Broadcom wireless card

[redshirt_55]

In Lucid and Maverick, all I had to do to get my wireless card working was install the broadcom-sta driver using the "Additional Drivers" app under the System menu. However, doing this did not work in Natty... Suggestions?

[darkphoenix]

Re: Broadcom wireless card

Go into the Software manager and search for this:

firmware-b43-lpphy-installer

Install it and you will have wireless.

[redshirt_55]

Re: Broadcom wireless card

I keep getting "subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 4."

[gjartin]

Re: Broadcom wireless card

Have exactly the same problem as redshirt_55. This solution doesn't forme either. Same error message.

[bigbrovar]

Re: Broadcom wireless card

I think there has been a regression with broadcom cards on natty. Probably this is due to the opensourcing of the broadcom driver and hence its including in the 2.6.38 kernel. I think Ubuntu decided to default to the opensource driver instead of the proprietary one. anyway here was how I resolved my issue with broadcom. http://bigbrovar.aoizora.org/index.p...y-work-around/

[gjartin]

Re: Broadcom wireless card

@ bigbrovar: This may or may not work, but it's not in any way a solution; just a very complicated workaround.
Since I've got an old 3Com 11g network adapter working, I will have to get by with that for now, and just hope for an update.

[juna]

Re: Broadcom wireless card

Hi,

I had trouble with my wireless card, too. Though it did work, the performance was horrible: High ping (>300ms) and took ages to find networks and so forth. I have an EeePC 1015PEM which has a Broadcom BCM4313 (PCI ID 14e4:4727). By default my 11.04 used the broadcom-sta driver. I read that the new kernel has a staging open source driver in it.

It took me while to figure out how to activate that one instead of the sta one: Just go to the Additional Drivers thing and disable the STA one, then reboot. Thats it :-) Now performance is great: low pings, fast network finding and connecting.

To figure out if the sta is running do a

lsmod | grep wl

the driver is called wl, if loaded it should show up with the above command. Also if one does a

ifconfig

the wlan shows up as an eth (eth1 in my case) which is odd.

If the open source driver is loaded a

lsmod | grep brcm80211

should show 3 or so entries. This driver registers as wlan (wlan0 in my case) which seams more appropriate.

Maybe that helps :-)

Cheers
Juna

[Melcar]

Re: Broadcom wireless card

My chip is a bcm4318, which is not supported by the open source drivers in Natty. The driver jockey thing wouldn't even recognize the chip and let me install any driver. What I had to do was install "firmware-b43-installer" and "b43-fwcutter". I tried the legacy and ipphy b43 drivers, but none of them worked (error on installation). Rebooted and the wireless chip started working fine.

[jayboyd]

Re: Broadcom wireless card

I'm a relative newbie to Linux, and am pulling out my hair at this point with all the frustration over Broadcom wireless cards. I went through all this a few months ago installing Ubuntu 10.10. After various permutations of b43, wl, wireless-tools, wicd, NetworkManager, I finally got that system stable. More recently installed 10.10 on another machine, also a Dell with Broadcom card, and it was much less painless, until today when I upgraded (and then a fresh install) to Kubuntu 11.04. I cannot get wireless back at all.

I also have the BCM4311 chipset, but I'm confused about how to use b43-fwcutter when not one of the drivers it says it supports is anywhere on my system. If I understand the recommendation here, it is to blacklist wl (STA driver), use older b43 driver (which never worked for me under 10.10), and install the firmware by cutting from... what?

Can anyone help? I'm going crazy with this, thinking of doing a wipe and reinstalling 10.10.

[dibl]

Re: Broadcom wireless card

Hey -- my great-grandfather was Jay Boyd!

OK, you need to first do

lspci -vv

and look at the details so you're sure about the Broadcom chip.

then go here and confirm the driver for your card: http://linux-wless.passys.nl/

Look at Ubuntu's guidance. Go to Ubuntu Forums and search for folks getting help with Broadcom wireless, for example : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...light=broadcom

(I don't have a Broadcom chip but I like your name and wanted to give some help.)

[jayboyd]

Re: Broadcom wireless card

Heh cool.

So update is I got this working. I wasted yet another day thanks to Broadcom, but as of now, it works.

I ended up blacklisting the wl driver, installing b43 (and apparently it's okay that b44 is also now installed with Ubuntu 11...), downloaded drivers and used b43-fwcutter and the new firmware-install-b43cutter tool, following instructions here:

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

That's about it, though it took considerable patience. Hopefully it's stable, but the connection seems significantly faster, maybe due to new kernel.

Oh and btw I'm using a Dell Inspiron E1505 with Broadcom BCM1411 (rev 01) wireless mini-card. What's weird is that under 10.10, I was *only* able to get the thing working using the wl driver; it never worked with the b43 drivers.

Note to Broadcom: @%$#! and the horse you rode in on.

[dibl]

Re: Broadcom wireless card

Note to Broadcom: @%$#! and the horse you rode in on.

Amen.

[Guest]

Re: Broadcom wireless card

HI! I was reading the thread, and I tried to blacklist wl, but it keeps telling me "permission denied". Is there a way to fix this?

[claydoh]

Re: Broadcom wireless card

HI! I was reading the thread, and I tried to blacklist wl, but it keeps telling me "permission denied". Is there a way to fix this?

You will need to edit it with Admin (sudo) privileges:
Assuming you are using the kate editor, you would hit alt-f2 keys, and type this in the krunner box that opens:

kdesudo kate

[Guest]

Re: Broadcom wireless card

Thanks!!

When i load the module"modprobe -r wl" this shows up :

WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist, it will be ignored in a future release.

what does that mean?