Getting BROADCOM Wireless to work in BackTrack!

[Reffohj]

I'm having trouble getting my wireless to work... properly.

I've installed my drivers through the manual installation directions. No problems there. I rebooted. When I was back in I started network. I then opened the WICD GTK interface, which showed a whole list of networks. Mine was on there so I connected, got an IP address and had a strong signal.

Whenever I try going anywhere inside of firefox after the default page, which is on the hard drive, my wireless connection gets dropped immediately.

Any ideas?

[nouhoh]

This is the infamous post I've been looking for! Sweet.
My issue is similar to the other peoples- especially sqrdsqr's post.
Except I have a Mac, and I think he/she/it has a Dell.
Either way, to answer sqrdsqr's question, what I just did to check to see if I have the "name" I should be calling it (i.e. eth1, wlan0, etc) was in konsole:

lshw -class network

. It should list your networking thingadoos.
My question is, I did my whole lshw thing, and confirmed that my settings were right in the /etc/network/interfaces file...but it's still not working.

Here's what I get when I do a lshw.

 *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       product: BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller
       vendor: Broadcom Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
       logical name: eth1
       version: 01
       serial: 00:26:bb:11:ec:8f
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=wl0 driverversion=5.60.246.6 latency=0 module=wl multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn

I see that my wireless device and/or is being recognized (at least one of them have to be recognized because it says 802.11abgn after an equal sign)...but as to what to do with this info from here, I've got nothing.

Here's what my interfaces file looks like.

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address ...(...means that I've got it right)
netmask ..........
network ............
gateway ........

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
address         ..........
netmask         .............
network         ..........
gateway        .............
essid           ...........
mode            Managed
nick            manor
channel         auto
ap              any
rate            auto
txpower         auto
key             off
modu            auto

iwconfig gives me this

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11abgn  ESSID:""  Nickname:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Bit Rate:16 Mb/s   Tx-Power:24 dBm
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Managementmode:All packets received
          Link Quality=5/5  Signal level=0 dBm  Noise level=-57 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:1  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

and ifconfig gives me this:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:26:bb:60:6a:ce
          inet addr:.......  Bcast:...........  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::226:bbff:fe60:6ace/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:6167 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:5364 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:5088981 (5.0 MB)  TX bytes:903159 (903.1 KB)
          Interrupt:45 Base address:0xa000

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:26:bb:11:ec:8f
          inet addr:.............  Bcast:..............  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::226:bbff:fe11:ec8f/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:195 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:941
          TX packets:0 errors:6 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:10782 (10.7 KB)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:22

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:475 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:475 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:26455 (26.4 KB)  TX bytes:26455 (26.4 KB)

Honestly, even after I get my wireless WORKING, I'm not going to have it be a static address...but I figured it'd be a good idea to get it up and running before trying to figure out how dhcp works. Maybe it's simpler. Who knows (not I)? So yeah. figure that one out.

Cheers
nouhoh

P.S.
Thanks for posting this, I started like 2 different threads ( and got in trouble because I accidentally started 2 rather than one...hard to explain) before finding this one. I seriously searched everywhere for people with similar issues, and only those last few dudes seemed to have the same kinds of problems I've been having.

[nouhoh]

I finally got my wireless to work! I'll go through what I did.

Firtsly, when I list networking hardware aka konsold command

lshw -class networking

I saw that the logical place for the Broadcom device was eth1. Basically I would keep editing my /etc/network/interfaces file...changing eth1 (my wireless port/place/hardware location) from eth1 to wlan0. So I checked what lshw said when I had edited the interfaces file to wlan0 and saw that it still said eth1...not wlan0.
So that's one thing to check. I see a lot of people who have not edited their /etc/network/interfaces file and that's a good place to start.
First do...

cat /etc/networking/interfaces

(don't worry when you do a cat you're not editing anything, just looking at whats there.)

The devices/things you NEED most of the time are

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

(leave lo alone. I don't know what it does but every example I've looked at [which is a LOT because I've been trying to solve this b.s. for like 30 hours] has it there. If anyone knows what lo does, feel free to enlighten me/us as to what its' purpose is)

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address ....................
netmask 255.255.255.0
network ...............
gateway ..........

