Broadcom BCM4318 – Ubuntu Intrepid
Posted: April 8th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Technology | 59 Comments »As many of you know and have seen from my little count down to the right hand side of this site Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10 – the latest version of the user friendly linux distribution has been launched.
Now wireless support has improved greatly over the past few years with more and more native drivers emerging and new work arounds cropping up every day but I have always had a problem with my Broadcom BCM4318 in my HP Pavilion Zv6000. So fingers crossed I installed the new version of Ubuntu and booted up, no suprise it didn’t work!
Now I could have downloaded numerous files and used the new Bcm43xx drivers which I believe have been kind of reverse engineered but i’ve tried that before and its more of a pain that it is worth. So I am going to explain clearly with step by step instruction how I personally have got my wireless inbuilt card working!
File Link: http://www.sampbar.com/downloads
Also: International users, should make appropriate adjustments if they are using a language other than English to variables such as commands which contain the English word “Desktop”.
Step 1.
After you have installed Intrepid and booted up Re-insert the installation disk, wait for the icon to display on the desktop then double click the icon.
Step 2.
Navigate to the folder “pool” -> “main” -> “n” -> “ndiswrapper”
and then first install ndiswrapper-common then ndiswrapper-utils.
Step 3.
Now open a terminal and enter the following commands or run step3.sh which can be located in the zipped folder linked near the top of the post:
echo -e ‘blacklist bcm43xxnblacklist wl’ | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
mkdir ~/bcm43xx; cd ~/bcm43xx
Step 4.
Now you need to find the .inf file from your wireless driver, I have included the file which came with my cd in the zipped file which is linked towards the top of this post this file personally worked with my laptop and wireless card. Move this to your desktop, my file is named bcmwl5a.inf
Step 5.
Now open a terminal and enter these commands or use the step5.sh file I have provided in the zipped file at the top:
cd ~/Desktop
sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5a.inf
sudo ndiswrapper -l
sudo depmod -a
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
sudo cp /etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces.orig
echo -e ‘auto loniface lo inet loopbackn’ | sudo tee /etc/network/interfaces
sudo ndiswrapper -m
echo ‘ndiswrapper’ | sudo tee -a /etc/modules
echo ‘ENABLED=0‘ | sudo tee -a /etc/default/wpasupplicant
Step 6.
Now I have included a wifi.sh file in the zipped folder near the top. You need to put this file in “/etc/init.d/” then type these commands in a terminal:
cd /etc/init.d/
sudo update-rc.d wifi.sh defaults
sudo chmod +x wifi.sh
This ensures the wifi starts on bootup!
Step 7.
Now enter your wireless network details in the network manager and reboot, hopefully it should all be working now!
If you encounter any problems please feel free to leave a comment!
Half a server?
Posted: March 1st, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Technology | No Comments »As a bit of a techie I decided last month to pick myself up a nice dedicated server. With the intention that if I didn’t get on with it or use all of it I would move all of my sites back to shared hosting.
Well! after a month of use i’m using less than a quarter of the space and bandwidth allocated to me.
So as a way to make the server economically viable I have decided to try offering to go halves with anybody who is interested in having half a server. The server spec is as follows:
- CPU: Intel Celeron 1.2ghz
- Ram: 1GB DDR
- HD: 250GB
- Bandwidth: Unlimited 100mbps connection
The current operating system is Ubuntu 8.04 with virtualmin gpl installed for a control panel. But i’m happy to change any software installed on the server.
Finally... the price for half the server would be £11.50 yes I did say £11.50! That is exactly half of what I am currently paying.
If your interested or would like more details just leave a comment or email me: samuelbarrett {a} sampbar.com
Kitting your new system out!
Posted: September 13th, 2008 | Author: admin | Filed under: Technology | No Comments »
So you’ve got your brand new PC home (a new Medion Akoya Mini in my case), unpacked it and gone through the tedious setup process. Now what?
Oh Yeah! there’s that thing called software!
There is now so much good quality open source and free software on the web that there is absolutely no reason to buy commercial equivalents. So where do you find all this stuff?
Well there are three very good websites you can visit depending on what operating system you are using:
No.1 Microsoft Windows (Vista, XP, 2000, 98, 95)
Unfortunately this is probably going to be what most of you use -
http://www.opensourcewindows.org
No.2 Mac OS
This is going to be the second most likely operating system -
http://www.opensourcemac.org
No.3 Linux (Ubuntu, SUSE, Fedora, Debian, Mandriva etc.)
http://www.opensourcelinux.org
I happen to use all three operating systems so I try to keep the same software on each for familiarity.
Two other pieces of open source software you may be interested in which aren’t mentioned on those sites are:
Songbird (Media Player)
It’s still in beta but is very stable on all systems.
http://www.getsongbird.com
IBM Lotus Symphony (Office Suite)
It’s a lot more polished than Open Office!
http://symphony.lotus.com
I hope this helps some people out, if anybody has any more suggestions for things I missed please feel free to email me at: samuelbarrett@sampbar.com