New thread, broadcom 802-11 related

Tue Apr 18 01:02:33 UTC 2006

Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Monday 17 April 2006 10:02, Neil Cherry wrote:
>> Gene Heskett wrote:
>>> On Monday 17 April 2006 08:45, Neil Cherry wrote:
>>>> Frank Pineau wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, 2006-04-17 at 00:18 -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
>>>>>> So I downloaded it, but nothing happens when I tap, or dbl-tap on
>>>>>> the SP30676.exe file.  Even in mc, which I thought could unpack
>>>>>> anything.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Next?  Surely there is a way to extract it and get the driver and
>>>>>> .inf file that ndiswrapper wants as an argument?
>>>>> I had the same problem.  I had to extract the driver under
>>>>> Windows.
>>>> You can extract it under Wine and when it blows up you'll find the
>>>> pieces under ~/.wine/drive_c/ (maybe SwSetup).
>>> Ok, installing wine with yum now.  This should be fun, never having
>>> run wine before...  Humm, I typed 'wine SP30676.exe' and it
>>> installed about 20 megs of fonts!  And at the end, a bunch of
>>> fixme's, and a flashing kicker bar section labeled "Broadcom
>>> InstallShield Wizard", so I tapped on that, and it ran, and now I
>>> have another section at the bottom of the screen labeled Broadcom
>>> 802-11 with a text window icon.  Tap that for effect.  And that gave
>>> me an error occured while launching the setup with a (0x80020005) 32
>>> bit number appended.  So it blew up as you said :)
>>>
>>> But when wine was done, those files did exist.  But ndiswrapper
>>> still fails with the exact same message when cd'd to that dir and
>>> running ndiswrapper -i bcmw15.inf,
>>>
>>>  "couldn't copy bcmw15.inf at ndiswrapper line 139"
>> I don't know why it doesn't work, what is the command you are
>> typing in?
> 
> ndiswrapper -i bcmw15.inf

I think the file name is wrong.

>> Are you in the directory what the files are?
> 
> Yes.

Good, that is important. It won't write anything to that directory
instead it puts everything in /etc/ndiswrapper.

>> I think you want the other inf file bcmwl5a.inf or somthing like that.
>> You can do a file * in that directory and it should be the ASCII
>> file not that data one.
> 
> AFAICS there is only one .inf file there, and its a BIG binary.
> I'd moved 3 files altogether, and a file * shows this:

> [root at diablo firmware]# file *

.../firmware/? weird mine is under ~/.wine/drive_c/SWSetup/SP30290A

> bcmwl5.inf:
> bcmwl5.PNF: PDP-11 UNIX/RT ldp
> bcmwl5.sys: MS-DOS executable PE  for MS Windows (native) Intel 80386 
> 32-bit
> [root at diablo firmware]#
> 
> Basicly nothing for the .inf.  And ls -la:
> -r--------  1 root root 658896 Nov 28 04:35 bcmwl5.inf
> -r--------  1 root root 379840 Feb 14 22:34 bcmwl5.PNF
> -r--------  1 root root 424320 Nov 28 04:35 bcmwl5.sys
> 
> Do I need to get more than the .inf file from the ntfs partition?

I don't know, the one file (bcmwl5.inf) is a binary file
and I have no clue as what it is. The other inf file (bcmwl5a.inf)
is a ASCII file that you can look at with an editor. It lists
the files that ndiswrapper needs to install the Windows driver.
That's why the binary file will not work.

> I just tried that by copying the whole dir from the ntfs partiton, but 
> that made no difference, still the:
> [root at diablo WLAN]# ndiswrapper -i bcmw15.inf
> Installing bcmw15
> couldn't copy bcmw15.inf at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper line 139.
> [root at diablo WLAN]#

When I ran the SP30290A.EXE file under win this is what
ended up in my directory (ignore my prompt):

[~/.wine/drive_c/SWSetup/SP30290A]
njc at cookie(pts/6)$ file *
Setup.ini:    ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators
bcm43xx.cat:  ACB archive data
bcm43xxa.cat: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators
bcmwl5.inf:
bcmwl5.sys:   MS-DOS executable PE  for MS Windows (native) Intel 80386 
32-bit
bcmwl5a.inf:  Windows INF file
bcmwld2k.exe: MS-DOS executable PE  for MS Windows (GUI) Intel 80386 32-bit
bcmwlhoa.ini: ASCII English text, with CRLF line terminators
bcmwlhom.exe: MS-DOS executable PE  for MS Windows (GUI) Intel 80386 32-bit
bcmwlhom.ini: ASCII English text, with CRLF line terminators
bcmwlntp.sys: MS-DOS executable PE  for MS Windows (native) Intel 80386 
32-bit
bcmwlu00.exe: MS-DOS executable PE  for MS Windows (GUI) Intel 80386 32-bit
data1.cab:    InstallShield CAB
data1.hdr:    InstallShield CAB
data2.cab:    InstallShield CAB
ikernel.ex_:  MS Compress archive data
is.exe:       MS-DOS executable PE  for MS Windows (GUI) Intel 80386 32-bit
launcher.ini: ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators
layout.bin:   data
setup.exe:    MS-DOS executable PE  for MS Windows (GUI) Intel 80386 32-bit
setup.inx:    data
setup.iss:    ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators
setupa.ini:   ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators
setupd.ini:   ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators
sp30290.cva:  ASCII text, with CRLF line terminators

Note the "Windows INF file" (bcmwl5a.inf) that the INF file that
you need (I have a Broadcom BCM4318 802.11g NIC). The driver
I ended up using is in the bcmwl5a.inf (bcmwl5.sys). Look for
the bcwml5a.inf and bcmwl5.sys files. Type:

ndiswrapper -i bcmw15a.inf

Then see what happens.

> And as you can see, I was cd'd to the ntfs WLAN dir that time.
> 
> I think I've an ndiswrapper bug, who do I nag about that?

I don't think it's a bug, your not using the correct file.

Do a search on the file SP30290.exe, that's the one I
use (with wpa_supplicant). In the next few months I'll
start fooling around with the kernel driver for the
NIC but for now it's just ndis.

-- 
Linux Home Automation         Neil Cherry       ncherry at linuxha.com
http://www.linuxha.com/                         Main site
http://linuxha.blogspot.com/                    My HA Blog
http://home.comcast.net/~ncherry/               Backup site