Hello,
In my attempts at replacing Windows on my Dell M6400 laptop with -14-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso, I have gotten as far as being able to create a live usb stick. My next step is to get on the internet via the Dell Wireless 1510 Wireless-N WLAN Mini-Card and my "WPA" network.
Broadcom offers sources and a library at: http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/hybrid-portsrc_x86_64-v5_100_82_38.ta... (via http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php ).
I did make on a machine with Linux 2.6.28-18-generic #60-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 12 04:26:47 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux:
~/tmp/broadcom$ make KBUILD_NOPEDANTIC=1 make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=`pwd` make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-18-generic' LD /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/built-in.o CC [M] /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/src/shared/linux_osl.o CC [M] /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.o CC [M] /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/src/wl/sys/wl_iw.o LD [M] /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/wl.o Building modules, stage 2. MODPOST 1 modules WARNING: modpost: missing MODULE_LICENSE() in /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/wl.o see include/linux/module.h for more information CC /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/wl.mod.o LD [M] /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/wl.ko make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-18-generic' ~/tmp/broadcom$
The action for "make install" is:
install -D -m 755 wl.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/wl.ko
which, I _guess_, is just copying wl.ko and doing a "chmod 755 /<path>/wl.ko".
Key requirement: The wireless card works with Win XP and I do _not_ want any firmware changes to happen to it!
Questions:
1) Will copying wl.ko to the corresponding directory on the Live USB be OK (since the build happened on Ubuntu 2.6.28-18-generic)?
2) If copying is OK and if copying and use with or without rebooting will _not_ make any changes to the wireless card's firmware, what do I do next to get on the WPA network and then to the internet?
Thanks,
--Suresh
On Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:27:44 -0800 "Suresh Govindachar" sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
Hello,
In my attempts at replacing Windows on my Dell M6400 laptop with -14-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso, I have gotten as far as being able to create a live usb stick. My next step is to get on the internet via the Dell Wireless 1510 Wireless-N WLAN Mini-Card and my "WPA" network.
My Dell Mini 10 works with 2.6.37 kernels quite happily - just need to use fwcutter. The firmware on all the broadcom cards I have seen is loaded each time you boot (each OS loading whatever it comes with).
For the Ubuntu questions you'd need to ask an Ubuntu list.
Alan
On Saturday 26 February 2011 11:55:34 Alan Cox wrote:
On Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:27:44 -0800
"Suresh Govindachar" sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
Hello,
In my attempts at replacing Windows on my Dell M6400 laptop with -14-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso, I have gotten as far as being able to create a live usb stick. My next step is to get on the internet via the Dell Wireless 1510 Wireless-N WLAN Mini-Card and my "WPA" network.
My Dell Mini 10 works with 2.6.37 kernels quite happily - just need to use fwcutter. The firmware on all the broadcom cards I have seen is loaded each time you boot (each OS loading whatever it comes with).
For the Ubuntu questions you'd need to ask an Ubuntu list.
Careful - there are two different sets - the b43 driver and fwcutter and the broadcom-wl driver, which also has a matching fwcutter, IIRC. Try to identify which driver you need. If you can't you may have to try each in turn.
Anne
Alan Cox replied as follows:
On Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:27:44 -0800 "Suresh Govindachar" wrote:
In my attempts at replacing Windows on my Dell M6400 laptop with [Fedora was missing in OP]-14-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso, I have gotten as far as being able to create a live usb stick. My next step is to get on the internet via the Dell Wireless 1510 Wireless-N WLAN Mini-Card and my "WPA" network.
Broadcom offers sources and a library at: http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/hybrid-portsrc_x86_64-v5_100_82_38.ta... (via http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php ).
I did make on a machine with Linux 2.6.28-18-generic #60-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 12 04:26:47 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux:
~/tmp/broadcom$ make KBUILD_NOPEDANTIC=1 make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=`pwd` make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-18-generic' LD /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/built-in.o CC [M] /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/src/shared/linux_osl.o CC [M] /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.o CC [M] /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/src/wl/sys/wl_iw.o LD [M] /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/wl.o Building modules, stage 2. MODPOST 1 modules WARNING: modpost: missing MODULE_LICENSE() in /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/wl.o see include/linux/module.h for more information CC /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/wl.mod.o LD [M] /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/wl.ko make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-18-generic' ~/tmp/broadcom$The action for "make install" is:
install -D -m 755 wl.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/wl.ko
which, I _guess_, is just copying wl.ko and doing a "chmod 755 /<path>/wl.ko".
Key requirement: The wireless card works with Win XP and I do _not_ want any firmware changes to happen to it!
Questions:
Will copying wl.ko to the corresponding directory on the [Fedora 14] Live USB be OK (since the build happened on Ubuntu 2.6.28-18-generic rather than on Fedora-14)?