(the .... mean that you should look it up. If I showed you mine it would give away your ip address which is not exactly a good idea as far as privacy issues are concerned; netmask is almost always 255.255.255.0)



auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
#address      .............  
#netmask                255.255.255.0
#network      ..........
#gateway      ...........
#essid          ...........
mode            Managed
nick            manor
channel         auto
ap              any
rate            auto
txpower         auto
key             off
modu            auto

Ok now here's the tricky part...not so much tricky as much as it is what was messing me up.
In my specific case, my BT4 is on my laptop which means it's portable. So setting your IP address type to static is working against you. If you never left your house then setting it to static makes sense (correct me if I'm wrong). So basically I commented out all of the stuff that you would put in if you were setting up a static IP. If you're setting up BT on a Desktop, I would assume you would want a static IP (of course I'm assuming that you're not taking your Desktop to school everyday). So if your compuuuuter isn't portable then set up a static IP as thus:

auto eth1 (<-stays the same...remember this is the logical name of the location on your computer...the eth1/wlan0/whatever that you saw when you did the lshw -class network. It that device is also the one listed below after iface)

iface eth1 inet dhcp (<- that part is the only thing you need to change to static...aka it should read:)


iface eth1 inet static
address      .............  
netmask                255.255.255.0
network      ..........
gateway      ...........

Aka same as I had before. The only thing that I, specifically had to change was I had my sh*t set to static rather than dhcp.

As far as I know this jazz (that I have after essid up in my other example) is optional:

mode            Managed
nick            ..........
channel         auto
ap              any
rate            auto
txpower         auto
key             off
modu            auto

mode managed means that that the mode of my wireless...it's purpose...is to give me the INTOURNETZZZZ . You can also set it to auto:

(mode auto)

if you're unsure or you don't want to f*kk with it.

I set:

channel auto

channel to auto because I don't know what channel my network device is on. It can also be a frequency (in GHz...like 2.50 GHz). You would find this by looking at your router information. I found my router info online by checking the bottom of my router and going to the setup url place (the fantastic website that you may or may not have had to go to to set up your INTERNEZTEZTZ). I basically print screened all of the info and then emailed it to myself (because I may or may not be running BT4 as a partition).

ap any

ap means access point. This is also something you can find in your router info. I have mine set to any because for debugging purposes if any doesn't work then I can change any to the
xx :xx :xx :xx :xx :xx
numbers to the numbers of the access point that I found in my router information. I'm not 1337 or anything but I'd suggest you set it to auto.

rate auto

I set my rate to auto because I have other dudes that are occasionally on my INTERNETZ0R3Z. Basically if you set this to anything, the way that I understand it, you would set it to the info you found on your router. I think you would do this so if you have a "noisy channel/frequency" your puter knows how much info it should be receiving after a particular request (again. correct me if I'm wrong.).

txpower auto

txpower is set to auto because I don't think my card supports that...if it does I don't know what it means so I set it to auto. I think that txpower controls the amount of powa your card supports if it's flexible and can do that kind of thing. Don't know why you'd do it but yeah. auto.


I didn't set my sensitivity because I don't know how sensitive my card is to interference. I didn't set retry because I don't know what it does. And I didn't set my rts threshold to anything because I'm not entirely sure what "handshake" means. I'm assuming it has something to do with ack, but I don't know.

While I didn't set my key/encryption to anything, I'm not sure whether I should or not. I'm all for protecting the info I'm sending out to the radiosphere so that 1337 h4k0urZ can't steal my credit card info, but I never use this OS to make any purchases so I'm not really too worried about it. I do mostly white hat stuff so if the FBI IS watching me, I wouldn't be too worried about what they'd find...because I'm not distributing cp or hacking into the pentagon or stealing credit card info. If you're into that kind of thing (don't be) then I'd look that jazz up. Especially if you're doing your hacking at home. If you're in coffee shops and stuff with free wi-fi (which if you're doing that kind of stuff you should be so spies don't get your IP and give you a knock on your door) I don't think it's as big as an issue.

module

I didn't set power because, again, no clue as to what it means or why you'd set it.

modu auto

I set modu to auto because again, I'm clueless.


commit

I didn't include commit because I was debugging and I took it out. I may put it back in because I think that if you don't have commit set you will have to do an

ifup ___(___is device port such as wlan0, wlan1, eth0, eth1, etc)

every time you start your wireless connection. You may want to set it if you're having problems and see what it does. If you set it you may want to restart your network card. I don't remember the command to do this, but it'd be something like
____ -network restart
(____ is the all powerful and elusive command that I can't remember) network (aka the variable network...you don't want to restart something else..like your computer...or your graphics card) restart (aka the option. aka what you want the ____command to do)


All of the variables that I have set (i.e. mode, nick, channel, ap, etc) can be found by looking in iwconfig's help section...i.e.
man iwconfig.

