SUSE 11.4/CHROME and Broadcom Wi-Fi

[ScrewySqrl]

I have loaded the pseudo-chrome OS Based on SUSE 11.4 on a very old laptop (an HP Turon 64 1.8 GHZ with 1.280 GB RAM and a 90 GB HD, 17" 1440x900 screen) which includes an old broadcomm b/g wi-fi router. The built-in codes *sees* the broadcom, and even reports the mac address. But the wi-fi won't detect any networks, and the light that indicates the wi-fi is on never lights up, the switch also never seems to activate the wi-fi.

anyone have any idea what is wrong and how it can be fixed?

 

[bmouring]

I see, so issuing (from the command prompt, as root)

ifconfig -a

will return a wlanN listing (N being a number, likely 0)

You may want to refer to any documentation you have about the laptop to see if there's a wireless "kill" switch (whether it be a physical switch or a switch controlled by software), if it's the former, make sure it's set to the "on" position, if it's the latter you'll need to do a little research to see if accessing that functionality is supported in Linux for that chip, although many will utilize the tool rfkill

rfkill --help

will list some useful information, or you could likewise just read the man(ual) page