If copying is OK and if copying and use with or without rebooting will _not_ make any changes to the wireless card's firmware, what do I do next to get on the WPA network and then to the internet?
My Dell Mini 10 works with 2.6.37 kernels quite happily - just need to use fwcutter.
Found info on fwcutter at http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
I think fwcutter is, essentially, a linux tool that extracts firmware from Windows driver.
But why such an indirect approach when Broadcom supports Linux on: http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php (such support has existed since October 2008.)
"lspci -nn" shows BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n 14e4:4326 (rev01). So, as per the FAQ http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Documentation/FAQ#Q:_Is_my_XXX_model_devic... I googled "14e4 4326" site:cateee.net/lkddb/ and got no hit.
The firmware on all the broadcom cards I have seen is loaded each time you boot (each OS loading whatever it comes with).
Thanks for the info.
For the Ubuntu questions you'd need to ask an Ubuntu list.
Sorry if the original post was not clear, but my questions are about wireless access from Live USB of _Fedora_14_.
--Suresh
On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 15:10:24 +0000, Suresh Govindachar sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
But why such an indirect approach when Broadcom supports Linux on: http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php (such support has existed since October 2008.)
Because they don't let people redistribute their firmware.
Also note that some Broadcom wireless devices are supported out of the box on Fedora using free firmware developed by a third party.
Bruno Wolff III wrote:
On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 15:10:24 +0000, Suresh Govindachar sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
But why such an indirect approach when Broadcom supports Linux on: http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php (such support has existed since October 2008.)
Because they don't let people redistribute their firmware.
They do; that's why they have the linux_sta.php page linked above.
Also note that some Broadcom wireless devices are supported out of the box on Fedora using free firmware developed by a third party.
The ones on rpmfusion.org use the firmware from the above broadcom.com page.
--Suresh
On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 09:06:25 -0800, Suresh Govindachar sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
Bruno Wolff III wrote:
On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 15:10:24 +0000, Suresh Govindachar sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
But why such an indirect approach when Broadcom supports Linux on: http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php (such support has existed since October 2008.)
Because they don't let people redistribute their firmware.
They do; that's why they have the linux_sta.php page linked above.
That's not what I said. That page is Broadcom distributing the firmware. They don't let other people do it (at least not without signing a contract). Hence it can't be in Fedora.
They don't typically seem to enforce that, as router distros have been doing that for a long time. But that doesn't mean that it is right or wise to do so.
Fedora will include firmware that is freely redistributable (even if it is restricted to being unmodified) in order to have functional hardware support.
Bruno Wolff III wrote:
On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 09:06:25 -0800, Suresh Govindachar sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
Bruno Wolff III wrote:
On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 15:10:24 +0000, Suresh Govindachar sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
But why such an indirect approach when Broadcom supports Linux on: http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php (such support has existed since October 2008.)
Because they don't let people redistribute their firmware.
They do; that's why they have the linux_sta.php page linked above.
That's not what I said. That page is Broadcom distributing the firmware. They don't let other people do it (at least not without signing a contract).
Not so; I have read their licence.txt -- have you? The licence.txt is in simple English (not leaglease) -- it allows distribution of the firmware.
Hence it can't be in Fedora.
My original question was why use the indirect approach of fwcutter rather than the direct approach of using the stuff provided by Broadcom. The question was _not_ about why Broadcom's firmware is not distributed in Fedora.
I think the reason why Broadcom's firmware is not in Fedora is because Broadcom does not provide (VHDL, Verilog or whatever) source code for the firmware, and Fedora.org wants source code for everything in it distributes.
They don't typically seem to enforce that, as router distros have been doing that for a long time. But that doesn't mean that it is right or wise to do so.
Fedora will include firmware that is freely redistributable (even if it is restricted to being unmodified) in order to have functional hardware support.
On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 09:53:23 -0800, Suresh Govindachar sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
Not so; I have read their licence.txt -- have you? The licence.txt is in simple English (not leaglease) -- it allows distribution of the firmware.
I hadn't read one since they started providing an open source driver. This one seems roughly OK. I don't know if there is a sticking point somewhere or if no one has re-evaluated the situation recently.
My original question was why use the indirect approach of fwcutter rather than the direct approach of using the stuff provided by Broadcom. The question was _not_ about why Broadcom's firmware is not distributed in Fedora.
I wouldn't consider extracting the firmware from an archive all that direct either. But again, probably the instructions haven't been re-evaluated since Broadcom released the open sourced driver.
I think the reason why Broadcom's firmware is not in Fedora is because Broadcom does not provide (VHDL, Verilog or whatever) source code for the firmware, and Fedora.org wants source code for everything in it distributes.
