The situation:
A DELL Notebook Inspiron 9100 is equipped with a Broadcom WLAN Card (Board: DELL Wireless LAN 1450 Adapter Rev 10.4, driver BCMWL5, Version 3.40.65.0, chip BCM4306 / BCM2050) and runs under Windows XP. As accespoint and DHCP-Server a Fritzbox 7050 is used; WLAN is configured and working under XP, SSID-name und encryption key are available. The same should work with Kanotix-2005-03! And also with Kanotix-2005-04!
Let's start.
First copy windows driver from C:\DRIVERS\NETWORK\ADDON\BCMWL5.INF and other BCMWL5.* stuff and install it with
ndiswrapper -i BCMWL5.INF
modprobe ndiswrapper
To be sure that everything okay type ndiswrapper -l . Output should say, that
bcmwl5? is installed and hardware is present. To automate loading of the ndiswrapper module you can use "ndiswrapper -m".
Change /etc/network/interfaces and uncomment (depending on WEP or WPA) the appropriate lines. Note: WEP isn't a good implementation, try to avoid it if possible.
# /etc/network/interfaces -- configuration file for ifup(8), ifdown(8)
#
# The loopback interface
# automatically added when upgrading
auto lo wlan0
iface lo inet loopback
#
# WLAN with WEP encryption
#
#iface wlan0 inet dhcp
# pre-up iwconfig wlan0 essid My-name-from-windows
# pre-up iwconfig wlan0 key My-HEX-value-from-windows
# pre-up iwconfig wlan0 ap auto
# pre-up iwconfig wlan0 key open
# pre-up iwconfig wlan0 commit
#
#
# WLAN with WPA-PSK encryption
#
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
pre-up /usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -d -B -w -Dndiswrapper -iwlan0 -c/etc/network/wpa_supplicant.conf
pre-up iwconfig wlan0 commit
post-down killall -q wpa_supplicant
Option -d delivers debugging infos, -dd more of them, very helpful!
Insert in /etc/modules ndiswrapper if you want to load the WLAN driver upon booting.
In /etc/modutils/linux-wlan-ng I inserted
# /etc/modutils/linux-wlan-ng
alias wlan0 ndiswrapper
Now you're ready to start WLAN with
ifup wlan0.
iwconfig wlan0 shows something like:
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"My-ESSID-name"
Mode: Managed Frequency: 2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:01:02:03:04:05
Bit Rate: 54 Mb/s Tx-Power: -2147483648 dBm
RTS thr: 2347 B Fragment thr: 2346 B
Power Management: off
Link Quality: 100/100 Signal level:-76 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:19465 Invalid misc:90560 Missed beacon:0
The values for Tx-Power and Noise level are nonsense in my humble opinion. It should be said that configuring the card from the command line with
iwconfig activates some settings at once, others have to be activated with
iwconfig wlan0 commit .
Until here everything is done regarding WEP.
If you want to use WPA encryption (way better!), you should create /etc/network/wpa_supplicant.conf and insert:
##### My wpa_supplicant configuration file /etc/network/wpa_supplicant.conf
#
# NOTE! This file may contain password information and should probably be made
# readable only by root user on multiuser systems.
#
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=0
eapol_version=1
ap_scan=2
fast_reauth=1
#
# Simple case: WPA-PSK, PSK as an ASCII passphrase, allow all valid ciphers
network={
ssid="My-name-from-windows"
scan_ssid=1
proto=WPA
psk="My-ASCII-value-from-windows"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
pairwise=TKIP
auth_alg=OPEN
priority=2
}
Other parameters may be needed for other acces points, the examples in /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/examples will help you. I had to run
/usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -dd -B -w -Dndiswrapper -iwlan0 -c/etc/network/wpa_supplicant.conf
and watch the debugging information and to change the values for eapol_version, ap_scan and fast_reauth to get connected
To run with WPA I had to de-install linux-wlan-ng and linux-wlan-ng-modules-2.6.11.kanotix-11 (or a newer version of it) as both are written for PRISM chipsets and /usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant aborts therefore with an error message.
Start your WLAN with
ifup wlan0.
I got many good ideas from the (german) debianforum:
http://www.debianforum.de/wiki/?page=WPA+auf+Centrino-Notebook∞ to get to this solution.
