Feisty Fawn herd 5 + Wireless Broadcom 4318 = Challenges

Hoping for that “Just Works” experience, I instead found it “Hard Work” getting the Wireless network to function on my HP dv5000 after installing the latest 7.04 alpha Herd 5.
The apparently best info on this I found at an Ubuntu forum post. The initial post, though updated regularly (Thanks, compwiz18!) does not quite get it since his script only checks for versions up to Edgy.

kosson has an update for a 64-bit + Herd 4 solution there.

Here’s what I tried (keep in mind I had a wired internet, so I didn’t install anything off of the CD):

1. Installed ndiswrapper-common and ndiswrapper-utils (links to ndiswrapper-utils-1.1)
2. Downloaded compwiz18’s tarball and extracted to Desktop. The files were ndiswrapper-setup, drivers-32.tar.gz, and drivers-64.tar.gz.
3. Attempted to run compwiz18’s ndiswrapper-setup script, but it abended. Dug into script and manually kept on going.
4. Extracted drivers-32.tar.gz which contained bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys.
5. To check if anything was already installed, executed:
   

   redboot@HPdv5000:~/Desktop$ ndiswrapper -l
   No drivers installed

6. To install, executed these two:
   

   redboot@HPdv5000:~/Desktop$ sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
   Installing bcmwl5
   Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2
   Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2
   Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2
   Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2
   Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2
   Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2
   Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2
   Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2
   Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2
   Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2
   Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2
   Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2
   Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2
   Forcing parameter IBSSGMode|0 to IBSSGMode|2redboot@HPdv5000:~/Desktop$ sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

7. Attempted to add bcm43xx to the blacklist:
   

   redboot@HPdv5000:~/Desktop$ sudo echo “blacklist bcm43xx” >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklistbash: /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist: Permission denied

   Not sure why; instead I used an editor to add to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist:

   # module below does not work with Broadcom 4318 wireless cards
   blacklist bcm43xx

8. The blue light is ON! BUT, I still see:
   

   eth1 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:”” Nickname:”Broadcom 4318″
   Mode:Managed Access Point: Invalid
   RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
   Link Quality=0/100 Signal level=-256 dBm Noise level=-256 dBm
   Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
   Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

9. No good, so let’s reboot. Yikes! Now I have little trace of any wireless card!
   When I look at Device Manager there doesn’t appear to be much there. I start looking through the Troubleshooting part of the forum post and see that it wants ndiswrapper-utils-1.8, too. After I do that I:

   redboot@HPdv5000:~/Desktop$ sudo ndiswrapper -e bcmwl5
   redboot@HPdv5000:~/Desktop$ ndiswrapper -l
   No drivers installed
   redboot@HPdv5000:~/Desktop$ sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5
   Installing bcmwl5
   couldn’t copy bcmwl5 at /usr/sbin/ndiswrapper-1.8 line 144

10. I also download and install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9. Eventually (don’t want to admit how long) I discover that the above error is because I was forgetting to add “.inf” at the end of the bcmwl5.Helpful commands along the way included:
    

    redboot@HPdv5000:~/Desktop$ sudo rmmod bcm43xx
    ERROR: Module bcm43xx does not exist in /proc/modules
    redboot@HPdv5000:~/Desktop$ sudo rmmod ndiswrapper
    redboot@HPdv5000:~/Desktop$ sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
    redboot@HPdv5000:~/Desktop$ sudo ifdown eth1
    redboot@HPdv5000:~/Desktop$ sudo ifup eth1
    redboot@HPdv5000:~/Desktop$ iwlist scan

11. You can see the DHCP process taking place and, voila!, I’m connected to my neighbors unsecured connection! It totally ignored the two nearer, WPA secured access points in my house.
12. Modprobe is not permanent so I added “ndiswrapper” as the last line to /etc/modules.
13. After re-booting, the Network Manager seemed unaware that I was already connected. It DID show the three wireless networks available, but it did not indicate that I was already connected to one. When I did tell it to connect to that same network, it DISconnected me and failed to reconnect forcing me to do a manual “sudo ifdown eth1” and a “sudo ifup eth1.”