Knoppix 5.0.1 and MN-720 wireless

[l951b951]

I have a MN-720 wireless card on a Dell Inspiron 8200. I have just downloaded my first distribution of Knoppix - version 5.0.1 . All my hardware works fine and is supported except for my network card. I have searched these forums and scoured the Internet using Google for a solution. I have seen some solutions for SusE 9.x, MEPIS, and DSL 1.3. All the solutions use ndiswrapper. I have gone into the root shell and tried to bring the card up by hand using ndiswrapper. I have run across 2 problems that I cannot get around.

1 - Knoppix will not acknowledge wlan0. It simply does not exist to Knoppix. I cannot do anything to find it.
Iwconfig says i have
lo,
eth0
eth1,
eth2 (which says 802.11b/g ESSIDff/any Nickname: “Broadcom 4306�, Mode:Managed Frequency=2.437 Ghz Access Point: Invalid, etc)
and sit0.

I have read that modprobe should be used to create an alias for wlan0, but I can't figure out how because:

2. the command "modprobe ndiswrapper" returns an error message: “FATAL: Error inserting ndiswrapper (/lib/modules/2.6.17/misc/ndiswrapper.ko): Invalid argument�

I have tried skipping that step and continuing on. here are the steps I try
1. ndiswrapper -e mn720-ankh (to clear it out, it does exist from my persistent home)
2. ndiswrapper -i /media/sda1/mn720-ankh.inf (located on my thumb drive)
i get the following response
“Installing mn720-ankh
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2
Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2�
3. modprobe ndiswrapper
“FATAL: Error inserting ndiswrapper (/lib/modules/2.6.17/misc/ndiswrapper.ko): Invalid argument�
4. iwconfig eth2 essid any
5. iwconfig eth2 channel 6
6. ifconfig eth2 up
“SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory�
7.pump -i eth2
“Operation failed�


If I try to ndiswrapper from the Knoppix menu it returns the following error after i select the inf file “The ndiswrapper module has been loaded but there is no new device. Perhaps NdisWrapper is not working with your driver file.� ndiswrapper -l tells me driver installed, hardware present.

If I try to use Network card configuration for eth2 it says
“Sending DHCP broadcast from device eth2SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory
Operation Failed.
Failed
Hit return to exit.�

It's worth mentioning that this card works fine with XP Home, But the power light won't even come on in knoppix. Additionally I plugged in an old netgear wireless card and can't get it to work either. On it, at least, the power light comes on, but no Internet.

Any help would be appreciated, my first day on Knoppix has been spent trying to get this card to work.

[Uberwon Kahnewbie]

im having the exact same problem with my dell insprion 600 with dell wireless 1470 dualband (broadcom) and i can tell you this that in order to create an alias you have to type modprobe -m but i havent got any further than that if you can figure somthing out please post it up

[Boukyaku]

Hello,

I have the EXACT same problem... And it is getting REALLY frustrating.

Your eth2 is your wireless card interface. It was detected by knoppix at bootup. Since it's a broadcom chip, the bcm43xx module was installed. Your eth2 interface is using the bxm43xx module.

Do lspci and see which bcm chip you have. I have bcm4318, which is newer, so that means the native bcm43xx module is not good for me. Trust me i have already tried everything and still can't get it to work with my router. It connected, auths with my router via WPA-TSK AES, and i can pump for an IP fine, but when I ping my router, it says host is unreachable and i can't ping anywhere outside my computer *shrugs*.

So I gave up and am trying to work with ndiswrapper with knoppix but it just wont work! -_-

Anyway, here is YOUR problem.

eth2 has nothing to do with ndiswrapper. the reason why it is named eth2 is because it is running on native linux drivers from the kernel (remember, modules is just another name for drivers). That eth2 interface is running on bcm43xx, which is the native linux drivers for broadcom based wireless hardware.

Before you do ANYTHING with it, you need to ifconfig eth# up, and THEN config the device...

"6. ifconfig eth2 up
“SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory�"

this means it can't find the required files in your /lib/firmware location. it uses these files to work with the card:

You need to extract the firmware from a firmware file of a bcm43xx file. Like bcmwla.sys or something. Or you can get wl_apsta.o and extract the firmware from that. You need to use bcmwl-fwcutter to extract. The reason why knoppix doesn't include the firmware files is because of legal issues. So you have to download it and access it from yuor hdd while running knoppix.

hint:
rmmod bcm43xx
make
bcm43xx-fwcutter-004 wl_apsta.o
make installfw

That will copy the files to /lib/firmware then you will be able to ifconfig eth# up.

GL

PS: someone please tell me a fix for the ndiswrapper.ko error -_-

[Ben Geber]

http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtopic.php?p=112365