Failing to Configure Wireless Network w/ b43legacy

Message

Ian · Post by **Ian** » Sun Sep 07, 2008 11:13 pm

I have a BCM4306 Rev 02 card, using b43legacy as a driver. I had everything working great, until one night last week everything just stopped working. Right now when I try to initialize the wireless network I get this.

Code: Select all

root# /etc/init.d/net.wlan0 start
* Starting wlan0
*   Configuring Wireless Network wlan0
*   Couldn't associate with any access points on wlan0
*   Failed to configure wireless network for wlan0

I have no idea what information useful, unfortunately this computer has no wired internet and there are no other computers in the same room, so slightly difficult to get information off of it other than copying down by hand unless I can find my usb key. All I know is this worked perfectly fine a few days ago, and I am currently unable to use ndiswrapper because I have no internet, so please don't tell me to just give up on b43legacy and use ndiswrapper, thanks.

kds66 · Post by **kds66** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 6:33 pm

Did you update the kernel? Are you using wpa_supplicant? Anything in /var/log/messages that might give additional clues?

For me the native drivers work reasonably fine with kernel 2.6.24 and very well with kernel 2.6.26. I use b43 instead b43-legacy, though.

Ian · Post by **Ian** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 6:56 pm

Updated kernel to use b43legacy, haven't touched the kernel since though (and it was working). Using wireless-tools as my roommate's router is "only" using WEP, but we're not too afraid of wardrivers. Didn't notice anything in /var/log/messages, but I can look again tonight. The problem I'm having is the lack of any weird error messages that tell me useful errors.

Btw, I'm using b43legacy because of my card, otherwise the drivers should behave the same from what I understand.

defenderBG · Post by **defenderBG** » Mon Sep 08, 2008 9:18 pm

You need to recompile net-wireless/b43-fwcutter (not 100% sure, but it is worth a try) and if you use ndiswrapper (100% sure) every time you compile the kernel. There was a command for recompiling the needed packages after compiling the kernel. Can't remember the name :/

if it did not work...need more info:
lspci -vnn (just the broadcom part)
rmmod b43-legacy
modprobe b43-legacy
dmesg | tail
iwconfig
This will give us some more info on where to search the problem.

Ian · Post by **Ian** » Tue Sep 09, 2008 10:40 pm

So I took a look at /var/log/messages and it's telling me that the authentication to the AP is timing out. From that, obviously it's not going to get an IP. I apologize for no straight logs, but as I have no internet on the computer in question...hard to get logs off of it beyond sneakernet...which requires a usb stick...which is currently missing...

I tried recompiling b43-fwcutter and re-cutting firmware, seems to not work any better.

IvanMajhen · Post by **IvanMajhen** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 5:47 am

Show some b43 related dmesg....

kds66 · Post by **kds66** » Wed Sep 10, 2008 3:12 pm

As the stuff was working previously I'd recommend to investigate what exactly changed: software, configuration, router configuration. Perhaps something as stupid as the key was changed on the access point? :)