wireless will not install with latest zen mini

[skikir]

I have been using zen mini for about 6 months and have been pleased with the way it detects all my hard ware on my Dell M65.  i'm dual booting.   I have installed it on a thumb drive and reinstalled it multible times for other reasons and it has always installed and ran the wireless seamlessly even off the live CD.   I wanted to put in a larger and faster drive and did not have my disk available and downloaded a new copy yesterday.  first installation it would not detect the wireless.  I thought I had the wireless switch off and made sure it was on and started over.  No go.  I booted to a previous install on my thumb drive and it picked up the wireless fine.  Of course W7 picked it up fine.  So the wireless is working proporly.   I have conluded that the new Zen is broken.  Version 10.28.10  To bad because there seems there were some changes to the new version I liked.

predicting answers I've looked at so far, if I can't get to internet with out wireless how do I use synaptic to down load drivers?

[melodie]

Hi,

Do you know what driver is missing ?

If you do, you can download it from within your thumb drive, copy it to the hard drive install and install it there after, with "rpm -Uvh <package>" run as root. And if you know what driver is missing, maybe should you also tell which one it is ?

[Xero]

What wireless do you have?

[skikir]

I don't have the machine handy but I believe it is a Broadcom 4312.  If I'm way off on that I'll correct that.  It gives me the " cannot find interface" error.  FYI I downloaded and ran lxde live disk and it picked up the wireless.

[Dragynn]

I think  the package "bcm43xx-firmware" from the repo might help?  It isn't installed by default in the latest version of Zen, there are also some other Broadcom specific packages that might help like "dkms-broadcom-wl" and some tools to extract the firmware needed from files on the chip or from the net.

Those two packages I listed were included in the older version of Zen, that's why your card worked previously.

[Xero]

Does it show up at all in the Hardware section of the Control Center? Any clues there at all?

[Texstar]

Zen is not broken but is a bare minimal install for advanced users who know what they need to make it all work. Many things have been stripped out of it to make it so small. There are no nvidia or fglrx video drivers, printer drivers, broadcom-wl and some wireless firmware. You should boot your thumbdrive and see what driver is being used in the old version so you can hook up to a wired connection and install it for the new version.

Tex

[skikir]

Well, crap.  OK, I guess I'll get around to it next year.  I haven't time time to futz around now.  Just when you get comfortable with something it gets "upgraded."  where can I find an earlier version?  I would not mind using the old version but I gave it away.

[Texstar]

Why don't you just use the full version that has all the drivers or is that too much to futz with until next year?

[siamer]

Hi.

Sorry but I was out for a while

Broadcom card 4312 is working just perfect with b43-firmware! Try just to reinstall it by synaptic and reboot your computer that should help.
Plese show "dmesg | grep b43" and "lsmod | grep b43" for sure module b43 is not load maybe because ssb module (there was some bug before - don't remember now exactly...)... so you can try "modprobe -r b43" and "modprobe -r ssb" and than just load b43 "modprobe 43" than check how it's work (if it's work...)...

"dkms-broadcom-wl" is loading b43 module to new installed kernel but I load it after upgrade kernel so didn't see reason to keep it... if someone updating kernel than it's good to install it (if see some reason - personaly I don't like dkms )

Tex you're right I removed a lot of things but not firmware for wireless card. I didn't see reason to keep on cd modules like: bcm43xx, b43-fwcutter, etc... bcm we don't using any more as I know (it was for older kernels...) and fwucutter is software to extract firmware for broadcom card - just my opinion...

Regards,
siamer