Arch Linux

Ypsy

Member

Registered: 2008-12-28

Posts: 15

Ideapad s10e Wifi issues (broadcom-wl)

Howdie,
Santa brought me one of those lovely Ideapad s10e's for christmas but sadly I can't get wlan working in Arch. The preinstalled SLED used the broadcom-wl driver (which worked), so I was pretty happy an AUR package existed for it. Install worked just fine and my card is also identified but I can't scan for networks nor connect to one I know of.
Here is some output:

$ iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11  Nickname:""
          Access Point: Not-Associated

Before installing broadcom-wl eth1 wasn't listed at all.
When I try to connect to my access point, this happens:

$ sudo iwconfig eth1 essid 'FRITZ!Box Fon WLAN' key 12345
Passwort: 
Error for wireless request "Set ESSID" (8B1A) :
    SET failed on device eth1 ; Invalid argument.

Another strange thing:

$ iwlist scan
lo        Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0      Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth1      Interface doesn't support scanning.

Any ideas? :S

Ypsy

Member

Registered: 2008-12-28

Posts: 15

Re: Ideapad s10e Wifi issues (broadcom-wl)

Just a quick bump here.
After I had some strange errors with my ESSID, I just tried changing it (and some other stuff) and the "SET failed" Error disappeared.
So if I enter

sudo iwconfig eth1 essid lazer key s:whoops

now, no errors are being printed anymore.
Iwconfig still gives me the same and ifconfig prints:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:23:8B:40:90:48  
          inet addr:192.168.178.45  Bcast:192.168.178.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::223:8bff:fe40:9048/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:2673 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2418 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:2026666 (1.9 Mb)  TX bytes:376605 (367.7 Kb)
          Interrupt:16 

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:21:00:91:47:F2  
          inet6 addr: fe80::221:ff:fe91:47f2/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:130 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:644
          TX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:11936 (11.6 Kb)  TX bytes:516 (516.0 b)
          Interrupt:18 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:280 (280.0 b)  TX bytes:280 (280.0 b)

I also tried to configure it using the network-admin but if I open the network manager after entering the essid etc. it's unconfigured again.

Any specific logs which could help me?
Or any ideas?

Last edited by Ypsy (2008-12-31 14:15:20)

Ypsy

Member

Registered: 2008-12-28

Posts: 15

Re: Ideapad s10e Wifi issues (broadcom-wl)

Another quick bump here.
After installing the new version of broadcom-wl, which was released today, and having no success again I tried installing broadcom's linux driver from hand following the wiki. No success again, same outputs as already posted.
I'm getting depressed! :-(
Will try using ndiswrapper tomorrow but I'm absolutely sure it works using broadcom-wl as there are lots of people who got it to work.

viga

Member

Registered: 2007-06-12

Posts: 112

Re: Ideapad s10e Wifi issues (broadcom-wl)

Take a look at the archlinux wireless page

and also this

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Broadcom_BCM4312

do you have the driver wl in lsmod  if not load the driver then try iwlist scan again

Ypsy

Member

Registered: 2008-12-28

Posts: 15

Re: Ideapad s10e Wifi issues (broadcom-wl)

@viga: Yes, the driver is loaded. lsmod | grep wl prints:

wl                   1074052  0 
ieee80211_crypt         6532  2 ieee80211_crypt_tkip,wl

Okay but now something strange happened! After going through the wiki pages again (as viga recommended) and entering every possible command more than twenty thousand times it suddenly worked!
The only thing I added this time the dhcpcd command.
Nevertheless: After rebooting it didn't work anymore, only after entering the command a few thousand times again.
Haven't figured out the exact order the commands need to be used but I'm sure it's not the way you're supposed to do it normally. Will hopefully find it out soon though! Anyways, now it can't be too hard to find a good solution to auto configure it.

Last edited by Ypsy (2009-01-02 04:54:22)

viga

Member

Registered: 2007-06-12

Posts: 112

Re: Ideapad s10e Wifi issues (broadcom-wl)

I use netcfg to start my wireless  sudo netcfg "the name of the file containing your configuration"

follow the instructions here:  I have the same card and us the wl driver

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

Good luck

scosu

Member

Registered: 2008-05-25

Posts: 3

Re: Ideapad s10e Wifi issues (broadcom-wl)

i had the same problem today... i think if you push the wifi button, the module has problems with that. so after you pushed the button just reload the module with "modprobe -r wl; modprobe wl"