Mageia forum

Has anyone gotten their Broadcom wireless working on Mageia 2 (i586) yet? I have been trying for the past day to get this thing working. Worked perfectly on Mandriva 2010.2.
If so, can anyone post a step by step howto. I've tried all the methods posted and it's still a no go.

Topic moved to "Networking"-subforum.

Please, some more information - which of "all methods" posted did you try exactly, which drivers did you try out?
And at least post the output of

Code: Select all

lspcidrake -v | grep NET

so we can see which device you have and which driver is currently in use.

Also from a short search i found at least three threads where the Broadcom devices work under Mageia 2, for your initial question.

Well I finally got it to work yesterday, only to have it fail when I booted this morning. After more tinkering, I managed to get it working again! Exasperation!

When I tried to start the WiFi connection this morning, it would not connect (or find a network at all). I went to reconfigure and the WiFi tried to download files from the repositories over the internet? - DOH!
So I made a physical connection to eth0 (wired LAN). No connection. Upon inspecting the network scripts, I noticed that icfg-eth1 script had the GATEWAY= line missing?!!??? I added it to the file and made the connection. I went back to re-configure the WiFi and this time, it downloaded the necessary files, configured the interface (eth1), found the network, and connected properly.

<Rant>
Now, I will echo what others have said about networking in Mageia....it continues to go downhill from what has been experienced in Mandriva since around 2008. Granted, the networking infrastructure has gotten more complex. However, for the END USER EXPERIENCE, these sorts of issues are NOT ACCEPTABLE for a modern OS - WiFi has been around for how long now?!! NETWORKING MUST WORK OUT OF THE BOX!!! Furthermore, rebooting and having these sorts of issues tells me that network configuration is getting corrupted or is incomplete.
</Rant>

Is the Alpha/Beta testing cycle truly long enough to kill 99% of the bugs?
Do the network developers feel that the users are contributing/supporting the test cycle to their satisfaction?

Finally, what can we do AS A COMMUNITY to get networking functioning robustly on Mageia?

bobw wrote:Is the Alpha/Beta testing cycle truly long enough to kill 99% of the bugs?
Do the network developers feel that the users are contributing/supporting the test cycle to their satisfaction?

Finally, what can we do AS A COMMUNITY to get networking functioning robustly on Mageia?

Hints/Questions: How many users participate in the testing cycle? How many bugs get properly reported?
How many users contribute to packaging/development? How many hardware combinations do you think are available/can be tested by QA team?
How many users add themselves to the development teams, compared to the number of new Mageia users?

In answer to your original question, I just did. My brother's computer uses an Asus WL-138G V2 PCI card to connect to the Internet, which uses the Broadcom 4318 chip. I installed Mageia 2 on his computer yesterday, and the wireless connection is working flawlessly, using the b43 driver. I got it working the same way I had it working with Mageia 1 and with Mandriva 2010.x.

Before starting the installation, I downloaded the file containing the appropriate firmware through linuxwireless.org. Upon first booting into Mageia 2, I installed b43-fwcutter from the DVD, and as root used it to install the needed firmware. I then went to MCC, set up my LAN0 connection, and rebooted. When Mageia came up again, the connection did, too. (I didn't try connecting before rebooting because that never seems to work for me.)

It's been working fine ever since. Zero problems.

I am afraid I have to echo some of bobw's frustration. I did just what tandrews16 did (as that's how I got it to work in Mandriva). It worked flawlessly for one day, but when I came home today (did not shut the PC down), I can't get it to come back up. It keeps saying there is a problem with the configuration. I tried deleting the connection, re-installing the b43-fwcutter, and tried running modprobe (~$ sudo modprobe -r b43 ssb
~$ sudo modprobe b43) to reset things without rebooting.

The wireless networks show up and there is a green arrow to the left of the SSID (not sure what that means), but still luck.

On a related note (?), when I try to monitor my wired connection (select MONITOR in the NETWORK CENTER), nothing happens. Not sure if that's a bug or not.

Second comment, to address doktor5000's comment/response about how to help improve things, I would love to be able to help because that would mean that I actually knew what I was doing

At this point, the best I can do is help with writing some of the manuals (and I have signed up for that). But please remember, doktor5000, that a lot of what we (and I include myself in this) say is said in frustration because we want to make the product better, but we just are not sure how...

So, on behalf of all the other wanna-be-geeks, I ask for your patience and, in return, we will try to be more patient and we offer you our sincere thanks for all your work.

drichard58 wrote:On a related note (?), when I try to monitor my wired connection (select MONITOR in the NETWORK CENTER), nothing happens. Not sure if that's a bug or not.

Well, merely a missing dependency, but documented: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_2_Err ... es_nothing

drichard58 wrote:I am afraid I have to echo some of bobw's frustration. I did just what tandrews16 did (as that's how I got it to work in Mandriva). It worked flawlessly for one day, but when I came home today (did not shut the PC down), I can't get it to come back up.

We just returned from a week-long fishing vacation, and my brother's Broadcom wireless came up with no problems. Everything was not only shut off, but unplugged while we were gone, just in case of thunderstorms. Also, my brother tends to shut his computer off if he's going to be away from it for a while, to save on our utility bill if nothing else.

But there has been no problem. Our power switch habbits are the only thing I can think of that might be different... No, wait. Because of where the wireless card has to be in relation to where his old video card had to be, his antenna would have been placed right up against the VGA cable. So, we bought a D-Link antenna with a short cable, MUCH stronger than the original, and it's placed in a window. Maybe a better antenna would help you, too.