Proxmox + Laptop + Wireless adapter (Wifi)

[mr.perplexed]

Hi,

I'm a newbie Proxmox user and a pretty rusty Linux user and I need help. I'm trying to set up Proxmox to run on a laptop (Dell Latitude E5500) and I want to use the wireless network adapter, but Proxmox doesn't recognise it. I have worked on this all of today and still haven't cracked it. The story so far:

• Install Proxmox from the iso image burned onto a CD.
• Connect the laptop to my local network via a cable.
• Open up the Proxmox VE web interface in a browser on a different machine and log in as root/admin.
• All hunky dory so far (a mere 10 mins work - nice).

Start wondering about getting the wifi connection to work...

$ lspci

returns a bunch of stuff, with the last line being

0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)

So, it looks like I've got a Broadcom BCM4322 Wireless card. Time to hit Google for the low down on getting this card going in a Debian installation...

http://wiki.debian.org/WiFi (leading to http://wiki.debian.org/bcm43xx) gives me some useful looking instructions. 2 hours later I'm getting up to speed with apt-get, modifying my sources.list file.

I follow the instructions and install:

• wireless-tools
• module-assistant
• wpasupplicant (getting ahead of myself I know, but I was young and optimistic at this stage)
• b43-fwcutter

and then follow further instructions:

$ modprobe b43

returns nothing, as does

$ iwconfig

lo       no wireless extensions.
eth0     no wireless extensions.
vmbr0    no wireless extensions.
venet0   no wireless extensions.

My wifi card has not magically appeared. Boo.

Hmm. Onwards and downwards through http://wiki.debian.org/bcm43xx we go. Let's try the native bcm43xx driver. I go through option 1-5. Another 2 hours pass. Still nothing. I can feel a sulk coming on.

Okay. Let's try Ndiswrapper. This requires some pre-requisite code for compiling the kernel (I think that's the reason):

$ aptitude install build-essential

Seems happy.

$ aptitude install linux-headers-`uname -r`

Not happy:

Couldn't find package "linux-headers-2.6.24". However the following
packages contain "linux-headers-2.6.24" in their name:
  linux-headers-2.6.24-etchnhalf.1-all
  linux-headers-2.6.24-etchnhalf.1-amd64
  linux-headers-2.6.24-all
  linux-headers-2.6.24-etchnhalf.1-all-amd64
  linux-headers-2.6.24-all-amd64
  linux-headers-2.6.24-etchnhalf.1-common

So I then install all these packages, which completes without error.

I remove the existing ndiswrapper packages as instructed:

aptitude remove ndiswrapper-common
aptitude remove ndiswrapper-utils

And now I can try and install the new ndiswrapper which I have downloaded. I extract the ndiswrapper-1.53 tar, cd into the ndiswrapper-1.53 directory and type

$ make

And I finally come to a griding halt:

Makefile:23: *** Kernel tree not found - please set KBUILD to configured kernel.

Ugh. That's it. I'm hosed. I'm out of ideas. Any help would be much appreciated.

Oh, I also referred to this guy's experiences but it didn't help in the end: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-357267.html

Thanks in advance.

 

[tom]

we never tested wlan as this is not the target. but we will release Proxmox VE 1.0 (release candidate) in a few weeks and I assume this could help here. So just wait a bit for the new ISO.

 

[mr.perplexed]

Thanks Tom,

I was actually really hoping to get this working for next week for a multi-user training course I'm running.

From all that I've read (which feels like quite a lot) the Debian distro that Proxmox is built off should be able to support the wifi card using ndiswrapper. It's just my ignorance of kernel re-compiles that is causing me to get stuck.

The installation instructions in the ndiswrapper package state:

Prerequisites
=============

You need a recent kernel, at least 2.6.16, with header files for the
kernel. Make sure there is a link to the kernel source from the modules
directory. The command

ls /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build

should have at least 'include' directory and '.config' file.

