywhere online.

Am I missing something?

[sampson]

bump.

[TBABill]

Which Broadcom card are you having a problem with? Can you open a terminal and enter

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lspci

I am wondering if it's a BCm4311 or a BCM4313 since they have had lots of problems with the latest Mint and ubuntu.

[itinerant1]

bump.

I think I had to install lshw to start with- you can do it in the package manager, or

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 apt-get install lshw

does the trick too.
assuming you're running Gnome, try

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lshw -C network

The output on my machine (for the wireless) is:

*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:0c:00.0
logical name: eth2
version: 01
serial: 00:22:68:bb:0c:55
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl0 driverversion=5.100.82.38 ip=192.168.1.100 latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
resources: irq:17 memory:f6cfc000-f6cfffff

What you're looking for is:
1) that you've got a wireless interface
2) the product name: mine's a Broadcom 4322 card. You'll need that to figure out the right driver.
3) the driver ( in the bottom couple of lines- mine's using the wl driver).

The approach to getting Broadcom wireless is complex due to there being three ways to make it happen:
1) Curmudgeon is using ndiswrapper, which is a workable approach.
2) There are Linux drivers. They're in the package manager, but just downloading them isn't enough; you'll need to set them up in the OS. It's not too complex, and is detailed here:http://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/218
3) Nirvana is nearly here: there are Linux drivers coming in a kernel update sometime, so it'll all happen automatically (all other things being equal though, the first time they install there's a good chance the network drivers will conflict and break down completely.. )

Once you've got it working, if you're using Gnome Network Manager

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nm-tool

is a nice terminal command that gives you most of the information you need in one spot.

If you're using Google, be aware all the approaches to setting up your network by messing with /etc/network/interfaces can make life difficult; if a connection is set in /etc/network/interfaces, it won't be auto managed by Network Manager.