Squeeky

Many people have said that linux will not support Broadcom 802.11b/g in suse and this is a very common chip in laptops. After a few hard hours i finaly got it to work so I though i'd save you nice people some time.

**This how to is designed for SLED 10 or OpenSuse

The key to getting the broadcom drivers to work is a tool called ndiswrapper. This tool basicaly loads windows .inf driver packages nativly.

1. Download your Broadcom 802.11b/g drivers from a website or use your driver disk (website is the easiest way) - I got my drivers from Acer's Wite here. Make sure you get XP drivers

2. Extract these drivers to a known location (this can be done by typing unzip file.zip at console)

3. Now open yast and go to package management and search for and install ndiswrapper (people using other linux distros may have to build from source or use yum / apt-get)

4. You should add 'ndiswrapper' to the 'MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT' line (between the double quotes) in the /etc/sysconfig/kernel file. This must be done as root user

5. Now type these two commands
root> depmod -a
root> modprobe ndiswrapper
(Dont worry about any errors at this point)

6. Next, start up ndiswrapper with the Broadcom driver using the following commands (your inf file may be called something different to mine):

root> cd /place/where/i/unziped/drivers
root> ndiswrapper -i netbc564.inf
root> ndiswrapper -l

The last command should give a "driver present, hardware present" response, if everything is OK.

7. Finalize the ndiswrapper setup by writing a configuration for modprobe. This will let ndiswrapper and the Broadcom chip start together at boot time.

root> ndiswrapper -m

8. Since the on-board NIC file was created during installation, I used it as a starting point for the Broadcom network file.

root> cd /etc/sysconfig/network
root> cp ifcfg-eth-id-[your 10/100 NIC MAC address] ifcfg-wlan0

9. Now edit the file you just created using a text editor as root or sudo vi ifcfg-wlan0
look through the file till you find this line
NAME='YOUR WIRED NETWORK ADAPTER'
change this to wlan0

10.
Go to the KDE start icon and click System -> YaST -> Network Devices -> Network Card to configure the networking for the Broadcom chip (wlan0).

On the Network Card configuration screen click the Change button.

Select the Wireless Network card and then click the Edit button.

Under the Host Name & Name Server button, fill in the machine name (my machine is CURLYAMD) and your DNS server addresses. I also filled in the domain search names.

On the Wireless Network Card Configuration screen fill in the Operating Mode line with "Managed." Fill in the Network Name (ESSID) with "any."

Click Next and Finish to get out of YaST.

Finish up by adding the following lines to the /etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-wlan0 file.

DHCLIENT_MODIFY_RESOLVE_CONF='yes'
DHCLIENT_SET_DEFAULT_ROUTE='yes'


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At this point you will be giving up the will to live :) dont worry we're nearly there.
Type the following commands

root> iwlist wlan0 scan - - - This will give you a list of avalible wireless connections

root> iwconfig wlan0 essid "[insert your AP essid here]"

root> ifconfig wlan0 up

Now reboot your pc and it might asy you for a wireless encryption key etc. From this point its easy gui stuff. In SuSE you can right click once on the network icon in the tray and you can select a network in range.


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Wow now your happy - Enjoy your wlan conenction