No. Freely redistributable without modification is OK. This is mentioned on the firmware SIG's page (and some other places): http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/SIGs/FirmWare#Packaging_guidelines
They may be a good group to poke about the possibility of changing things.
One other thing that might be a sticking point is that this may not be the same firmware expected by the b43 driver.
On Sat, Feb 26, 2011 at 09:53:23 -0800, Suresh Govindachar sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
Bruno Wolff III wrote:
That's not what I said. That page is Broadcom distributing the firmware. They don't let other people do it (at least not without signing a contract).
Not so; I have read their licence.txt -- have you? The licence.txt is in simple English (not leaglease) -- it allows distribution of the firmware.
I went back and looked and it seems that the b43 and brcm80211 drivers use different firmware. The new firmware is redistributable and the old firmware isn't. A lwn article from last Spetmber goes over this. http://lwn.net/Articles/406491/
I think the reason why Broadcom's firmware is not in Fedora is because Broadcom does not provide (VHDL, Verilog or whatever) source code for the firmware, and Fedora.org wants source code for everything in it distributes.
You think wrongly.
There is lots of firmware included in Fedora for which you most certainly don't have any source, and indeed in some cases the nature of firmware being what it is there may not really be as its just tables.
On Saturday 26 February 2011 15:10:24 Suresh Govindachar wrote:
Alan Cox replied as follows:
On Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:27:44 -0800
"Suresh Govindachar" wrote:
In my attempts at replacing Windows on my Dell M6400 laptop with [Fedora was missing in OP]-14-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso, I have gotten as far as being able to create a live usb stick. My next step is to get on the internet via the Dell Wireless 1510 Wireless-N WLAN Mini-Card and my "WPA" network.
Broadcom offers sources and a library at: http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/hybrid-portsrc_x86_64-v5_100_82_3 8.tar.gz (via http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php ).
I did make on a machine with Linux 2.6.28-18-generic
#60-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 12 04:26:47 UTC 2010 x86_64 GNU/Linux: ~/tmp/broadcom$ make KBUILD_NOPEDANTIC=1 make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=`pwd` make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-18-generic'
LD /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/built-in.o CC [M] /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/src/shared/linux_osl.o CC [M] /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.o CC [M] /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/src/wl/sys/wl_iw.o LD [M] /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/wl.o Building modules, stage 2. MODPOST 1 modules WARNING: modpost: missing MODULE_LICENSE() in /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/wl.o see include/linux/module.h for more information CC /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/wl.mod.o LD [M] /h/sgovinda/tmp/broadcom/wl.ko make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.28-18-generic' ~/tmp/broadcom$The action for "make install" is: install -D -m 755 wl.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/wl.ko
which, I _guess_, is just copying wl.ko and doing a "chmod 755 /<path>/wl.ko".
Key requirement: The wireless card works with Win XP and I
do _not_ want any firmware changes to happen to it!Questions:
Will copying wl.ko to the corresponding directory on
the [Fedora 14] Live USB be OK (since the build happened on Ubuntu 2.6.28-18-generic rather than on Fedora-14)?
If copying is OK and if copying and use with or without
rebooting will _not_ make any changes to the wireless card's firmware, what do I do next to get on the WPA network and then to the internet?
My Dell Mini 10 works with 2.6.37 kernels quite happily - just need to use fwcutter.
Found info on fwcutter at http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
I think fwcutter is, essentially, a linux tool that extracts firmware from Windows driver.
But why such an indirect approach when Broadcom supports Linux on: http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php (such support has existed since October 2008.)
Quite simple - the driver is not a legally free driver, so can't be included in the purer distros. However, rpmfusion does supply drivers for the grey area, where they are legally free in some countries but not in others. Make sure you have the rpmfusion free and non-free repos installed.
"lspci -nn" shows BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n 14e4:4326 (rev01). So, as per the FAQ
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Documentation/FAQ#Q:_Is_my_XXX_model_dev ice_supported.3F I googled "14e4 4326" site:cateee.net/lkddb/ and got no hit.
You were googling the wrong thing. You should have been looking for BCM4322. Here is the link you need - http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=233919 - it's for Fedora 12, but exactly the same is needed for Fedora 14 (I know, I had to install it on my netbook).
The firmware on all the broadcom cards I have seen is loaded each time you boot (each OS loading whatever it comes with).
Thanks for the info.
For the Ubuntu questions you'd need to ask an Ubuntu list.
Sorry if the original post was not clear, but my questions are about wireless access from Live USB of _Fedora_14_.
It should be possible to install the driver to the USB stick, I would think.
