[CS-FSLUG] wifi problems

[Chris]

> Mint has a modified download system/packagemanager.  I downloaded their
> 'fwcutter' and the program asked if I wanted it to download the firmware.
> I answere yes, and the program proceded to operate, and exited without
> errors, saying that it had finished the job.  I haven't beren able to
> figure out how to check and see if the right modules are in the right
> place and being properly loaded at boot.  I don't even know for sure what
> the modules would be called.  (I suppose 'bcm43??' or 'b43??' since it is
> a Broadcom 'card'.

It's going to depend a lot on the type of card you have.  There are
several versions of that driver floating around.  Most likely, you are
using a newer kernel where the driver is either called b43 or b43legacy.
Then again, depending on your card, you may need another different
driver written by broadcom (proprietary blob which interfaces with an
open source kernel bit).  From what I hear, the writing of that driver
was paid for by ubuntu for their "sold with linux" laptops.  The
module's name in that case is wl.  I have to use that one in my work
laptop, which isn't ubuntu, so I have to patch the source every time I
update my kernel.  Since you are running an ubuntu based distro, that
probably won't be a problem.

A few links you will want to check out are:
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
and 
http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php
http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/README.txt

The hybrid driver works in most cases, but there are some issues I've
noticed:
1. Switching from wpa networks to wep networks may require a module
unload and reload, which eventually leads to a frozen kernel in some
circumstances (can be as much as several hours later).
2. Using SSH requires you to 'iwpriv eth1 set_vlanmode 0' otherwise your
connection will just hang.  This might not be an issue in ubuntu
distros.

Also remember that the command 'dmesg' is your friend.  The open source
drivers will output debugging messages that you can see there, and can
tell you quite a bit about what is or isn't happening.

Chris