Oops with WiFi driver and Kubuntu

GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
edited July 2006 in Science & Tech
Yesterday I finally installed Kubuntu in a dual-boot situation with Windows. I hit a few snags this time that I hadn't hit when I had it installed on its own HDD... the first thing that happened is that kdesu wouldn't work properly to promote my sessions to su privileges - I couldn't run Adept or make any admin level changes from KDE... command line worked with sudo, though. As it turns out, my username hadn't automatically been added to sudo on install this time. I added the line and then kdesu worked.

Anyway, that's the side story - now back to the real story.

I finally implemented the fix that I found here for the Broadcom WiFi card in the notebook. After following the steps on that page, I loaded the WiFi utility that installed with KDE, and lo and behold, the WiFi light on my laptop turned on for the first time while using Linux!

And then the PC locked up. I had to hard-reboot. And it subsequently locked up while loading the device drivers during boot. Then I tried to go into the recovery mode, and it locked up somewhere during the loading of that as well.

It still boots into Windows just fine, but I was so frustrated that I just went to bed and left it.

Any suggestions? :eek3:

Comments

  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    So you used the new native driver, not ndiswrapper, right? I take it you've also run through the troubleshooting guide near the bottom of what you linked. I can't think of anything to add to what they've already mentioned.

    If it's really stumping you, the last line at the very bottom will likely get you back to a working system. If you're having trouble getting to a point where you can do that, try booting up off of a LiveCD, mounting your root partition, and running the command:
    echo "blacklist bcm43xx" | sudo tee -a /mnt/my_filesystem_mount_point/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
    where /mnt/my_filesystem_mount_point is where you mounted your Kubuntu's hard drive root partition. This will prevent the native kernel module from loading during startup.

    ASIDE: I checked out that driver a month ago when I was looking at putting Gentoo on my Mac and decided it was way too beta for me. If it works, that's great, but if it doesn't your system crashes like that.


    -drasnor :fold:
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    Yes, I used the new native driver with the firmware gained through BCM43xx-fwcutter. I have not tried ndiswrapper, and I didn't install it in the first place, so I know it's not a conflict there.

    You gave exactly the kind of advice I was looking for here - I know how to get a hosed Windows install up and running, but I did not know how to do so for Linux... It didn't even cross my mind to try a LiveCD, but I will this weekend and at least get things bootable. After I do that, is it safe to try ndiswrapper, or is there some sort of uninstallation procedure that I need to follow after the blacklist?

    Do you use ndiswrapper on your Mac now? Or did you stick with OSX alone for now?
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    Installing ndiswrapper "over it" shouldn't be a problem. They only conflict when they're both loaded into the kernel at the same time.

    I can't use ndiswrapper on my Mac because it works by wrapping the Windows ndis drivers around the Linux kernel module api. The Windows drivers only work on IA32 arches and my Mac is PPC. I'm using OS X alone for now but when a Gentoo ebuild comes for the driver I may try again. It isn't very high on my priorities list at the moment :).

    -drasnor :fold:
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    I'm finally typing this message from a working WiFi connection on a Linux install.

    I installed the i386 build of ubuntu (since that's what all the help seemed geared toward anyway). I used the same steps with the same BCM43xx-fwcutter, and this time it actually worked properly. I'm not sure whether the issue was from using KDE's Wireless manger as opposed to GNOME's wireless manager or from using 64-bit edition as opposed to 32-bit edition, but this time everything went smoothly.

    Now I'm in the process of customizing GNOME to my liking and settling in to Ubuntu.

    I'm liking it.
  • drasnordrasnor Starship Operator Hawthorne, CA Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    Probably the 32bit vs 64bit. The firmware was probably from the 32-bit driver.

    -drasnor :fold:
  • GHoosdumGHoosdum Icrontian
    edited July 2006
    Ack - you're 100% correct. I didn't even realize that I decided not to go to 64-bit Windows a while back because I couldn't find proper 64-bit drivers.... the firmware probably did pull out of the 32-bit driver. I'm betting that I wouldn't have been able to get ndiswrapper to work either then.

    I'm happy I switched from KDE to GNOME anyway... I was getting tired of seeing all the programs that installed with the DE start with the letter "K"...
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