Anne
Anne Wilson wrote:
On Saturday 26 February 2011 15:10:24 Suresh Govindachar wrote:
Alan Cox replied as follows:
On Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:27:44 -0800 "Suresh Govindachar" wrote:
In my attempts at replacing Windows on my Dell M6400 laptop with [Fedora was missing in OP]-14-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso, I have gotten as far as being able to create a live usb stick. My next step is to get on the internet via the Dell Wireless 1510 Wireless-N WLAN Mini-Card and my "WPA" network.
...
"lspci -nn" shows BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n 14e4:4326 (rev01).
...
[ http://linuxwireless.org is probably obsolete]
...
You were googling the wrong thing. You should have been looking for BCM4322. Here is the link you need - http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=233919 - it's for Fedora 12, but exactly the same is needed for Fedora 14 (I know, I had to install it on my netbook).
Thanks; saw that and also http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=255435 ...
The firmware on all the broadcom cards I have seen is loaded each time you boot (each OS loading whatever it comes with).
Thanks for the info.
...
Sorry if the original post was not clear, but my questions are about wireless access from Live USB of _Fedora_14_.
It should be possible to install the driver to the USB stick, I would think.
I read http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/README.txt carefully; and in each of the following attempts, I made use of the instructions in the README. I tried the rpms:
broadcom-wl-5.60.48.36-1.fc13.noarch.rpm kmod-wl-2.6.35.6-48.fc14.x86_64-5.60.48.36-2.fc14.2.x86_64.rpm kmod-wl-5.60.48.36-2.fc14.2.x86_64.rpm
which didn't work. Then downloaded sources from
http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php
and compiled on 2.6.28-18-generic Ubuntu, fc5, and rhel5 -- none of these worked either.
Then I tried what I should have tried at the very beginning: used an ethernet cable -- but F14 could not detect the network even via the ethernet cable!
In thinking about moving from XP to Linux, I never expected that just getting started with Linux would be such a hassle!
To recap, the latest Ubuntu Live CD wouldn't even boot; the latest CentOS couldn't find the internal drive; and F14 ended up not finding the network.
--Suresh
On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 22:58:22 -0800 "Suresh Govindachar" sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
I read http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/README.txt carefully; and in each of the following attempts, I made use of the instructions in the README. I tried the rpms:
broadcom-wl-5.60.48.36-1.fc13.noarch.rpm kmod-wl-2.6.35.6-48.fc14.x86_64-5.60.48.36-2.fc14.2.x86_64.rpm kmod-wl-5.60.48.36-2.fc14.2.x86_64.rpmwhich didn't work. Then downloaded sources from
http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.phpand compiled on 2.6.28-18-generic Ubuntu, fc5, and rhel5 -- none of these worked either.
It seems that you are trying to apply current version RPMs to an OS version that is approximately 5 years old. *So* many things have changed in that time that this is a major project. If you did get them to compile on the old versions, the compiled versions probably wouldn't work on the new version because the library APIs have changed.
You could install the development group, and do it all within the live CD environment, but that is a pretty big project also. And unless you put the result somewhere permanent, you will lose it when you shut down.
Then I tried what I should have tried at the very beginning: used an ethernet cable -- but F14 could not detect the network even via the ethernet cable!
I haven't used a live CD for a while. Do you have access to a root terminal? If you do you could check what is running as your network service by running the command chkconfig --list | grep 5:on | less. You can page up or down, or use the arrow keys. Typing a q will exit. The network service is either NetworkManager (likely on a live CD) or network, and one, and only one of them should be there. In either case you can run ifconfig eth0 to see if you have a network IP address. And if you don't, run ifdown eth0 to close the connection, and then ifup eth0 to bring it up. If you then run ifconfig eth0 again, you should see an IP address. There must be something strange about the networking hardware on your system. I haven't had any problems with finding a wired ethernet connection for well over 10 years with various distributions of linux.
Usually there is a menu under System-Administration-Network that allows you to do the same thing from the GUI. That is, you can tell the networking app to manually try bringing up the connection again. If it doesn't, you can then look in the messages as described below to see why it failed.
In thinking about moving from XP to Linux, I never expected that just getting started with Linux would be such a hassle!
Usually it isn't. Of course, different people have different definitions of hassle, and what seems a minor glitch to me might be a show stopper to you. :-) And vice versa on Windows XP. I would be lost if anything went wrong if I was working with windows. The last version I worked with was XP and I remember how blind I felt when something went wrong. Like being in a foreign country where I didn't speak the language.
To recap, the latest Ubuntu Live CD wouldn't even boot; the latest CentOS couldn't find the internal drive; and F14 ended up not finding the network.
CentOS couldn't find an internal drive? That seems strange. I think the latest CentOS is based on Fedora 6, which had no trouble finding all my drives. Is there anything unusual about the drive? What shows if you run blkid in a terminal? How about if you run lspci ? The first should show all drives (actually partitions on the drives) that were recognized, the second should show if the drive controllers were recognized.
