[ydl-gen] PowerBook G4 wireless problems on YDL 6.0

Mon Apr 7 10:38:39 MDT 2008

Hello furio, I have exactly the same problem (Yes, have, sorry, no solution
yet >_<)

I posted my problem to the yellow dog board a while ago but got no answers,
so, i'm just gonna copy-paste what i posted so maybe you and i can get this
to work with the some help :P (Please Help Us!).

-------------------- Original Thread at yellowDogBoard
------------------------ http://www.yellowdog-board.com/viewtopic.php?t=3102

Hi everyone, sorry to bother you, i know there are already a gazzillion
tutorials on how to make the wireless work, and i have read a fair amount of
them. but still cant make it work.

This is what i've done so far:

My Laptop is a late model iBook G4, the last one before the change to intel,
the airport extreme is built in and lspci reports is this one:
 *Code:*
[tonyx at localhost bcm43xx-fwcutter-006]$ /sbin/lspci | grep -i broadcom
0001:10:12.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One
54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

i'm using terrasoft's instructions on this page:
http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/support/solutions/ydl_5.x/airport-extreme.shtml

so far i've downloaded the bcm43xx-fwcutter-006, and cut the firmware from
macosx by mounting the partition, and then put it in /lib/firmware. as far
as that everything goes just a as smooth as the tutorial says...

then i use system-config-network to create a new wireless connection, the
card is recognized and appears as an option rigth away. i click ok to
everything and the connection appears on the menu.

when i try to activate it the interface wont come up, this is the error
message:

 *Code:*  Determining IP information for dev1804289383... failed; no link
present.  Check cable?

first thing i notice is that is says dev18xxx instead of eth1... but i've
changed that too and the problem is the same...

at the network configuration window, under hardware, i can see that there
are three devices, the wired ethernet, the BCM4318(complete name) and the
"bcm43xx". i think that last one was the one the fwcutter got from macosx,
but it doesnt appear as a wireless driver to select when making a new
connection, it appears listed as a wired ethernet thougth, i tried making a
conection as if it were wired ethernet but then get this error message when
i try to activate it:

 *Code:*
bcm43xx device eth1 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization.

i've been looking all over google for an aswer to this, but cant find
someone who's having this problem... please help!

I'm using Yellow Dog 5.0.2: Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.22-0.ydl.rc4 #1
SMP Tue Jun 12 09:42:32 MDT 2007 ppc ppc ppc GNU/Linux

thanx!

###################
I was Originally Using YDL6 but the driver didn't appear on the list at
all... i switched to YDL5 and at least now ita ppeared on the list... then
something weird happened...
###################

--------------------------------------------

Hi everyone!

Today i was just doing my stuff, then my wired ethernet failed and i
restarted the network by using /etc/init.d/network restart... it brings up
eth0(wired) .. and to my surprise, it also brings up eth1(the
wireless!!!)... i disconnected the cable to make sure ... and yes!!, it was
using the wireless!!!

However it died a few minutes later (the accespoint at the office usually
does that, it's normal) ... then i tried to restart the network again just
as before.. and nothing... again the same problem telling me to check the
cable..

So, now i know that the card is working, it worked once, then this is only a
configuration issue, everytime i bring up eth1(wireless) it starts to look
for IP information from DHCP, somehow it managed to get the info once and
connected to the office's accesspoint, but this isnt a very reliable access
point anyway... i'm willing to blame it on that. i have my own accespoint at
my place, but it is WEP protected, where do you tell the system that you
want eth1 to connect to a specific accesspoint and with a passwd????

is there a config file or a command i can use? because the default behavior
seems to be that it has to find a wireless connection and get DHCP info to
be able to bring up the interface...i dont know much about how this wireless
things work, but isnt there a way like to bring up the interface eth1 alone
without having to bind it to an address since the beginning, and then
connecting to a network using wireless tools???

i'm new to using wireless on linux, can you refer me to a tutorial to learn
how to connect from command line???

thanks!!!

#######################

That's what i've got so far, please help :S

On Mon, Apr 7, 2008 at 5:50 AM, furio ercolessi <furio at spin.it> wrote:

> I installed YDL 6.0 on a PowerBook G4 (1.5 GHz 15"). All went well,
> except that it does not recognize the Airport wireless.  I found
>
> http://www.terrasoftsolutions.com/support/solutions/ydl_5.x/airport-extreme.shtml
> , assumed that the same applies to YDL 6 and proceeded to follow these
> instructions.  lspci says  "Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g
> Wireless
> LAN Controller (rev 03)" as expected, and I installed the .fw files in
> /lib/firmware after extracting them from the driver in OSX 10.3
> (no 10.4 at hand, and the procedure does not work with 10.5).
> The device is seen by the kernel (from /var/log/messages):
> Apr  7 11:48:51 systemname kernel: bcm43xx driver
> Apr  7 11:48:51 systemname kernel: b43-phy0: Broadcom 4306 WLAN found
>
> Then I configured the interface as eth1 with system-config-network
> (which seemed to know about the device in the Hardware subpanel).
> I configured it as an Ethernet device, because if I try to add a
> Wireless device I do not see the BCM4306 in the device list.
> So I assumed that the OS sees this chip as an Ethernet.
> However, this is suspect (where am I supposed to configure the wifi
> network infos then?).
>
> Now the problem: the interface won't come up.  When I click on Activate I
> get:
>
> Cannot activate device eth1!
> bcm43xx device eth1 does not seem to be present, delaying initialization.
>
> and of course eth1 does not show up using ifconfig.
>
> I suspect that something may be wrong in /etc/modprobe.conf.
> In an attempt to made things working, I inserted manually
>
> alias eth1 bcm43xx
>
> in replacement of some other unrelated driver - probably put there
> by the script - that did not work either.  However I do not know
> exactly what I am doing here, and my line could also be wrong.
> I would really appreciate suggestions from people with the Airport
> working.
>
> Thanks in advance
>
> furio
>
> _______________________________________________
> yellowdog-general mailing list
> yellowdog-general at lists.terrasoftsolutions.com
> http://lists.terrasoftsolutions.com/mailman/listinfo/yellowdog-general
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>

-- 
Ing. Antonio García Camacho // 331 - 170 - 9069 (mobile) //
garciantonioc at gmail.com
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