Acquiring Satellites..

Ahh nothing like a bcm43xx card to make life interesting. I haven’t had good luck speed or stability wise using fwcutter. I applaud the direction the project is taking but for now I’m sticking with ndiswrapper.

Step 1: Install the livna repository

wget http://rpm.livna.org/livna-release-7.rpm (change to 7 to an 8 for FC8)
rpm -ivh livna-release-7.rpm

Step 2: Download the windows drivers for your card. I was planning on providing a link however Compaq/HP seems to have decided they never made the 6715b since it’s support pages are gone.

Step 3: Install ndiswrapper and cabextract

yum install kmod-ndiswrapper cabextract

Step 4: Make a new folder in your home directory and move the driver file you downloaded into it.

mkdir ~/wireless
mv myvendorsdriver.exe ~/wireless

Step 5: Now extract the drivers

cabextract myvendorsdriver.exe

Step 6: Now edit your /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file and add the following lines at the bottom. This prevents the built in drivers from loading.

blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist bcm43xx-mac80211
blacklist ssb

Step 7: Now make sure the old drivers are not loaded

modprobe -r bcm43xx
modprobe -r bcm43xx-mac80211
modprobe -r ssb

Step 8: Now we install the Windows driver using ndiswrapper

cd ~/wireless
ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

If you execute the following command you should see your wireless device listed:

ndiswrapper -l

Step 9: Now we’ll load the new driver and configure it to load at boot

depmod -a
ndiswrapper -ma
echo "ndiswrapper" >> /etc/modules
echo "alias wlan0 ndiswrapper" >> /etc/modprobe.conf
modprobe ndiswrapper

Step 10: Now the card should be working we’ll want an easy way to configure it. These packages may already be installed but this isn’t going to hurt if they are already there.

yum install NetworkManager

Now we need to change the services that load at startup to enable NetworkManager:

ntsysv

Then enable “NetworkManager” and “NetworkManagerDispatcher”

Now we can reboot and wireless should be working.