And if you type less /var/log/messages in a terminal do you see any messages about your network or hard drive problem? These are the messages the kernel wrote as it brought your system live, and when it has a problem it will usually write the reason it had a problem.
You can bring up a terminal via the menus, Applications -> System Tools -> xterm or outside X, Ctrl - Alt - F2 through F6. Ctrl - Alt - F1 gets you back to the GUI.
[It seems to take ages for the mailing list to forward posts, so I have taken to cc'ing authors I reply to.]
stan wrote:
On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 22:58:22 -0800 "Suresh Govindachar" sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
I read http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/README.txt carefully; and in each of the following attempts, I made use of the instructions in the README. I tried the rpms:
broadcom-wl-5.60.48.36-1.fc13.noarch.rpm kmod-wl-2.6.35.6-48.fc14.x86_64-5.60.48.36-2.fc14.2.x86_64.rpm kmod-wl-5.60.48.36-2.fc14.2.x86_64.rpmwhich didn't work. Then downloaded sources from
http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php
and compiled on 2.6.28-18-generic Ubuntu, fc5, and rhel5 -- none of these worked either.
...
If you did get them to compile on the old versions, the compiled versions probably wouldn't work on the new version because the library APIs have changed.
OK.
You could install the development group, and do it all within the live CD environment, but that is a pretty big project also. And unless you put the result somewhere permanent, you will lose it when you shut down.
Since the the Live USB from Fedora-14-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso does not have a compiler (it does have make!), the "development group" to install needs to be pre-compiled. I have room on the internal hard-drive, and I suppose the "development group" can be installed and used from there. The output of a build of broadcom's sources is just a file that needs to be placed elsewhere. So to set up this "development group" what needs to be downloaded and what needs to be done with the downloaded stuff? (I now have a wired connection to the internet; I indicate how I got this below.)
Then I tried what I should have tried at the very beginning: used an ethernet cable -- but F14 could not detect the network even via the ethernet cable!
I haven't used a live CD for a while. Do you have access to a root terminal? If you do you could check what is running as your network service by running the command
chkconfig --list | grep 5:on | less.
You can page up or down, or use the arrow keys. Typing a q will exit. The network service is either NetworkManager (likely on a live CD) or network, and one, and only one of them should be there. In either case you can run
ifconfig eth0
to see if you have a network IP address. And if you don't, run
ifdown eth0
to close the connection, and then
ifup eth0
to bring it up. If you then run ifconfig eth0 again, you should see an IP address. There must be something strange about the networking hardware on your system. I haven't had any problems with finding a wired ethernet connection for well over 10 years with various distributions of linux.
Usually there is a menu under System-Administration-Network that allows you to do the same thing from the GUI. That is, you can tell the networking app to manually try bringing up the connection again. If it doesn't, you can then look in the messages as described below to see why it failed.
Thanks for the list of useful commands (provided above and below). I prefer working from the command line (and have been making my life in Windows bearable by using things like MinGW, bash, perl, and vim).
I happened to get the wired network to function before I saw Stan's reply email.
I did try using the Network icon (in the upper right corner of the default desktop) to refresh the connection, but it didn't help. I noticed that I was plugging in the ethernet cable after the system had booted -- I tried pluggin in the cable before booting -- and got network connection! But it was only partial: I could ping by name (eg, "ping yahoo.com" passed), but FireFox would not bring up any web-page -- it just kept waiting, with no error message.
I then booted Windows -- the ethernet cable was connected while Windows was up; then shut-down Windows and booted into F-14. But even though the cable was plugged in before I booted F-14, I now did not have network connection.
I went to the router and put that end of the cable into another slot, came back to F-14, and pressed the "apply" button on the Network settings dialog box for the etho0 tab.
This time the GUI method worked to get me connected -- and Firefox started loading web-pages. I went on to install Adobe's flash plugin, and verified that it worked.
Next time I run into a broken wired connection, instead of going to the router physically, I'll try the "ifdown/ifup" command sequence.
In thinking about moving from XP to Linux, I never expected that just getting started with Linux would be such a hassle!
Usually it isn't. Of course, different people have different definitions of hassle, and what seems a minor glitch to me might be a show stopper to you. :-) And vice versa on Windows XP. I would be lost if anything went wrong if I was working with windows. The last version I worked with was XP and I remember how blind I felt when something went wrong. Like being in a foreign country where I didn't speak the language.
To recap, the latest Ubuntu Live CD wouldn't even boot; the latest CentOS couldn't find the internal drive; and F14 ended up not finding the network.
CentOS couldn't find an internal drive? That seems strange. I think the latest CentOS is based on Fedora 6, which had no trouble finding all my drives.
