Mandriva 2008.0 Wireless bcmwl5.inf Problem ndiswrapper
Solution is at the bottom of the page ........
I have tried to get the wireless to work but it seems like there is a problem with ndiswrapper. It works great with PCLinuxOS. I have my Windows drivers, bcmwl5.inf & bcmwl5.sys on the desktop so I can find it. All I do at the command line is.
ndiswralpper -i bcmwl5.inf
Next I go into the Control Center and configure the wireless, and that's it. It works great.
With this new install of Mandriva 2008.0 I get something unexpected.
I first install the driver that I got off of my windows hard drive.
[root@localhost batteryman]# ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
installing bcmwl5 ...
forcing parameter IBSSGMode from 0 to 2
forcing parameter IBSSGMode from 0 to 2
forcing parameter IBSSGMode from 0 to 2
forcing parameter IBSSGMode from 0 to 2
forcing parameter IBSSGMode from 0 to 2
forcing parameter IBSSGMode from 0 to 2
forcing parameter IBSSGMode from 0 to 2
forcing parameter IBSSGMode from 0 to 2
Then I check to see if the driver is installed.
[root@localhost batteryman]# ndiswrapper -l
Unknown line at line 2389
bcmwl5 : driver installed
device (14E4:4320) present (alternate driver: bcm43xx)
Next I tried to configure the wireless through the Control Center.
I thought that I would do another install to see what ndiswrapper would list as the driver. Here is what I got below.
[root@localhost batteryman]# ndiswrapper -l
Unknown line at line 2389
Mandriva has a page explaining about the problem with using ndiswrapper. You need to blacklist the driver. in the /etc/modprobe.conf file add 'blacklist bcm43xx' to the file so that this default Linux driver cannot be loaded. The solution below does not call for blacklisting.
Solution: While posting a message about this on the Distrowatch Weekly for 10/15/2007, I got a reply from one of the guys at Mandriva.
Ronald, Mandriva 2008 uses the native driver - bcm43xx - for Broadcom cards by default, not ndiswrapper. There's no need to use the console to set up ndiswrapper or anything. The firmware the network configuration tool is asking for is for bcm43xx, not a Windows driver for ndiswrapper. Just feed it the bcmwl5.sys file, or if that doesn't work (some Windows drivers aren't suitable for extracting firmware for bcm43xx), get it here: http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware (the version 3 file, not the version 4 one). This is already documented in the release notes:
http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Releases/Mandriva/2008.0/Notes
So I downloaded the file "wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o" and did not use ndiswrapper this time.
RonaldGibson@gmail.com
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