64 Bit Jungle

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There are some great posts in forums and other blogs about getting the Broadcom 43xx Wireless card working in Ubuntu, which really helped me get on the right road to setting mine up (see the end of this post). However, I’m running 64 Bit Ubuntu on my Acer Aspire 5052, so I had a little trouble finding the correct Windozzze drivers to use with ndiswrapper. The drivers can be downloaded from this post, if anyone needs them - Broadcom 43xx Windows 64 Bit drivers.

This is the method I used to get my Wireless up and running, which is a combination of a few different posts:

First, open a terminal window (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal), then run:
lspci | grep Broadcom
You should see something along the lines of:
08:04.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
If you don’t, stop reading now! If you do, then continue…

Download the drivers and extract them to your Desktop, or wherever you want:
tar -zxvf broadcom-64bit-win-drivers.tar.gz
You should now have two files extracted - bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl564.sys. If your Wireless was recognised by Ubuntu when it was first installed, but is simply not working, then it needs to be blacklisted, so that ndiswrapper can take over. Open the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file:
gksu gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
I added “blacklist bcm43xx” to the end of the file:
# blacklist bcm43xx wifi driver, and use ndiswrapper instead
blacklist bcm43xx
Now save the file, and reboot. Open a terminal window again, and cd to the directory where the extracted driver files are - e.g.:
cd ~/Desktop/wireless
If ndiswrapper isn’t installed, run the Synaptic Package Manager (Stsyem -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager) and search for “ndiswrapper”. Install ndiswrapper-common and ndiswrapper-utils-x.x (where x is the version number). Go back to the terminal window to install the new driver, and type:
sudo ndiswrapper –i bcmwl5.inf
sudo ndiswrapper –m
Then, edit the /etc/modules file:
gksu gedit /etc/modules
Add:
ndiswrapper
to the bottom, and press “Enter” to add a new line. Save the file, and reboot! The Wireless card should be working, and should be able to connect to a wireless network.

If removal of the driver is required, you can run:
sudo ndiswrapper –e bcmwl5
Then, delete the entry from /etc/modules:
gksu gedit /etc/modules
Delete “ndiswrapper” and save… and un-blacklist the bcm43xx driver in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist:
gksu gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
Delete “blacklist bcm43xx”, save and reboot.

Hope that helps somebody!

References:

Broadcom 4318 Using NdisWrapper, posted by brainwrecked-tech @ ubuntuforums
HOWTO: Broadcom 4318 Wireless Cards, posted by compwiz18 @ ubuntuforums

written by Hodge \\ tags: 43xx, 5052, 64 bit, Acer Aspire, Broadcom, broadcom 4318, driver, drivers, Linux, Ubuntu, Wireless

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A couple of weeks ago, I decided to shrink my windozzze partition, and give the extra space to Ubuntu. I’ve been using Linux on and off for some years now, so I have a bunch of commands and methods stored away in my memory, and as such, I remembered that I probably wouldn’t be able to repartition my drive while in Linux, and while one of the partitions (i.e. my root partition) was mounted - and, of course, if I unmounted my root partition, I wouldn’t be able to use any applications located there to execute the repartition… Minor dilema.Thankfully, Ubuntu has a LiveCD, which, as well as being the installation CD, also has the OS loaded so it can be booted and tested without even installing it on the computer! Handy, eh?

So, I booted into the LiveCD and once it had loaded, was able to run the Partition Editor (System -> Administration -> Partition Editor) application. From here, I switched the Swap off (I was also about to install 2Gb RAM, and thus wanted to shrink my Swap file from 2Gb to 1Gb), resized my Windozzze, Swap and Ubuntu root / partition, and made a cup of tea (milk, no sugar - I’m English, you see).

I finished my brew around the same time Ubuntu finished its little task of repartitioning (I like to drink my tea slowly), and rebooted the system (without the LiveCD), and everything seemed to work well - I had a larger Linux partition, a smaller Windozzze partition, and a smaller Swap file… fantastic - no errors, and no data loss! Then I started running applications - the RAM filled up, and the computer ground to a halt… So, the Swap wasn’t working after all. Bugger.

Opening /etc/fstab
more /etc/fstab
revealed that the Swap is supposed to automount at boot time, so something was obviously amiss, since the Swap clearly wasn’t mounted! I ran
mkswap /dev/hda6
(my Swap partition), and found the problem - the UUID for the partition was different, doh! Changed the UUID for /dev/hda6 in fstab
gksu gedit /etc/fstab
saved, rebooted, and all the lights came on.

Ubuntu rules!

written by Hodge \\ tags: 5052, 64 bit, acer, aspire, partition, repartition, Ubuntu, Windows

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Why 64 Bit Jungle? Well, I live in the Mountainous Jungle of Northern Thailand, near the Burmese Border, and I’ve always been interested in Computer Technology. I’m currently using an AMD 64 Bit Acer Aspire 5052 Laptop to work, and play. I’ve been meaning to set up a blog for some time now, and the name “64bitjungle” came to me during a brief period of meditation… It seemed as though my mind was trying to tell me something, even though I was trying to meditate! So I set up this blog…

Unfortunately, the blog name isn’t really future proof, so when 64 bits become 128 bits…

written by Hodge \\ tags: 5052, 64 bit, acer, aspire, jungle