How to get wireless (BCM4331) working on Macbook Pro 8,2/8,1/8,3 + Natty

As you probably all know, Macbook Pro 8.x owners, with a Broadcom 4331 wireless card, ) have had to endure the hardship of being tethered with a network cable to the wall, or use the flaky ndiswrapper locking up our precious systems at random moments (read: whenever we are doing something important and haven't saved our data yet).

But no more of this now: After some search I found that there is a solution to get our wireless working properly with the newest open-source b43 driver (recall that the proprietary wl driver *STILL* provides no support for the BCM4331). The solution is here and whilst it does involve compiling a kernel module, (but not upgrade the entire kernel to 3.0+), the steps are well laid out and should be easy to follow:

http://homepage.uibk.ac.at/~c705283/..._81/index.html

I have tested this and it works great on Ubuntu 11.04 (natty). This post is written and published without any strings attached!

Note 1: If you later do a kernel update through the package manager you will also have to recompile the module as it will probably get overwritten.

Note 2: If the wireless.kernel.org link in the post is not working (kernal.org is down after their unfortunate security mishab), then get the required package from for example http://linuxwireless.org/download/compat-wireless-2.6/

Would the same have to be done on oneric? or less steps needed?

I haven't tried oneiric yet (waiting for the final release), but if the b43 driver with oneiric doesn't work out of the box yet, then the same procedure can be applied.

Instructions from http://homepage.uibk.ac.at/~c705283/..._81/index.html are working in my MBP 8,2 in Oneiric.

so when kernel updates are out via the repo these steps need to be redone, correct?
Edit: yes.

any chance an update in oneric will have builtin support? or we looking at precise pangolin for that?

I have just followed the instructions ( http://homepage.uibk.ac.at/~c705283/..._81/index.html ) to install the b43 driver on MacBook Pro 8,2 running Ubuntu 10.04 LTS (Lucid) and it worked like a charm!!! My Wireless is up and running! :D Thanks a lot!

This is on a 8,3 Macbook running Oneiric:

Followed the instructions to the letter and got:

Code:

---

FATAL: Error inserting b43 (/lib/modules/3.0.14-generic/updates/drivers/net/wireless/b43/b43.ko): Invalid argument
FATAL: Error running install command for b43

---

after the

Code:

---

sudo modprobe b43

---

step.
(That path may not be exact; I'm typing it from memory, but when I was on the machine I double-checked to make sure the .ko file was where it ought to be.)

This is using the latest files from the above-linked site.

Any notions?
Thanks much in advance!

Hi,

I've managed to install the driver and I can also see the interface being available when doing an ifconfig:

Code:

---

root@bt:~# ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr c8:2a:14:0a:02:30 
          inet addr:10.0.1.58  Bcast:10.0.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::ca2a:14ff:fe0a:230/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:131 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:125 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:24779 (24.7 KB)  TX bytes:22580 (22.5 KB)
          Interrupt:16

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback 
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:17 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:17 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:1073 (1.0 KB)  TX bytes:1073 (1.0 KB)

wlan0    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr e0:f8:47:1a:87:b6 
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

---

But as you can see it doesn't get an ip address, would someone be able to help me out on this?

hey I'm getting this error

Code:

---

FATAL: Error inserting b43 (/lib/modules/3.2.6/updates/drivers/net/wireless/b43/b43.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

---

At the last step,

Code:

---

sudo modprobe b43

---

What do i do :S?

I see this is an older thread, but I'm also getting the following when I run modprobe b43

Quote:

---

FATAL: Error inserting b43 (/lib/modules/3.2.0-32-generic/updates/drivers/net/wireless/b43/b43.ko): Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

---

dmesg output:

Quote:

---

cfg80211: Unknown symbol simple_open (err 0)

---

Has anyone figured out the solution? I've tried a number of versions from http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Download/stable/ They all compile without issues, but they all fail with the same message from modprobe.