Arch Linux

snufkin

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2008-11-08

Posts: 71

Need help getting my wireless working on Asus F5R

In this thread, I'll ask for help as I progress on my journey to a working wireless network, so I won't post all questions at once.

First thing I need to know:
When I type iwconfig (or ifconfig), it prints information about my interfaces on the screen. Now, how exactly does iwconfig/ifconfig/etc know that there's a interface named eth0? Where does it retrieve the information about it? iwconfig lists eth0, but I'm not sure if eth0 is my wireless or my wired NIC.

And second question:
Is there a way to display which module is being used for a specific hardware?

For example, lspci lists
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI (rev 01)
, but I don't know if there's any module using it.

Thanks in advance.

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Need help getting my wireless working on Asus F5R

The interfaces are created by the kernel when the appropriate modules are loaded, and they are then available to userspace tools like ofconfig etc. If iwconfig shows details about eth0 (as opposed to saying "no wireless extensions"), then eth0 is your wireless interface.

hwd (in the extra repo) can show you modules per device, and lsmod can show you what modules are currently loaded.

btw - if you're getting eth0 for a Broadcom device, that probably means you're using the deprecated bcm43xx module, which in turn means your kernel is not up to date. Whe you update, the interface will become wlan0, provided by the b43 module, so I'd suggest you do that first.

snufkin

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2008-11-08

Posts: 71

Re: Need help getting my wireless working on Asus F5R

As I expected. I've removed bcm43xx from /etc/rc.conf and now I eth0 doesn't show up anyemore

Another question popped into my head now:
Do I download the b43 module from somewhere, or am I supposed to create it my self?

Last edited by snufkin (2008-11-28 10:04:57)

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: Need help getting my wireless working on Asus F5R

Unless you have a very old kernel, just modprobe it. But as I said above, upgrade you system first, before doing any of this.

snufkin

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2008-11-08

Posts: 71

Re: Need help getting my wireless working on Asus F5R

No need to update (I think). Installed the latest Arch realease a couple of days ago.

I figured out modprobe b43 too, didn't thought I had b43 though.

Now when I run iwlist wlan0 scanning, I get "Device doesn't support scanning", which means that I have to put the firmware in /lib/firmware, right? If not, what am I supposed to do now?

zenlord

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-05-24

Posts: 1,221

Website

Re: Need help getting my wireless working on Asus F5R

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/B43#b43

and

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network_Profiles

Zl.

snufkin

Member

From: Sweden

Registered: 2008-11-08

Posts: 71

Re: Need help getting my wireless working on Asus F5R

Well, now I've got another problem.

So far I've blacklisted bcm43xx, and added b43. But I can't seem to get the DHCP to work.

I run:
ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig essid yodarules enc s:asdasd
dhcpcd wlan0

But when I run dhcpcd, I get "err, wlan0: timed out". Is there something I've missed? I know the DHCP server is working, because I can connect with Windows without any problems.

Oh, and also; don't tell me to use any program that requires X. Haven't been able to download it, since I can't connect to the internet.