Wireless with Arch Linux on the Dell Mini 9
DO NOT FOLLOW THE BELOW ADVICE
I was new to Arch at the time and didn’t know that you had to run “ck-launch-session nm-applet” to get it work as a normal user. iwconfig only running as root is not a bug as I described, but rather a lack of knowledge at the time on my part. I’m leaving the original post below for archive’s sake.
Original Post
Recently I’ve gotten into Arch Linux. Its flexibility, documentation, and well thought out method of configuration make it an excellent distro. I’ve also been running it primarily on my Dell Mini 9 netbook. This computer has a pesky BCM4312 wireless card from Broadcom. Here’s how I dealt with it. Criticism and suggestions welcome.
This is assuming that you’re using Network Manager. The b43 drivers just don’t work with WEP or WPA making it pretty much useless. First install the broadcom-wl drivers. Then install Network Manager. Now you’ll probably notice that still nothing seems to work; not even iwconfig or any of the other command line wireless tools.
The problem appears to be a bug where anything related to wireless networking with the broadcom-wl driver only works as the root user. A quick workaround for this is to enter visudo in the command line and add %wheel ALL=NOPASSWD: /usr/bin/nm-applet at the end of the file. Save and close. Reboot.
That should get you up and going at least as far network manager is concerned. My final solution for this is to just replace the wireless card with something more Linux friendly. I hope this helps.
Hmmm… may try this if B43 doesn’t work right (like you say), but I have always heard it works better. Have you met others for whom WEP doesn’t work on that? I have the same card, but I have heard contrary reports.
Don’t do it the way I described in this post. I didn’t know about ck-launch-session back then which is what nm-applet needs to run as a normal user. I should also correct myself when I wrote that iwconfig only working as root is a “bug”. I was just new to Arch at the time. Just run “ck-launch-session nm-applet”.