Sorry about the inexact remark "CentOS couldn't find the internal drive" which implies I did something to get CentOS to find the drive -- I didn't; I just looked in the menu. One of the three menus in the upper left of F-14 has an item "OS"; clicking on this item opens up a folder at the root of the internal drive -- and, the process of opening this folder also mounts this drive to /media/OS for use in the terminal window.
Is there anything unusual about the drive?
Not that I know of -- it is 2 year old Dell M6400 laptop.
What shows if you run
blkid
in a terminal? How about if you run
lspci
? The first should show all drives (actually partitions on the drives) that were recognized, the second should show if the drive controllers were recognized.
And if you type
less /var/log/messages
in a terminal do you see any messages about your network or hard drive problem? These are the messages the kernel wrote as it brought your system live, and when it has a problem it will usually write the reason it had a problem.
You can bring up a terminal via the menus, Applications -> System Tools -> xterm or outside X,
Ctrl - Alt - F2 through F6. Ctrl - Alt - F1
gets you back to the GUI.
Interesting -- you seem to be saying one can have 5 terminals when one is not booted into the GUI desktop? I thought that without a GUI desktop, one only had one terminal at 640x480 resolution!
--Suresh
On Mon, 28 Feb 2011 19:53:41 -0800 "Suresh Govindachar" sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
You could install the development group, and do it all within the live CD environment, but that is a pretty big project also. And unless you put the result somewhere permanent, you will lose it when you shut down.
Since the the Live USB from Fedora-14-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso does not have a compiler (it does have make!), the "development group" to install needs to be pre-compiled. I have room on the internal hard-drive, and I suppose the "development group" can be installed and used from there. The output of a build of broadcom's sources is just a file that needs to be placed elsewhere. So to set up this "development group" what needs to be downloaded and what needs to be done with the downloaded stuff? (I now have a wired connection to the internet; I indicate how I got this below.)
Use yum install development-group development-libs
These are precompiled binaries, as are all .rpms on Fedora. You have to specifically ask for source with another program, yumdownloader from the yum-utils package, and those are named .src.rpm.
You can see what groups are available with yum grouplist -v | less
To check other options to yum, look at man yum . That will tell you how to get a list of individual packages that are available, with their descriptions. There are over 20,000, so it can be a little overwhelming.
[snip]
Interesting -- you seem to be saying one can have 5 terminals when one is not booted into the GUI desktop? I thought that without a GUI desktop, one only had one terminal at 640x480 resolution!
Yes, there are these five that are old style serial tty, or emulations of thereof. Using the screen application, that can be expanded to many more. Install it and do a man screen to see all the possibilities. I like them because there is no X involved, so when things are not working properly in the GUI, these will normally still work, allowing research and fixes.
And it is possible to set them to different resolutions. If you add vga=0x317 to the kernel line, you will normally get 1024x768 on the terminal. With nomodeset, which is what is the default on the modern Fedoras, the terminals are at the resolution of the GUI. So if your GUI is 1920x1280, the terminals will be that as well. There are ways to adjust font size on them, and colors, etc. In the GUI, I normally use konsole as my terminal, but there are lots of other terminals to try there.
On Tue, 1 Mar 2011 12:49:33 -0700 stan gryt2@q.com wrote:
Use yum install development-group development-libs
I realized I made an error in this command. It should be
yum groupinstall development-tools development-libs
And as a further note, if you have problems with missing dependencies while you are compiling, you might also have to install the -devel packages for other packages you are using in order to pull in the headers with the api definitions.
stan wrote:
yum install development-group development-libs
I realized I made an error in this command. It should be
yum groupinstall development-tools development-libs
As a slight tangent, you can use install with groups, you just need to prefix them with the @ symbol, e.g.:
yum install @development-group @development-libs
(Or for the lazy bash types: yum install @development-{group,lib} ;)
Todd Zullinger wrote:
stan wrote:
yum install development-group development-libs
I realized I made an error in this command. It should be
yum groupinstall development-tools development-libs
As a slight tangent, you can use install with groups, you just need to prefix them with the @ symbol, e.g.:
yum install @development-group @development-libs(Or for the lazy bash types: yum install @development-{group,lib} ;)
Turns out yum installs the latest version of things it is asked to install -- and this can be an issue when installing kernel-headers and kernel-devel for the purpose of building kernel modules. Even if yum install of kernel stuff is done on the machine on which the to-be-built kernel module will be deployed, the kernel stuff installed by yum might not match (might be newer than) the kernel of the calling machine!
