On Thu, 2006-12-28 at 21:51 -0500, oleksandr korneta wrote: > hello all, > > here is a fresh Fedora Core 6 installation on a Compaq v2404us laptop. > The built-in wireless adapter is based on Broadcom bcm4318 chip. On a > previous installation I was using ndiswrapper with windows driver for > x86_64, but since I've heard a lot about a native driver for bcm43xx > family and decided to give it a try this time. > > With the help of HOWTO from fedoraforum.org everything went smoothly > and my wireless started working like a charm. However now, after a > couple days of using it I am not so excited. > > The wireless works very unstable. Sometimes it works fine the whole day, > and another day I am not able to connect for hours. I am using > NetworkManager and I can see my access point (AP) along the whole bunch > of another APs in my apartment complex but does not want to establish a > connection. I am not using any encryption, just mac-address-based > filtering on my wireless router, so wpa_supplicant should not come into > play. Also, the AP is just next room so the signal should be strong enough. > > What bothers me the most is that even when the connection is stable > /var/log/messages gets full of the following crap: > text deleted > > and this is happening for the whole day constantly. I have no idea what > is this SoftMAC thing and what wpa_supplicant has to do with my > connection if there is no encryption and its daemon is even turned off. > > I can also attach /var/log/messages and dmesg output if someone is > willing to help. > > Right now I am thinking about switching back to ndiswrapper unless > someone gives me a good argument to stay. > > Thank you in advance, > > > -- > regards, > Oleksandr Korneta I just spent 2 days and 3 installs to figure out what the problem was. The short story is - don't use bmc43xx - it's not fully functional and is experimental - it also won't work with more that 1gb of memory (if I remember and understand correctly). The problem is that FC6 automatically installs bcm43xx. I installed the ndiswrapper package but could NOT get it to work. I even went back to FC4 (where I knew that it worked) but could not get it to work - bcm43xx was now being installed even in FC4. I tried blacklisting the module but blacklisting was not enough (both blacklist and blacklist-compat). I had to rename bcm43xx.ko to something else (like bcm43xx.ko.disabled) to prevent it from being installed and screwing up ndiswrapper. Once you stop bcm43xx from installing, it's easy to install ndiswrapper and it works like it always has with bcm4318 chip. bcm43xx is NOT ready at all for prime time. Rick B.