I'm not a mod or anything but generally speaking to all you kids that are new to troubleshooting threads after you solve your problems your posts should look something like what I just did above. You should always post your solutions if you asked a question or at least say "hey yo ___(dude guy who gave me the solution to my problem) your post solved my issue." It's just common courtesy, and it helps lurkers find the posts that they can attempt to solve their problems.

I like to type a lot so my explanation is a little in depth. Also the stuff that I'm ignorant about is stuff that I'd...not like to be ignorant about (hence being a member of a forum) so for me, my motivation is to help confused kids out, AND to learn about stuff. So if you know anything that I didn't post an explanation.

Cheers, good luck, and godspeed my fellow n00bs.

NoUhOh

[nouhoh]

Sorry for the triple post. I'm not spamming so I figured it's ok.

Shouldn't a copy of this article also be in the Beginners section? When I was looking for this info, I was mainly lurking the n00b135 section because that's where the other setting up wireless posts were...

[freshintall]

lshw -class network

I registered just to thank you for this. I followed the OP's tutorial (and many others) to the letter and BT did not recognize my wireless interface at all. ifconfig and iwconfig revealed no wireless interfaces. I ran the lshw command above and everything works great now, my device resolved as eth1. IMO this should be included in the OP, the others on page 2 of this thread have the exact same problem.

After getting the wireless interface on eth1 I started the wicd manager GUI ( K Menu -> Internet -> Wicd network manager ). I clicked on preferences to make sure that the wireless interface was set to eth1. At that point I hit refresh and was able to see wireless networks! I was still not able to connect via WEP though, next I started playing with the WEP supplicant drivers (also available in preferences) and wext worked for me. I can now connect, and resolve an IP address.

Thanks for your post.

Cheers!

[nouhoh]

I registered just to thank you for this. I followed the OP's tutorial (and many others) to the letter and BT did not recognize my wireless interface at all. ifconfig and iwconfig revealed no wireless interfaces. I ran the lshw command above and everything works great now, my device resolved as eth1. IMO this should be included in the OP, the others on page 2 of this thread have the exact same problem.

After getting the wireless interface on eth1 I started the wicd manager GUI ( K Menu -> Internet -> Wicd network manager ). I clicked on preferences to make sure that the wireless interface was set to eth1. At that point I hit refresh and was able to see wireless networks! I was still not able to connect via WEP though, next I started playing with the WEP supplicant drivers (also available in preferences) and wext worked for me. I can now connect, and resolve an IP address.

Thanks for your post.

Cheers!

Dude. Warm, fuzzy feelings and good vibes go out to you. Glad I could help

[sqrdsqr]

Wow, thanks a bunch. yeah the problem was that it's eth1 instead of wlan0. I'm not sure where your changing eth1 to wlan0 but i just know to use eth1 as my default wireless in wicd network and this at least gets me online.

Again, Thanks
SqrdSqr

[adrianpip2000]

I did the apt-get thing and jockey-gtk says the driver is installed and is currently in use, but no wireless networks show up in wicd. Do I have to reload any drivers or something? Oh, also, my wireless card is a BCM4318.

[joker5bb]

If you have these wireless cards:
BCM4313
BCM43224
BCM43225

you should install the open source brcmsmac driver from brcm80211

get firmware first:

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/dwmw2/linux-firmware.git
sudo mkdir /lib/firmware/brcm
cd linux-firmware
sudo cp brcm/bcm43xx* /lib/firmware/brcm
cd /lib/firmware/brcm
sudo ln -s bcm43xx-0-610-809-0.fw bcm43xx-0.fw
sudo ln -s bcm43xx_hdr-0-610-809-0.fw bcm43xx_hdr-0.fw

then install the latest compat-wireless package

managed mode works fine, but no data in monitor mode yet.

[TheFlyingDutchMan]

For everyone with this error:

root@bt:/usr/local/src/broadcom-hybrid# make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=`pwd`
make: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-source-2.6.35.8'

  WARNING: Symbol version dump /usr/src/linux-source-2.6.35.8/Module.symvers
           is missing; modules will have no dependencies and modversions.

U can fix this by do a full make/make install of the linux-source
or this:
http://linux.koolsolutions.com/2009/...e-compilation/
But haven't tried the last one.