Suresh Govindachar wrote:
Todd Zullinger wrote:
stan wrote:
yum install development-group development-libs
I realized I made an error in this command. It should be
yum groupinstall development-tools development-libs
As a slight tangent, you can use install with groups, you just need to prefix them with the @ symbol, e.g.:
yum install @development-group @development-libs(Or for the lazy bash types: yum install @development-{group,lib} ;)
Turns out yum installs the latest version of things it is asked to install -- and this can be an issue when installing kernel-headers and kernel-devel for the purpose of building kernel modules. Even if yum install of kernel stuff is done on the machine on which the to-be-built kernel module will be deployed, the kernel stuff installed by yum might not match (might be newer than) the kernel of the calling machine!
Thanks for the tip for "lazy bash types" --
yum --installroot=`pwd`/foo -y -v install kernel-{headers,devel}-`uname -r`
(I used the above but wrote out the `pwd` value explicitly; I suppose -y -v can be replaced by -yv; echoing the command before executing it helps to ensure correctness.)
1) Download sources from Broadcom http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php
2) yum --installroot=`pwd`/foo -y -v install kernel-{headers,devel}-`uname -r`
3) yum --installroot=`pwd`/foo -y -v install gcc
4) set-up PATH for usr/local/bin and usr/bin
5) set-up LD_LIBRARY_PATH for usr/lib64
6) soft-link to make perl5 visible from its default location
7) work-around the bug in the installation of ld (replace soft-absolute-links in installation by soft-relative-links)
8) build
9) Study http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php
10) Implement http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php
11) Wireless card should be running (maybe a light on the laptop will turn on).
12) Google for info on setting up wireless network
--Suresh
[ Background: Installing drivers for Broadcom's wireless card on a Dell M6400 laptop running a Live USB of Fedora-14-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso failed to result in a wireless connection; since Broadcom's sources from
http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php
need to be built using a kernel of the target OS, and since I don't have access to any other F14, I now need to build these sources on the live USB, using the laptop's internal drive as a place to hold the required libraries etc. And I am new to such activities.]
Briefly, I was able to build the sources from Broadcom, but not without having to overcome some hurdles! Here are the details:
The command:
yum --installroot=/media/OS/home/f14 install kernel-headers kernel-devel
failed with the message:
Loaded plugins: langpacks, presto, refresh-packagekit Adding en_US to language list
Error: Cannot retrieve repository metadata (repomd.xml) for repository: fedora. Please verify its path and try again
Could not parse metalink https://mirrors.fedoraproject.org/metalink?repo=fedora-$releasever&arch=... error was No repomd file
Not being used to reading error messages in detail, I just googled for the first line of the error message, and found:
http://digitizor.com/2009/06/17/how-to-fix-the-cannot-retrieve-repository-me...
As per that web-page, I modified /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora.repo and /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo -- but not /etc/hosts. yum failed again, but this time I read the error message in detail -- and noticed $releasever in the url. I went back to the two .repo files and replaced $releasever by 14 ($basearch would automatically become x86_64).
Question 1: What's the bug that prevents $releaserver from taking its value?
This time, although the yum command went forward, it aborted with some message (alas!, I didn't record the error message). The above web-page mentioned modifying the /etc/hosts file, which I hadn't done; I pinged both mirrors.fedoraproject.org and mirrors.rpmfusion.org and found that the numerical addresses did _match_ the values in that web-page. Still puzzled, I went ahead and edited /etc/hosts files as advised, and tried yum again -- it succeeded!
Question 2: Why did I need to modify the /etc/hosts file even though ping showed that the human-readable addresses were being resolved to correct values? Perhaps, it was just some congestion at the destination url, and the command would have worked the second time even without the modification to /etc/hosts?
Then I did:
yum --installroot=/media/OS/home/f14 install gcc
Not having wget, I used Firefox to get Broadcom's sources hybrid-portsrc_x86_64-v5_100_82_38.tar.gz.
The attempts to build the sources had hurdles too, all but one of the hurdles was because of the non-standard installation location.
I had to update PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH, which is understandable.
export PATH=$PATH:/media/OS/home/f14/usr/local/bin:/media/OS/home/f14/usr/bin export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/media/OS/home/f14/usr/lib64 export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/media/OS/home/f14/usr/lib64/perl5/CORE
I had to create some soft-links:
cd /lib/modules/2.6.35.6-45.fc14.x86_64/ mv build build.org ln -s /media/OS/home/f14/usr/src/kernels/2.6.35.6-45.fc14.x86_64 build
cd /usr/lib64 ln -s /media/OS/home/f14/usr/lib64/perl5 perl5 cd ../share ln -s /media/OS/home/f14/usr/share/perl5 perl5
I think the need for the preceding is understandable too; "understandable" meaning this need does _not_ occur because of some bug in the process of installing in the non-default location.
