M3B2 Broadcom wireless test

[DShelbyD]

I am writing from a laptop booted with M3B2 on a stick (created with the LinuxMint "USB Image Writer") and connected to wireless Broadcom 4318 with free driver on the image, as expected, as this driver has worked for 4318, 4306, and two others (4311? 4322?) for a while. Hope those with other Broadcom chips will follow here with their tests.

(This is an old, old, Compaq V2000 series laptop. What I find unusually good about M3B2 is the full functioning of the touch pad for tap-clicking and scrolling.)

[ti-paul]

Installed M3B2 on my disk.
Wireless detect all networks around but can't connect to my hidden wireless network (WPA2 w/passkey).

Works with LinuxMint14 and Windows7.

My system Toshiba Satellite laptop has Broadcom chipset:
07:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)

Since all not hidden networks aren't open, i can't test and connect to internet from Mageia 3,

Will continue testing tomorrow...

[doktor5000]

Wireless detect all networks around but can't connect to my hidden wireless network (WPA2 w/passkey).

Is there any error message to this? Also, it would be good to know from which medium you installed and which driver is currently used.
The former two questions have to ne answered by you, i can only help with the latter. Please show the output of

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lspcidrake -v | grep NET
rpm -qa | grep wpa

[ti-paul]

Since i'm at my job, i can only say that i've installed from the complete 64-bit beta2 DVD install.
No change made to driver and did not connect to internet for now (no update done so far).

Strangely, i have three option for wireless :
One that is listing the Broadcom hardware (error reported / unusable)
A second one with Wifi eth1 (that one is working and listing networks around)
A third one for WL "Windows driver" (must be the ndiswrapper which i never used and have to install additional packages)

Will get back with answers to the first question and command-line output...

thanks,
Paul

[doktor5000]

Wait - is the issue just that you can't see any network with a hidden SSID?

[isadora]

Good try but no, i can't see any hidden SSID but thats the behaviour i want to have

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lspcidrake -v | grep NET :
wl              : Broadcom Corporation|BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [NETWORK_OTHER] (vendor:14e4 device:4727 subv:144f subd:7175) (rev: 01)
r8169           : Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.|RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [NETWORK_ETHERNET] (vendor:10ec device:8136 subv:1179 subd:fd30) (rev: 05)

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rpm -qa | grep wpa
wpa_supplicant-1.1-2.mga3


Listed driver module for BCM4313 Wireless LAN is "wl".
I don't think that any other distro used this one on my system.
In fact, on my working Linux Mint distro, driver is "brcmsmac" and i think all recent distro is using it.

When i go through Mageia control center > Network > New connection , i select to configure a Wireless.
Next it ask me which interface to configure :
1) Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller
2) eth1 : eth1
3) Use Windows driver with ndiswrapper

When i select first interface, i'm advised that the interface can't be found (using driver wl).
When i select third interface, i'm asked to insert the DVD to install ndiswrapper packages (which i don't want to).
When i select second interface, look good :

A list of all surrounding networks appear and i select "Not Listed - manually edit".
Next i enter my ESSID, select WPA2-PSK and enter my passkey.
Next i select all defaults (DHCP, etc...).
A small window pop-up telling it is testing the connection but seconds later, i have a not very informative warning:
"Problem found when testing the network connection. This can be caused by incorrect network configuration or a problem with your modem or router. You can try restarting the configuration to verify the connection parameters."


Please note that I translate all messages returned by Mageia since i've installed it in french...

[doktor5000]

A small window pop-up telling it is testing the connection but seconds later, i have a not very informative warning:
"Problem found when testing the network connection. This can be caused by incorrect network configuration or a problem with your modem or router. You can try restarting the configuration to verify the connection parameters."

Well, that error message comes up even after successful connection, as the time it waits is most times shorter than the time
needed to completely establish a connection.

Did you try afterwards to access e.g. google or at least your routers web frontend?

[ti-paul]

Yes, i always try searching for something in the Google search bar.

Next step i have to do is to use the wired connection and trying to update everything.
I've read about installing a firmware package, that one i also have to try.

I dont know why Mageia is using the WL driver :
The proprietary Broadcom wl driver (aka broadcom-sta) provides support for some Broadcom-based PCI hardware. It includes a binary-only component targeted for the x86 or x86-64 architecture.

