connecting to a wireless network

[karasu]

so, after a long struggle getting my Dell Truemobile 1300 card to be usefull using ndiswrapper (I can actually scan for networks now! Woohoo!), I found I actually no clue how to connect to a wireless network. I would like to be able to connect to open networks in public places as well as my own home network which I have encrypted with WPA. Is there any easy, possibly automated way to configure this?

I am running FC6 on an Inspiron 8500.

also, wpa_supplicant is already installed but not configured

[dkeav]

you could install the NetworkManager applet which makes use of hal/dbus and supports wpa_supplicant

btw, that card is probably a broadcom 43xx chipset and is supported nativly in the kernel as of 2.6.17, you just need to load the firmware

[karasu]

I saw stuff on loading the firmware, but the consequences of doing it wrong seemed to great for me.
As for the network manager, thats exactly what I need, but it won't let me use ndiswrapper to use the card. It insists on using what it detects as Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN, which is correct, but does not work. I guess I have to try that firmware thing. How do I do that?

[dkeav]

http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/

you will need the wlapsta.o firmware to load, which i guess is technically illegal to distribute around, but just google its relativly easy to find

[karasu]

Before I go messing with the firmware, is there anyway I could change stuff shown here, mainly how wlan0 keeps getting associated with the BCM4306. If it were using ndiswrapper here, wouldn't I be able to connect right away with the network manager? I'm not sure what configuration file this configuration utility works with, so I can't force it to change and it automatically puts wlan0 back configured as pictured everytime I reboot.
http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/370/snapshot1zz2.png
http://img444.imageshack.us/img444/2522/snapshot2ds4.png

[dkeav]

your kernel probably has the bcm43xx module and all you need to do is load the firmware, this is not like a bios firmware or something you are not flashing anything or the likes, you are just telling the kernel what to use

check to see if the bcm43xx module is loaded

/sbin/lsmod | grep bcm43

[karasu]

well its loaded now. I had blacklisted it so that I could use ndiswrapper instead

here are the modules loaded. Does this look about right?

bcm43xx 425153 0
ieee80211softmac 36801 1 bcm43xx
ieee80211 34953 2 bcm43xx,ieee80211softmac


so, if I do this stuff with the firmware, I should be able to use the bcm43xx module to use my wireless card??

[dkeav]

thats the gist of it

[karasu]

SWEET! Posting from a Panera. Connection is incredibibly slow here, but at least I know my wireless works. THANK YOU SO MUCH!

[dkeav]

congrats, enjoy