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

Tue Apr 8 19:04:08 MDT 2008

Buon Giorno, Furio!

Well, it's 7:30AM over here, when I started this note.  I'll intersperse my
answers with yours below to approach a semblance of conversation.  I also run
YDL6 from my Powerbook, wirelessly.

On Mon, 7 Apr 2008 12:50:31 +0200
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

There are many differences between YDL 5 and YDL6.  Suffice it to say that the
instructions you refered to need to be updated.  I'll share the modifications
which worked for me.

There are two methods of extracting the firmware from MacOS X, the most
efficient, in my view, is to do so from within YDL.  I'm not exactly sure why
(and I did exchange communications with Christopher Murtagh regarding this) but
invoking the mount command so that OS X is completely available must be done
explicitly via the following sequence:

#mount -thfsplus /dev/hda3 /mnt/macosx

Of course, it is perfectly clear that the directory /mnt/macosx must be created
first before the above command is used.  Within YDL one does:

#mkdir /mnt/macosx

After the mount command has been invoked as described above proceeding to step
3 occurs as Chris described it -- if one is using YDL 5.  HOWEVER, in YDL6 what
follows occurred to me after I used both the original version of fwcutter (which
Chris decribed) and a more current one at different times.  Although my use of
the newer and older fwcutter appear together they were not invoked within
moments of one another as they appear below.  I'm merely presenting them this
way to highlight a completely different problem which occurs within YDL 6.
Here's what happened:

[root at arakus b43-fwcutter-009]# ./b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware/
\/mnt/macosx/Sys*/Libr*/Ex*/Ap*/Con*/Ma*/AppleAirPort2
Sorry, the input file is either wrong or not supported by b43-fwcutter.
This file has an unknown MD5sum 85c71d658b650fd2ef546d1d81b113a0.
[root at arakus b43-fwcutter-009]# 

[root at arakus bcm43XX-fwcutter-006]# ./bcm43XX-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware/
\/mnt/macosx/System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirPort2.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleAirPort2
Sorry, the input file is either wrong or not supported by bcm43XX-fwcutter.
This file has an unknown MD5sum 85c71d658b650fd2ef546d1d81b113a0.

A computer apologizing for not functioning as expected, is a nice piece of
programming.  However, it is also going to provide sometimes misleading clues
as to what it believes went wrong because it has no idea how to think.  So
never accept the computer's view on face value in any operating system.  What
follows below is what I was able to discover.

The first three instructions under the section: Configure your... under Linux.
Didn't work.  Being the nut that I am I tried a bit of cheating by merely
copying ifcfg-eth0 and naming it ifcfg-eth1; that didn't work either.  The
reason why it didn't work is because the HWADDR variable in ifcfg-eth1 != the
HWADDR variable in ifcfg-eth0.  Anaconda creates both files with different
definitions for the hardware location accessed for Ethernet (eth0) and Wireless
(eth1).  The symbol != is a rather old way of signifying the phrase, does not
equal.

What follows is the ifcfg-eth1 file settings located in  /etc/sys*/net*scripts:

The * are wildcard symbols, a quick and nasty shortcut.

The file which works appears below:

# Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller
DEVICE=eth1
ONBOOT=no
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
HWADDR=00:11:24:90:c3:d8
NETMASK=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=enter your hostname here
IPADDR=
DOMAIN=
TYPE=Wireless
ESSID=off/any
CHANNEL=1
MODE=Managed
RATE=Auto
USERCTL=yes
IPV6INIT=yes
PEERDNS=yes

Note that the phrase "enter your hostname here" for the actual hostname you
created as you were installing YDL; that is the name you use for the variable
DHCP_HOSTNAME.

After making modifications to the above file, then you reboot.  When you are
back within YDL6 it is then possible to do the standard manual invocation of
eth1 via the terminal.

The sequence, to connect with a router with no encryption
(in a room or environment you frequent regularly), is:

#ifconfig eth1 up
#iwconfig eth1
#iwconfig eth1 channel 6 txpower on rate auto essid xxcxxxxxxxxx
#dhclient eth1

Explanation: x represents various numbers, c represents a character.  The
letters and characters are usually printed on the body of the back of a router.

The sequence to discover what AP (access point) may be available locally, and
join that AP if it doesn't use encyrption is:

#ifconfig eth1 up
#iwconfig eth1
#iwlist eth1 scanning
#iwconfig eth1 channel 6 txpower on rate auto essid 'name'
#dhclient eth1

Explanation: name represents the name of the AP listed as defining the essid
variable.  Caution: Although the name is listed in double quotes, you will
notice that it can be invoked within the iwconfig command only if used with
single quotes.  The technical reason for this difference has to do with how
Unix/Linux uses and executes commands.  This nuance cannot be discussed here;
it needed to be mentioned however.

The sequence to join an AP if it does use WEP encyrption is:

#ifconfig eth1 up
#iwconfig eth1
#iwconfig eth1 channel 6 txpower on rate auto essid 'name' key
xxxcxxcxxcxxxcxcxccxxxxxcc
#dhclient eth1

I haven't figured out how to use wpa within YDL6 yet.  Oh well...

> 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

=====
"If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often
think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of
music. ... I get most joy in life out of music."  

"What Life Means to Einstein: An Interview by George Sylvester
Viereck," for the October 26, 1929 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
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