This is a project for Matt Haas' HPC II class in the Spring 2012 Semester.

I will be writing a guide detailing how to set up a wireless connection on a laptop running Linux Mint Debian edition, though the guide may be of some use to the main De. What's that, you say? “Setting up wireless sounds way too easy, though!” Well, guess what? Sometimes it isn't! Chances are, if you've found this guide, you know this as well as I do. This guide will detail how to determine what wireless hardware your system is running, how to find drivers for it, how to install them, and how to tie up any loose ends. On the other hand, this will be a very specific guide, in a sense. I will give you all of the aforementioned general information, but I will be using my own netbook as an example, so your mileage may vary. For reference, I will be using, to start–

• Asus EeePC 1215T
  • AMD Athlon II Neo K125 @ 1.7GHz
  • 4 GB RAM
  • 320 GB HDD
  • ATI Radeon HD 4250 integrated
  • Broadcom BCM4313 Wireless controller
• Linux Mint Debian Edition
  • 64-bit
  • Xfce

As previously stated, that does not mean that this guide is useless for anyone using any other hardware, necessarily. This guide should be most useful to the people with systems using the same (or any) Broadcom wireless controller on some sort of recent Debian edition.

Using Synaptic to check for wireless drivers is always a good place to start. After all, in this instance, wireless connections do not seem to show up by default. Use the search bar to look for these using obvious words like “wireless” or “wireless driver.” If you know the manufacturer name, even better as far as the search goes.

Even if installing these drivers “works,” you may encounter more problems. Wireless connections may appear after this, but you may not be able to connect due to an error such as “unable to obtain IP address.” In which case, try–

Wicd is an alternative to the default NetworkManager (note that is the name of the actual program). A good place to try would be removing NetworkManager through apt-get or Synaptic. Make sure all related packages for it are removed, then install wicd and its related packages, and reboot. wicd's tray icon should appear. Click it to adjust settings and choose connections.

Now, this may solve your problems outright. However, it may not. It will get you a step closer, but still not where it should be. Some issues may include errors such as “unable to obtain IP address,” or having wicd say that you are connected to the wireless point without being able to communicate without receiving anything when attempting to recieve content from the internet (“page unavailable” while trying to use a web browser, perhaps). If this is the case, this last attempt ~should~ fix your problems–

Use “modprobe -r [module name]” to remove your wireless kernel module from your kernel, then use “modprobe [module name]” to put it back in. In my case, my module's name is “brcmsmac.” Attempt to reconnect. If you get a working connection this way, then the solution is nearly solved.

To make sure that your system does this on startup to ensure a working wireless connection, add these commands to your “/etc/rc.local”. This will make sure that the commands are run automatically when you log in. Here's what my rc.local script ended up looking like–

#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bitso
#
# By default this script does nothing.

mkdir -p /dev/cgroup/cpu
mount -t cgroup cgroup /dev/cgroup/cpu -o cpu
mkdir -m 0777 /dev/cgroup/cpu/user
echo "/usr/local/sbin/cgroup_clean" > /dev/cgroup/cpu/release_agent
modprobe -r brcmsmac
modprobe brcmsmac

exit 0

This was the first real project I did this semester. It was necessary, really, since I needed a working laptop for school, and I needed it to be wireless. Before I figured it out, I was about to install a different operating system, which was disappointing considering this was the sole issue I had with Debian Mint with Xfce. Luckily, it got solved, and my troubleshooting skill improved that much!

• Matt Haas
• Hours of troubleshooting