Wifi extras for Puppy 2.14

[tempestuous]

Puppy 2.14 has a comprehensive collection of wifi drivers, but the necessary firmware is missing for some of the drivers, specifically for -

bcm43xx (Broadcom)
hostap (Prism3 SSF)
prism54 (PrismGT)
rt61 (Ralink)

Get the missing firmware here
EDIT: temporary download location -
http://puppyfiles.org/dotpupsde/dotpups ... 2-to-2.14/

Also in this directory are additional wifi drivers and utilities:
- better Ralink rt73 driver, compiled by Mark from CVS source
- better Zydas drivers, zd1211 & zd1211b
- latest wpa_supplicant with Ralink patch
- for Prism2-USB devices, setup instructions and script, unique to this driver.
- README file which explains how to manually set up wifi connection, if Network Wizard fails.

[tempestuous]

A tip - after installing any of these firmware packages for the first time, the Network Wizard will still fail ... that's because your driver has already loaded at boot up, but the firmware was not available, so the driver would have failed to load correctly.

The solution is simple: unload and reload the driver.
But I see on the forum lately quite a degree of negativity by newbies towards making any attempt to use commands at the terminal, so the simple alternative is just to reboot. Now the driver should find the firmware and load correctly.

[trfogey]

Just wanted to thank tempestuous for posting this thread. I've been tired of having to run "modprobe -r bcm43xx" before using ndiswrapper on some Windows drivers for the onboard Broadcom chipset for my laptop. I installed the .pet file with the Broadcom firmware, rebooted, and, lo and behold, I brought up my wireless connection using Puppy's bcm43xx driver with the Network Wizard. Saved the configuration, rebooted again, and the wireless connection configured itself during boot. My WPA/TKIP connection is working flawlessly.

Once again, thanks.

[tempestuous]

Update March 20 2007.
Zydas zd1211 & zd1211b drivers updated to "r85" version.
Various README's added to help setup wifi connections.

[setecio]

When installed does Puppy then automatically recognise cards with this chipset, or is an installation process of the card itself required as well ?

Is there an easy way to see what cardbus cards have the broadcom chipset and would work with this driver - I read in the forums that it works much better than using ndiswrapper on a card.

EDIT :
I just found this page
http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/?go=devices
and this
http://linux-wless.passys.nl/
However, does this mean anything, or are there so many version of all these cards that I can't buy one and be 90% sure it will be the broadcom chipset. Eg. could I just buy a Belkin F5D7010 (any version) and be sure it will work with this updated firmware ?

[tempestuous]

Update May 1st 2007.
Extra wifi drivers added -

Atmel USB
Atheros 5006
Marvell
Prism54 softmac/USB
Realtek 8185/8187/8187B

[tempestuous]

EDIT Feb 2009:
This version of fwcutter applies only to the old bcm43xx wifi driver.
From Puppy 4.1 onwards there are two new opensource Broadcom drivers, b43 and b43legacy. These require a different version of fwcutter, but Puppy 4.1 contains the appropriate firmware, anyway.

I recently learned that there are many different versions of bcm43xx firmware, so the "general" version available as a dotpet may not work.
The "dmesg" command should give clues about whether your firmware loaded successfully.
The best way to obtain the correct firmware is to extract it from the matching Windows driver, using the "bcm43xx-fwcutter" utility, which I now attach. It's the latest CVS version.

Copy the Windows driver for your wifi device into /lib/firmware
If the Windows driver is in the form of an .exe file, it can often be uncompressed using WinZip in Windows. If this doesn't work, you must fully install the Windows driver, then find the .sys file in \WINDOWS\system32\drivers
Install the dotpet, then run these commands to extract the firmware:

cd /lib/firmware
bcm43xx-fwcutter MYWINDOWSDRIVER

There should now be several files in /lib/firmware with the '.fw' suffix.
Reboot and hopefully your driver should be working. Run dmesg to check.

[Wegg]

I have a HP Pavilion dv2000 (dv2214us) with a Broadcom BCM4311kfbg wifi card in it.

None of the installed broadcom drivers appear to be able to wake up the wi-fi. The light just stays orange instead of switching to blue.

I read here about using windows .sys drivers with bcm43xx-fwcutter and so I went to HP's website and download the XP drivers, placed them in the /lib/firmware folder and tried to make the fwcutter thing work and got. . .

# bcm43xx-fwcutter bcmw1564.sys
Sorry, the input file is either wrong or not supported by bcm43xx-fwcutter.
This file has an unknown MD5sum e477200bb07c1aa8b1347948ac696962.

Can anyone help me figure out what I'm doing wrong? Thank you in advance.

[tempestuous]

Modern versions of bcmwl5.sys will not be recognised by bcm43xx-fwcutter, same with the more recent b43-fwcutter.
But Puppy 4.1.x already contains firmware for the b43 and b43legacy modules. If neither driver works, then all you can do is move on to a different driver ... such as the proprietary Broadcom wifi driver available here -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 942#251942

None of the installed broadcom drivers appear to be able to wake up the wi-fi. The light just stays orange instead of switching to blue.

Lights on a wifi device are not accurate indicators of success or failure. Success of the b43 or b43legacy driver is indicated by whether a network interface is created. The Network Wizard should reveal this, but you can also check with this command -

Code: Select all

ifconfig -a