New brcm80211 driver guide for Broadcom wireless cards

[geekuillaume]

Hi everyone !
I use BRCM80211 with Backtrack 5 and, like the others said, no data received...
I know it's not a priority for devs but it really be cool to add this function to the next release.
Thanks !

[Mcjohnnson]

I blacklisted it in favour of STA-driver. Couldn't get my WLAN work properly. I am waiting for UBuntu 11.10 and Kernel 3.0.

Everything is fine. But is was real hard to find a sollution. Wrote a howto.
Acer_wmi was giving me trouble, too.

[marcio_mi]

do you know if these drivers (both the free and proprietory one) support power management?

this is my iwconfig output

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"FASTWEB-1-55ls2qcCoLIk"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 64:87:D7:B9:98:38   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=19 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-37 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:1  Invalid misc:100   Missed beacon:0

but if I try to set the power management on, it doesn't allow me

miccoli@netbook-N230:~$ iwconfig wlan0 power on
Error for wireless request "Set Power Management" (8B2C) :
    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Operation not permitted.
miccoli@netbook-N230:~$ sudo iwconfig wlan0 power on
Error for wireless request "Set Power Management" (8B2C) :
    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Operation not supported.

this happens both with the propriatory and free driver. Any idea?

[.:astroboy:.]

so we still don't have any solution on how to use bcm4313 chip set for cracking......

[shiman6]

so we still don't have any solution on how to use bcm4313 chip set for cracking......

funny thing, i have that same chipset on my laptop and the brcm80211 module worked out of the box. it works with aircrack-ng perfectly. It works better than the wl module most of the time in performance and response time.

[geekuillaume]

funny thing, i have that same chipset on my laptop and the brcm80211 module worked out of the box. it works with aircrack-ng perfectly. It works better than the wl module most of the time in performance and response time.

Which linux distro do you use ???

[dbdexter]

Hello everybody.
I have a eeepc 1215n with a bcm4313 card. I found a script that automatically patches the brcmsmac driver, and on ubuntu 11.04 works fine (no more -1 fixed channel, injection test passed), BUT when I try to inject, it just sends packets, and lost packets goes up until injection stops. Here's the script:

wget http://wireless.kernel.org/download/...-08-27.tar.bz2
tar -jxf compat-wireless-2011-08-27.tar.bz2
cd compat-wireless-2011-08-27
wget http://patches.aircrack-ng.org/mac80...g+ack_v1.patch
patch -p1 < mac80211.compat08082009.wl_frag+ack_v1.patch
wget http://patches.aircrack-ng.org/chann...ne-maxim.patch
patch ./net/wireless/chan.c channel-negative-one-maxim.patch
gedit scripts/update-initramfs
#*** FIND LINE 13: KLIB=/lib/modules/2.6.31-wl/build
#*** REPLACE WITH: KLIB=/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build
make
sudo make install
sudo make unload
#Uncomment the line below to automatically reboot after the script ran.
#sudo reboot

let me know if works

P.S. it's a bit slow when updating grub, just wait.

[shadowlyx]

Hi all,

Let me start by saying that the solution below applies to Lenovo laptops that have hw switch with dual function - enable WLAN & BT. Please also make sure you follow all the required steps in order to have the proper wlan card driver installed.

I had the same wireless problem with bcm4313 and I spent days trying to fix it with no luck. Until last night.
This fix is for Lenovo laptops that have the hardware switch with dual function - enable/disable both wireless and bluetooth.

Before trying to make the linux driver work, you need turn the switch on and the you MUST boot into windows (I know how it sound but it's not a joke and I'm not advertising for the MS guys) and use the FN + F5 combination to open the software control and make sure that BOTH wireless and bluetooth are "On". If at least one of them is OFF, the it will never work in linux. The downside is for those that cannot dual-boot because they only use Linux and don't have a Win OS installed.

You can easily check that in the linux terminal using "rfkill list all". If the ideapad hw-swith is in the list and hard block is on then you have the problem I mentioned above. It will not matter if you have the correct driver installed or not. Just using "rfkill unblock all" will unblock only the soft block, not the hard version.

For me it was a nightmare until I discovered this setting.
Long story short:
- make sure the hw switch is on
- boot into windows and use FN + F5 to enable WLAN & BT
- boot your linux OS, install the driver (if it's not already there) and use "rfkill list all"; if your driver is correctly installed everything should be OK
- make sure you defined a wireless connection in Network Manager
Now it should work.

I hope this will also help others like me that spent hours and days trying to understand why to correct driver is working but wireless network cannot be enabled.

Have a nice day. &nbsp

[Dr.Aequitas]

guys, i've read all the pages, all the instructions..
i have a very simple and important problem here..
none of the given kernel.org links are working.. so i am not able to download or clone -whatever you name it- anything to start with..
i did download kernel 3.1rc4, extract it on my desktop, browsed into linuxbla-bla/drivers/staging/brcm80211/
i made the change in the Makefile, run the make command, but all i got is this..

xxx@xxx-1015PEM:/usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.4-030004/drivers/staging/brcm80211$ make
echo /usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.4-030004/drivers/staging/brcm80211
/usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.4-030004/drivers/staging/brcm80211
make -C /lib/modules/3.0.4-030004-generic/build SUBDIRS=/usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.4-030004/drivers/staging/brcm80211 CONFIG_BRCM80211_PCI=y V=1 modules
make[1]:`/usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.4-030004-generic' dizinine giriliyor
test -e include/generated/autoconf.h -a -e include/config/auto.conf || (	\
	echo;								\
	echo "  ERROR: Kernel configuration is invalid.";		\
	echo "         include/generated/autoconf.h or include/config/auto.conf are missing.";\
	echo "         Run 'make oldconfig && make prepare' on kernel src to fix it.";	\
	echo;								\
	/bin/false)
mkdir -p /usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.4-030004/drivers/staging/brcm80211/.tmp_versions ; rm -f /usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.4-030004/drivers/staging/brcm80211/.tmp_versions/*
make -f scripts/Makefile.build obj=/usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.4-030004/drivers/staging/brcm80211
make -f scripts/Makefile.build obj=/usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.4-030004/drivers/staging/brcm80211/brcmfmac
make[3]: *** Hedef `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.4-030004/drivers/staging/brcm80211/brcmfmac/wl_cfg80211.o' i derlemek için  hiçbir kural yok, `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.4-030004/drivers/staging/brcm80211/brcmfmac/brcmfmac.o' tarafından gereksinim duyuluyor. Durdu.
make[2]: *** [/usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.4-030004/drivers/staging/brcm80211/brcmfmac] Hata 2
make[1]: *** [_module_/usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.4-030004/drivers/staging/brcm80211] Hata 2
make[1]: `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.4-030004-generic' dizininden çıkılıyor
make: *** [default] Hata 2
xxx@xxx-1015PEM:/usr/src/linux-headers-3.0.4-030004/drivers/staging/brcm80211$

so i need some help over here..
if anyone using eeepc 1015PEM/PED/PE.. can share the brcm80211.ko file with me, it would be appreciated so much..
if noone using eeepc then anyone with a BCM4313 can share it too..
i'm stuck, and can not do anything..

[Axx83]

The latest linux kernel ALREADY contains the brcm80211 driver and it works well. If you are running Ubuntu 11.04 then it's already functioning, if you are running previous version you could try updating the kernel with the kernel ppa, try googleing it