Dell Inspiron 8600 WiFi

[paulflinn]

I am testing Mageia3 beta4, using the full (non-free) DVD The system does not detect the WiFi chip, either during install, or in Network center. The chip works fine under Windows XP. The chip is an unusual one: Broadband BCM4306.802.11 a/b/g.
It does not appear in the ndiswrapper list of Broadband chips. It seems to me important that this chip be found during install, since hardwire connection may not be available for a laptop.

[doktor5000]

Please show the output of

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lspcidrake -v | grep NET

[isadora]

This is the response I received:

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ssb             : Broadcom Corporation|BCM4306 802.11a/b/g [NETWORK_OTHER] (vendor:14e4 device:4324 subv:1028 subd:0001) (rev: 02)
b44             : Broadcom Corporation|BCM4401 100Base-T [NETWORK_ETHERNET] (vendor:14e4 device:4401 subv:1028 subd:8127) (rev: 01)


What happens now?

[doktor5000]

Well, you need a firmware for that driver, and probably also blacklist ssb. Check http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drive ... ed_devices

For the firmware, either check https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_2_Err ... s_firmware and for the procedure afterwards http://wiki.mandriva.com/en/Installing_ ... b43_driver

Was also mentioned recently (the fact that Mandriva wiki page still applies) but i can't seem to find that Mageia forum thread.

[paulflinn]

I've been through all that under Mageia 2, without any success. The problem seems to be that the system doesn't recognize the chip as a Wi-Fi device, so that even with the software installed, it won't connect. I had hoped that the problem would be fixed in Mageia 3.

[doktor5000]

FWIW, such problems will usually not fix themselves. Please next time report it as a bug, and if you also provide some workaround,
or information what the problem is, and if someone can reproduce it, chances are high that it will be fixed in next release:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_report_a_bug_properly

Please show the output of

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dmesg | grep -iE "iwl|wifi|wireless|80211"

You may also want to take a look at https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7828