Then there was the issue about not finding ld; I poked around and found something strange:
cd /media/OS/home/f14/usr/bin ls -laF ld ld -> /etc/alternatives/ld
cd /media/OS/home/f14/etc/alternatives ls -laF ld* ld -> /usr/bin/ld.bfd
The above is strange since the use of absolute paths in the links means that there will be issues when the modules are installed in a non-default location! I modified the above as follows:
cd /media/OS/home/f14/etc/alternatives ln -s ../../usr/bin/ld.bfd ld ln -s ../../usr/bin/ld.bfd ld.bfd
cd /media/OS/home/f14/usr/bin # Should have used a relative path in the next command # Even better, could have just done: ln -s ld.bfd ld ln -s /media/OS/home/f14/etc/alternatives/ld ld
Question 3: Why doesn't the module that provides ld use relative paths in the soft links -- thereby allowing that module to be easily installed in a non-standard location?
Question 4: An annoying thing about the terminal is that selection does nothing and right click brings up a menu -- how to change this so that selection results in an automatic copy to the clipboard, and right-click results in paste?
I have not yet gotten to installing the wl.ko; hope to do so something this week.
--Suresh
On Thu, Mar 03, 2011 at 04:52:19 +0000, Suresh Govindachar sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
Question 1: What's the bug that prevents $releaserver from taking its value?
The feature of supporting $releasever in livecd-tools didn't come out until after the F14 release. So if you are using a release day live iso, you need to first update livecd-tools before that feature will work.
As far as your initial goal goes, you might want to look at using mock to do the build.
Bruno Wolff III wrote:
On Thu, Mar 03, 2011 at 04:52:19 +0000, Suresh Govindachar sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
Question 1: What's the bug that prevents $releaserver from taking its value?
The feature of supporting $releasever in livecd-tools didn't come out until after the F14 release. So if you are using a release day live iso, you need to first update livecd-tools before that feature will work.
What's a "release day" live iso? I downloaded Fedora-14-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso a week or so ago from fedoraproject.org. So this iso has not been updated since the day F14 was released?
As far as your initial goal goes, you might want to look at using mock to do the build.
Good to know.
On Thu, Mar 03, 2011 at 08:04:54 -0800, Suresh Govindachar sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
What's a "release day" live iso? I downloaded
The normal one. You can make a respin that includes updates using livecd-creator.
Fedora-14-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso a week or so ago from fedoraproject.org. So this iso has not been updated since the day F14 was released?
That is correct. Fedora doesn't normally update its ISOs. There is a project named Unity that occasionally does Fedora respins. It doesn't look like they have done any for F13 or F14 yet. This isn't as important these days as anaconda doesn't get broken as often by updates. It used to be pretty common for Unity to have to backport anaconda updates to make the respins installable.
On Thu, 2011-03-03 at 10:26 -0600, Bruno Wolff III wrote:
On Thu, Mar 03, 2011 at 08:04:54 -0800, Suresh Govindachar sgovindachar@yahoo.com wrote:
What's a "release day" live iso? I downloaded
The normal one. You can make a respin that includes updates using livecd-creator.
Fedora-14-x86_64-Live-Desktop.iso a week or so ago from fedoraproject.org. So this iso has not been updated since the day F14 was released?
That is correct. Fedora doesn't normally update its ISOs. There is a project named Unity that occasionally does Fedora respins. It doesn't look like they have done any for F13 or F14 yet. This isn't as important these days as anaconda doesn't get broken as often by updates. It used to be pretty common for Unity to have to backport anaconda updates to make the respins installable.
Also I believe that starting with F13 during an install you could specify an update repo so update got installed at install rather than having to spend another hour or so after first boot doing a 'yum update all' Of course, installing updates during install would also require a network connection too. It might make the install take a bit longer if the updates came off of an internet repo opposed to a local one, but would give you a machine that's up2date at first boot.
Found info on fwcutter at http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
Its also in the Fedora repository
I think fwcutter is, essentially, a linux tool that extracts firmware from Windows driver.
Basically yes
But why such an indirect approach when Broadcom supports Linux on: http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php (such support has existed since October 2008.)
Please read the licence document for the Linux kernel. In particular please note that GNU Public License v2 applies to it. That requires all derivative works of the kernel be GPL. I (albeit as a non-lawyer) would be very surprised if a court was to find that driver not a derivative work, but unless it ever ends up in court we may never know.
"lspci -nn" shows BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n 14e4:4326 (rev01). So, as per the FAQ http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Documentation/FAQ#Q:_Is_my_XXX_model_devic... I googled "14e4 4326" site:cateee.net/lkddb/ and got no hit.
Maybe its out of date, maybe its right. I'm not sure what the Mini 10 uses but I think thats also 4326 - thing is it depends on more complex things than the PCI ids.
-
Alan Cox -
Anne Wilson -
Bruno Wolff III -
stan -
Suresh Govindachar -
Terry Polzin -
Todd Zullinger