Wifi on Ubuntu Desktop

wireless networks: device not ready (firmware missing).

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer (OR firmware-b43-lpphy-installer) 

This will install the firmware needed to make Broadcom wireless card work.

Also make sure which wireless card is present.
 (Use lspci to find, in my case
Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY)

ndiswrapper module not found: solved

When I logged into my Linux distribution almost after several months, I just hit this error while connecting to wifi. I still dunno what exactly went wrong. But one clean install of ndiswrapper got me into working happily!

Go to ndiswrapper directory(where ndiswrapper was unzipped), make clean, make, make install, when you modprobe ndiswrapper now, no error but get connected:)
       This is probably 'coz kernel is unaware of ndiswrapper module (somehow ndiswrapper module object file got deleted) , and to make use of that, should be added into kernel and then load it.

wifi on linux : solved

Finally got wifi up on linux.. Have been trying from 2 days reading tutorials and downloading drivers.. All you guys trying the same on FC distributions(I'm using FC10), on Dell(dual  boot),

follow these steps[...]

Errors welcome:) 

• Download the driver file from DRIVER
• Extract the exe file using unzip.

[root@localhost trial_wifi_varsha]# unzip dell.exe

• Need to follow ndiswrapper instructions if you see any errors while you using ndiswrapper.

          (NDISwrapper is a free software driver wrapper that enables the use of Windows XP drivers for network devices on Unix-like operating systems.)

            [root@localhost trial_wifi_varsha]# ndiswrapper -i DRIVER_US/bcmwl5.inf
            [root@localhost trial_wifi_varsha]# ndiswrapper -l
             bcmwl5 : driver installed
            device (14E4:4315) present

• [root@localhost trial_wifi_varsha]# ndiswrapper –m

module configuration information is stored in /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper.conf

            ( -m writes  an alias for wlan0 (default wireless device) into module  configuration file so that ndiswrapper kernel module  is  loaded automatically when this interface is used.)

•  [root@localhost trial_wifi_varsha]# depmod -a
(so that the correct module dependencies will be available immediately after booting the system.)
• [root@localhost trial_wifi_varsha]# modprobe ndiswrapper

• edit /etc/modprobe.conf

(manually add the alias into /etc/modprobe.conf)

[root@localhost trial_wifi_varsha]# vim /etc/modprobe.conf

add this line: alias wlan0 ndiswrapper

• Configure network manager System>Administration>Network to get associated with the Access Point or manually configur using following commands.

1. To list the Access Points available.

[root@localhost trial_wifi_varsha]# iwlist wlan0 scan

2. Configure to get associated with one of the AP:

Assuming you want to use the ESSID named MyEssid:

Ø  No encryption

 # iwconfig wlan0 essid "MyEssid"

Ø  WEP

using an hexadecimal key:

 # iwconfig wlan0 essid "MyEssid" key 1234567890

using an ascii key:

 # iwconfig wlan0 essid "MyEssid" key s:asciikey

Ø  WPA/WPA2

  (might get this error!                       

Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) : SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.)

You need to edit the /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file as described in WPA_Supplicant. Then, issue this command:

 # wpa_supplicant -B -Dwext -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

This is assuming your device uses the wext driver. If this does not work, you may need to adjust these options. Check WPA_Supplicant for more information and troubleshooting. 

3. Finally, provide an IP address to the network interface.

for DHCP,

# dhcpcd wlan0

Or
for static IP.

# ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.12

# route add default gw 192.168.0.1

4. Regardless of the method used, you can check if you have associated successfully as follows:

[root@localhost trial_wifi_varsha]# iwconfig wlan0

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"MyEssid" 

Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:1B:57:EC:4A:27  

Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:32 dBm  

RTS thr:2347 B   Fragment thr:2346 B  

Encryption key:”the key!” Security mode:restricted

Power Management:off

Link Quality:70/100  Signal level:-51 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm

Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0

Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0