Ubuntu Wireless Help please.

I recently installed Ubuntu 7.10 on my Acer aspire 5051 but I cannot get the wireless to work.Are there ubuntu experts out there who can explain in plain english please?

First thing to check is if your wireless network adaptor (in particular the chipset) is compatible with Ubuntu out of the box. Do you know anything about your wireless card? Have you checked the help and forums on the Ubuntu site (in particular the discussion forums) - there is a wealth of info there and somebody may well have faced the same problem. I've been through a voyage of discovery myself recently with Ubuntu 7.10 on a Dell Latitude C400 with a Dell TrueMobile 1150 802.11b wireless card (Lucent/Agere Orinoco Hermes chipset). Unencrypted networking worked straight off but WPA encrypted networking did not and I just discovered a thread on the forums explaining where to get a custom driver that will sort this out.

Using linux myself at the moment, wireless was a pain to setup!
Google is your friend. To get started:
1. open a shell
2. run 'lspci' (need to be root)
3. look for an entry for your wireless card, on mine I see
4. Google search for the adaptor & version of linux, e.g. "ubuntu BCM4306"

Here's what info I've gleaned about my wireless card,its a Broadcom 802.11g driver version 4.10.40.0 Where do I go to find info on the chip set? Pardon my ignorance but I'm very new to linux,does"open a shell"mean use "terminal"?The driver for mine is listed as restricted.I don't think thats good news.

If you Google the make and model of your card along with the word chipset you may find it. Post the model details here if you can. The driver version you mention - where are you getting that from?

Have you read the Ubuntu help articles at https://help.ubuntu.com/ ? They answer the sort of questions that you are asking above.

I'm getting the driver version from the device manager in windows xp.Its an acer aspire 5051 awxmi.I've tried ubuntu forums but I find I get out of my depth fairly quickly.I only started 2 days ago.I could chicken out and just buy a wireless card but I love a challenge

The Windows driver version is irrelevant here - well, unless you are going to try an NdisWrapper approach under Ubuntu but that's another thing altogether...

I was referring to the Broadcom wireless card model number not your laptop. Judging by a quick search of the Ubuntu forums for details of your machine it looks like Acer may have assembled that model with different components at different times so one person's latop may not be the same as the next person's even if they are the same model.

BTW - did you work through the basic guides first? Such as this one:

Wireless networking

As mentioned above you should check first to see if your wireless card is being recognised and maybe it's just a case of needing to configure the wireless (usually encryption) settings appropriately or if there is something more fundamental at issue.

My card is Broadcom BCM4318[airforce one 54g]802.11g.The card is not being powered at all(no blinking from the activity light)

Thanks. OK - quite a bit of info about this card and Ubuntu (or other - possibly also Debian based - GNU/Linux distributions) which might be worth trawling through. Bear in mind that some of the threads on Ubuntu forums may be long and start off a while ago in relation to older releases but often come up to date with more recent (including the latest) releases. So maybe work backwards on some of the longer threads in case the original/earlier posts are outdated. Unfortunately it seems to me that wireless networking can be one area where GNU/Linux can require a bit of digging (even a GNU/Linux guru colleague of mine says this and usually just buys a PCMCIA/CardBus wireless card that he knows will work rather than trying to persist with certain mini-PCI or other cards that don't work out of the box).

I think I'll concede defeat on this one Clubman and go for a card out of the box....................e-bay here I come.Thanks for your help.

Awwww - don't give up so easily!

... but if you do...

You can get Intel PRO/Wireless mini-PCI cards on eBay (e.g. from [broken link removed] who seems to do a lot of business and seems to be reputable) for about €15 including P&P. I believe that they are compatible out of the box with Ubuntu. If you do go for this option then check and double check that any specific card is compatible with your laptop first. I'm on the verge of giving up myself and getting one of those Intel cards having failed so far to get my Dell TrueMobile 1150 card to work with WPA encrypted networks (works with open networks) even with the custom driver that I found on the Ubuntu forums...

Good news folks I'm now typing this using ubuntu from my kitchen wirelessly.Its goodbye windoze A very good friend text me a solution which worked a treat.System>Administration>software sources;tick all the boxes available on the first tab,close,reload while remaining connected to the web by cable,just follow the reboot instructions and you,re finished.When you are restarted its system>administration>restricted drivers manager click enable on your wireless card,choose internet for download and hopefully the active led will blink and you're communicating.I put in my wpa code and alls working perfectly

Thanks Ray

Good to hear you got it working, and thanks for posting the solution.
Hope you weren't up until 6am working on it

Nice one - well done. Pity the same didn't work for me. Neither did installing the custom driver for my card. Might have to get onto eBay soon...

Thanks for the reminder - I had been meaning to install ubuntu one of these days and today seemed like a good day, especially with the details above.

I downloaded it and installed it. While the wireless card (DLink USB yoke) would associate with the AP, it kept dropping it after about 15s or so. Obviously this was going nowhere fast.

I did what was suggested by caffs friend, wired it up, selected all update sources, pushed the button, waited and without a reboot I was able to associate with the AP, get an IP address and Bob was my uncle.

From looking at the various forums out there it seems that the DLink DWL-G122 cards are a little flaky to say the least. Well the drivers are anyway. I know the Windows one cannot work with an AP that is not broadcasting its SSID. I can associate correctly in Windows, but after some time (20 minutes or something) the link drops. Get the AP to broadcast the SSID and it never drops the link.

Because my card was USB and not PCI I used the command 'lsusb' but there wasn't as much info provided. At least since the card was external I could look up the model number on it and do Tigers suggested search for ubuntu issues.

Cheers,

z