I'm trying out BackTrack, and I'm running it as a Live USB. It boots fine, and it runs fine, on my HP Pavilion dv9000 laptop, but it won't recognize the integrated wireless card that came with the laptop. I can't seem to figure out why... I've looked into drivers and such, but there really doesn't seem to be much info about HP integrated cards around, and I can't even find the drivers online. Can anyone help me? Just a pointer in the right direction... I don't really know where to begin approaching this problem, but I'd like to solve it myself. [Edited by - EmrldDrgn on May 3, 2008 5:42:18 PM]

If there's not a Linux-native driver for your wireless adapter, you can use the Windows driver (generally supplied as an ".inf" file) with ndiswrapper. If you can get ndiswrapper working during a running session, there may be a way to add the proper configuration as a part of the Live CD and have it reapply each time you boot it on your laptop. If not, you can probably write a little script to do the setup the hard way and keep it on the laptop, a flash drive, or as an addendum on the Live CD that you run manually. I am unfamiliar with BackTrack and what it allows you to customize easily.

As far as I'm aware, drivers run through ndiswrapper do not tend to support monitor mode or other lower-level features that you may require from a security Live CD. Maybe a PC/Express card or USB 802.11b/g adapter with a well supported chipset would be a worthwhile investment if you need such features.

You can find the chipset of your wireless adapter in the output of lspci (run it in a terminal and paste the results if you'd like). The HP dv9000 likely uses some sort of Broadcom chipset (possibly in a replaceable mini-express card?).

How I was supposed to paste the results from a laptop that can't access the internet eludes me, I must admit... :D.

00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0547 (rev a2)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0548 (rev a2)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0542 (rev a2)
00:01.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0541 (rev a2)
00:01.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0543 (rev a2)
00:02.0 USB controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 055e (rev a2)
00:02.1 USB controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 055f (rev a2)
00:04.0 USB controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 055e (rev a2)
00:04.1 USB controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 055f (rev a2)
00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0560 (rev a1)
00:07.0 Audio device: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 055c (rev a1)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0561 (rev a2)
00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0550 (rev a2)
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown Device 054c (rev a2)
00:0c.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0563 (rev a2)
00:0d.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0563 (rev a2)
00:12.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Unknown device 0531 (rev a2)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
02:05.0 FireWire (OEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0832 (rev 05)
02:05.1 Class 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
02:05.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 12)
02:05.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
02:05.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 12)
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 UART (rev 02)

I take it that this means I'm using a Broadcom chipset, but I'm not quite sure how this helps me. I've looked for "Broadcom drivers", including my specific version number, and haven't found anything, unfortunately. If I had the Windows drivers, I could put them into BackTrack with NDISwrapper, but I can't find the .inf file, and I'm not even sure the .sys I have is the right one.

And yes, I know that a better solution would be some better hardware, and I will probably have to get some, soon. This is just a... testrun, as it were, to see if I can make it work. I'll update as needed.

What kernel version are you running (run uname -r to check?) From the BackTrack wiki it seems that it's running 2.6.15.5, which is ancient when it comes to mobile Linux. Wireless support in Linux has made huge strides forward in the last year, and I'm fairly sure that you might get your WiFi working just by switching to a modern kernel (2.6.25 has two different drivers for Broadcom chipsets.)

I don't know how you'd do that under BackTrack though, and building your own kernel can be tricky to say the least, especially if you've never done it before. Debian has a package for 2.6.25 in its unstable repositories though, so you might be able to use that for BackTrack as it seems based on Knoppix which in turn is based on Debian. Or you could just switch over to a Debian live USB drive; all the apps you're using with BackTrack are likely available from the huge Debian repos.

Quote: Original post by EmrldDrgn
How I was supposed to paste the results from a laptop that can't access the internet eludes me, I must admit... :D.

You seem to have figured it out :p.

I'm pretty sure these two files are the ones you'd need for the ndiswrapper route (courtesy of linux-wireless.org):
bcmwl5.inf
bcmwl5.sys

Those files can also apparently be extracted from this executable on HP's site with cabextract.

There is also a module named "bcm43xx" included in 2.6.17 and newer kernels that is meant to support the BCM4310 natively, but I can't say I've tried it.

Quote: Original post by Null and Void
There is also a module named "bcm43xx" included in 2.6.17 and newer kernels that is meant to support the BCM4310 natively, but I can't say I've tried it.

I'm not sure exactly which Broadcom chipset that was, but the in-kernel driver supported the Airport Extreme in my old iBook just fine when I tried it. However, the card's firmware will probably be needed. For Debian-based distributions, there is a package named bcm43xx-fwcutter (and more recently, b43-fwcutter) that downloads and extracts it automatically.

Well I used bcm43xx-fwcutter (found out bcm43xx was included in the BT2 kernel) and now it recognizes the card. Unfortunately the wireless assistant does not find any wireless networks, even when I'm right next to my router. I press the scan button and it immediately pops up a box saying "The scan was completed, but no networks were found". I've been Googling around and I get a lot of things about various cards not working in monitor mode, but nothing about not connecting in ANY mode. Any ideas? Thanks for the help so far, by the way.

have you tried manually setting the access point? I don't have the bandiwdth to download large things at a whim, so I can't try it out on that distro, (you'll have to do some digging yourself) On my machine the configuration is in /etc/conf.d/net and the relevant lines to configure my wireless card are...

essid_wlan0="PoweredByTux"config_wlan0="dhcp"

Quote: Original post by EmrldDrgn
Well I used bcm43xx-fwcutter (found out bcm43xx was included in the BT2 kernel) and now it recognizes the card. Unfortunately the wireless assistant does not find any wireless networks, even when I'm right next to my router. I press the scan button and it immediately pops up a box saying "The scan was completed, but no networks were found". I've been Googling around and I get a lot of things about various cards not working in monitor mode, but nothing about not connecting in ANY mode. Any ideas? Thanks for the help so far, by the way.

Once again, I'm going to have to recommend upgrading your kernel. Wireless support is one of the areas that has seen the most development since your kernel was released, and the difference between now and when I first tried out mobile Linux about a year ago is simply staggering.

Also, you might want to try wicd, which IMO is far better than NetworkManager, and several hundred lightyears ahead of earlier networking tools.

hi, try backtrack 3 beta. I hope this will definitely work.because i am using on my hp pavilion dv 2000 machine.this will detect ur wlan0.