Since all current Debian based distro is using the brcmsmac driver and is working pretty good:
brcmsmac (brcm80211 prior to Linux 2.6.39) is a free and open source mac80211 driver, introduced in Linux 2.6.37.

[doktor5000]

I dont know why Mageia is using the WL driver :
The proprietary Broadcom wl driver (aka broadcom-sta) provides support for some Broadcom-based PCI hardware. It includes a binary-only component targeted for the x86 or x86-64 architecture.

Well, with the initial kernel for Mageia 2, the best support for most devices is provided by the wl driver.
b43 with the open firmware doesn't support all devices http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drive ... ed_devices

For brcm80211 you probably need the kernel-firmware-nonfree package. Can you please post the output of

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rpm -qa | grep firmware

and

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dmesg | grep -iE 'wl|fw|wifi|firmware'

[ti-paul]

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rpm -qa | grep firmware
bluez-firmware-1.2-9.mga3.nonfree
carl9170-firmware-1.9.4-2.mga3
radeon-firmware-20120322-4.mga3.nonfree
kernel-firmware-20121225-1.mga3

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dmesg | grep -iE 'wl|fw|wifi|firmware'
[    0.097055] [Firmware Bug]: ACPI: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored
[    2.824060] psmouse serio1: synaptics: Touchpad model: 1, fw: 7.4, id: 0x1e0b1, caps: 0xd04773/0xa40000/0xa0400, board id: 3655, fw id: 647346
[   11.332046] [Firmware Bug]: battery: (dis)charge rate invalid.
[   11.933165] wl: module license 'unspecified' taints kernel.
[   25.407378] r8169 0000:02:00.0 eth0: unable to load firmware patch rtl_nic/rtl8168e-2.fw (-2)
[   65.674564] IFWLOG: register target

Doing a full upgrade at the moment.
If not sucessfull, i'll try the installation of kernel-firmwares-nonfree...

[ti-paul]

Ok, so i've connected through wired ethernet.
Update though MCC wasn't working (even when adding mirror list and selecting them).
So i added mirror list and updated them from urpmi command line using "urpmi.addmedia --distrib --mirrorlist" and "urpmi --auto-update".
Now i was able to update my system through MCC .
After update finished, i restarted...
Nvidia proprietary driver from original DVD installation was broken (cannot start X).
While i was into shell, i tried connecting to my wireless with iwconfig commands.
I finally made it! i could ping successfully and ifconfig reported ip address into my eth1 interface (not wlan0 as i always used).
So i manually changed "nvidia" to "nouveau"... back to graphical interface.
I restart again the PC and once into MCC, i ended up with same wifi trouble!
I didn't tried again connecting from iwconfig commands (to late, have to sleep), but it sure be working since i could just before...
Will get back to test after my day job...

[doktor5000]

Maybe you have two network applets running in parallel, net_applet and networkmanager, as they will "fight" for the connection.
Please show the output of

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ps -ef | grep -vE 'grep|netns' | grep -i net

[ti-paul]

I have only net_applet running:

"[root@localhost paul]# ps -ef | grep -vE 'grep|netns' | grep -i net
paul 2401 1826 1 00:20 ? 00:00:02 /usr/bin/perl /usr/bin/net_applet"

I can connect through shell with:
iwconfig eth1 essid MyPo
iwconfig eth1 essid MyPo key s:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
iwlist eth1 scanning essid MyPo

I can see IP address with ifconfig on my eth1!

Pretty strange.

[doktor5000]

Pretty strange.

Definitely. Should be reported as a bug: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_report_a_bug_properly

[ti-paul]

Just added my bug description into this already filled bug : https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=7828

Looks like same prob but they don't seem to have tried the iwconfig command...

Hope this will get ironed-out before release as i never tumble over this bug in all other distro i've tried on this laptop (and i've tried many,Fedora, Buntu's, Arch, name it....).

[ti-paul]

ok, i've finally have auto-connection when Megeia start!

I had to remove the "hidden SSID" in my router setting...

I always had my router hidden but it seems that Mageia or more specifically the WL driver don't like it.
I saw some remarks about this kind of trouble with this driver, seem's like it's not 100% fixed!