This is what I didn't really understand. What are header files? (I'm a web developer/scripter, not a comsci programmer). How do I link to the kernel source from the modules directory? I know what a symbolic link is in Unix, I just don't know what to link to from where in the context of the Proxmox OS.

 

[dietmar]

We currently do not have separate kernel headers available. Instead you have to compile the kernel yourself - download from:

ftp://pve.proxmox.com/sources/pve-kernel-2.6.24-3.tar.gz

- Dietmar

 

[mr.perplexed]

Right, I got hold of that yesterday. I unpacked it into /root/pve-kernel-2.6.24. What do I do with it now? I haven't actually compiled a kernel myself before.

 

[dietmar]

AFAIK there is a README file.

 

[mr.perplexed]

Yep, read that and it didn't honestly make much sense to me. It seems that the first half is a description of how the PVE kernel has been put together. Then the second half reads:

make menuconfig

- enable ext2/ext3

- enable KVM Drivers/Virtualization/KVM CONFIG_KVM=m
CONFIG_KVM_INTEL=y
CONFIG_KVM_AMD=y
CONFIG_PREEMPT_NOTIFIERS=y
CONFIG_PREEMPT=y
CONFIG_PREEMPT_BKL=y

disable CONFIG_DEBUG_PREEMPT=n

- enable openvz CONFIG_VE=y CONFIG_GRKERNSEC=y CONFIG_GRKERNSEC_TPE=n
- enable FAIRSCHED CONFIG_VZ_FAIRSCHED=y

- disable firewire (CONFIG_IEEE1394)

- enable bootsplash
CONFIG_FB_VESA=y
CONFIG_FRAMEBUFFER_CONSOLE=Y
CONFIG_BOOTSPLASH=y

- set CONFIG_SYSFS_DEPRECATED=n

- also set the kernel version in the 'postinst' script.


TEST with kvm:

kvm -kernel data/boot/vmlinux-2.6.24 -initrd proxmox_initrd.img -append proxdebug /dev/zero

Is this a set of instructions to follow? If I'm in the pve-kernel-2.6.24 directory and type

$ make menuconfig

I get

make: *** No rule to make target 'menuconfig'. Stop.

Sorry to be such a newb about all this.

 

[dietmar]

Compile it yourself, or wait until we release the next version. We will not answer question about kernel compilation in this forum (we do not have the resources to do that).

- Dietmar

 

[joost]

Is you're wifi card by default (or in the restricted modules) supported under ubuntu-hardy? If yes, then i can probably help you out with this.

I'm running proxmox under a ubuntu minimal hardy server install (so instead of using the proxmox iso i used the proxmox repository in my apt sources and apt-get installed proxmox!).

I had the same problem with my atheros wifi card. I do now how to compile kernels, but I rather use pre-compiled ones with module-addons ( i'm kinda lazy on that matter ). So I looked for an "easy" way to overcome the problem and gave it a shot by installing hardy server. If you like i can write a short step-by-step guide on the forum.

Regards,
Joost

 

[clipcarl]

Don't bother. Most wireless cards, including Broadcom cards, cannot see traffic for more than one MAC address. So even if you find 64-bit Windows XP drivers for the card that actually work with ndiswrapper, you won't be able to use it usefully with Proxmox VE. (You won't be able to successfully bridge your VMs virtual adapters over the wireless network.)

 

[joost]

Don't bother. Most wireless cards, including Broadcom cards, cannot see traffic for more than one MAC address. So even if you find 64-bit Windows XP drivers for the card that actually work with ndiswrapper, you won't be able to use it usefully with Proxmox VE. (You won't be able to successfully bridge your VMs virtual adapters over the wireless network.)

I guess i was lucky then . Bridging works fine with my Atheros AR5007EG!

 

[tog]

It'll work for OpenVZ containers, but not KVM bridged networking.

OpenVZ containers using venet use the same MAC address as the NIC so no problems there, but KVM bridged networking bridged to an 802.11 client wont work unless you've got special WDS support at station and AP because that is a different MAC address for each KVM.