How to: Broadcom Wireless cards

[veebis]

Followed your excellent step by step, and here I am, posting from the living room (my regular spot for writing/browsing)... Thank you! Only suggestion I can think of is maybe make it clearer that the pieces (esp. the ".o" file) actually works for Apple hw. Made me a little nervous, what with all that sudo-ing and being pretty noob. Great job, and thanks again!
-Vb

[PPower]

same problem - that documentation says to download the module source from http://bcm43xx.berlios.de, but as previously mentioned, the module source is not available on that page (that I can see).

smylie

The module depends on PCI && IEEE80211 && IEEE80211_SOFTMAC && NET_RADIO && EXPERIMENTAL

Use \ to find it in menuconfig. When done the bcm option will magically appear.

[rjstevens3]

First of all, thanks to all the posts on these forums I'm posting from a wireless connection, and I have a Broadcom 4318 "AirForce One 54g".

Here's how I did it, maybe it'll help someone. You don't even need an internet connection.

The drivers I used are attached to the message. To follow this guide to a T downlad them and place in a folder bcm43xx on your desktop.

I've tried the procedure in this HowTo several times, on different versions of Dapper, with different drivers and it would never work. I had to use ndiswrapper to get it working.

I'm running Ubuntu i386 Dapper, Turion 64, ATI Radeon XPRESS 200M.

1) Blacklist bcm43xx driver

Open a Terminal window

Type "sudo gedit etc/modprobe.d/blacklist"

At the bottom add the lines

# get rid of the default kernel drivers

blacklist bcm43xx

2) Make sure network interfaces file is correct

Type "sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces"

Remove all comments ('#') that you see so that all devices are handled by the default network manager.

I would reboot here and make sure the wireless light goes out

3) Install ndiswrapper

Put in Ubuntu CD. Open Synaptic Package Manager (Click System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager), search for ndiswrapper-utils, and install it.
You could also type "sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-utils

4) Conigure ndiswrapper

Open termianl and navigate the folder where your drivers are.
"cd Desktop/bcm43xx"

Type "sudo ndiswrapper -i oem3.inf"
Then type "sudo ndiswrapper -m"

Type "sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper"
Change the one line in that file to read "alias eth1 ndiswrapper"

Now you should reboot so all the drivers load.

Once you reboot the wireless light on your laptop should be lit. If it worked, you should be able to click the Network Manager icon in the top right. It will probably show a disconnected ennection becuase the computer is not plugged in.
Left click it and select eth1 from the drop down menu.
Click Configure
Click Wireless Connection, then Properties. Here just enter your network information. If you're using an unprotected network you should only have to type yout SSID.

Click OK and you should now be connected! If a green signal meter and connected network icon appear in the upper right you'll know it worked.

Hope this helps!

When I

 dmesg | grep ndiswrapper

I get ndiswrapper 1.6 loaded... driver loaded... wlan0:ndiswrapper ethernet device (numbers) using driver oem3.... I changed the alias in /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper, but the module still loads with wlan0 as the wireless card. Network manager doesn't show wlan0, nor does ifconfig or iwconfig. This has been my problem with ndiswrapper all along. I have used the .deb and built from source with same results. I'm using source right now.

-RJ

[cfischer]

I've read and re-read every post here - thanks, all. And I guess I should contribute - just got the wireless card working on my Dell Inspiron 5150. The secret (after two days of work) is to use ndiswrapper (disable bcm43xx and install ndiswrapper-utils) and the drivers from dell - bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys. The other driver (wl_apsta.o) does not bring up the link - that is handled (I guess) by the RadioState line in bcmwl5.inf - it needs to be set to 0 to turn on the card. I spent two days wondering why dmesg kept telling me that eth1: link is not ready.

see part 2 here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WifiDocs/Dri...4e5d044ef78d2f

[cfischer]

I've read and re-read every post here - thanks, all. And I guess I should contribute - just got the wireless card working on my Dell Inspiron 5150. The secret (after two days of work) is to use ndiswrapper (disable bcm43xx and install ndiswrapper-utils) and the drivers from dell - bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys. The other driver (wl_apsta.o) does not bring up the link - that is handled (I guess) by the RadioState line in bcmwl5.inf - it needs to be set to 0 to turn on the card. I spent two days wondering why dmesg kept telling me that eth1: link is not ready.

see part 2 here: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WifiDocs/Dri...4e5d044ef78d2f

Oh, yeah ... ndiswrapper wants to name the wireless device wlan0 - and automatically does that by adding a line to /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper: alias wlan0 ndiswrapper. That needs to be fixed. And then be sure the script, /etc/network/interfaces uses eth1 for the interface name - can't just pop in your old script! I added ndiswrapper to modules and blacklisted bcm43xx.

Now, on to getting my usb mouse and storage working ...

[MarkSheely]

Thank you so much for this guide. I have one of the dreaded BCM4318[Air ForceOne 54g] cards that everyone has been having problems with, and a Dell B130 laptop. I began with a clean install of Dapper (as you recommended), followed the instructions you gave, and the recommendation here:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...4&postcount=43

Within 15 minutes, my wireless was working.

I think the most important thing was that I went through the process immediately after installing Dapper. I didn't have the chance to screw anything up.

[roadkillbunny]

I have a BCM4306 wireless card in my amd64 laptop. I have been using it sucessfully with ndiswrapper for some time now, but since I updated to Drapper I figured I will give the native bcm43xx driver a shot. I followed this guide to a step and am able to connect to my neighbors' unencrypted network. But when I try conneting to my WEP encrypted I get the following error in dmesg:

bcm43xx: FATAL ERROR: BCM43xx_IRQ_XMIT_ERROR
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
SoftMAC: Open Authentication with 00:c0:49:ee:7b:78 failed, error code: 13

I tried using the same firmware from what I use with ndiswrapper, one that I found in bcm43xx's README, the one from this site, and one that I found on compaq's site. Anyone know what I could do to fix this?

[?????]

I have a BCM4306 wireless card in my amd64 laptop. I have been using it sucessfully with ndiswrapper for some time now, but since I updated to Drapper I figured I will give the native bcm43xx driver a shot. I followed this guide to a step and am able to connect to my neighbors' unencrypted network. But when I try conneting to my WEP encrypted I get the following error in dmesg:

bcm43xx: FATAL ERROR: BCM43xx_IRQ_XMIT_ERROR
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
SoftMAC: Open Authentication with 00:c0:49:ee:7b:78 failed, error code: 13

I tried using the same firmware from what I use with ndiswrapper, one that I found in bcm43xx's README, the one from this site, and one that I found on compaq's site. Anyone know what I could do to fix this?

What comes up when you type iwconfig into terminal? Is your AP "Open" and not "shared"?

[roadkillbunny]

What comes up when you type iwconfig into terminal? Is your AP "Open" and not "shared"?

Right after loading the bcm43xx module:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11b/g  ESSID:off/any  Nickname:"Broadcom 4306"
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Invalid   Bit Rate=1 Mb/s
          RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

After doing ifconfig wlan0 up:

wlan0     IEEE 802.11b/g  ESSID:off/any  Nickname:"Broadcom 4306"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency=2.437 GHz  Access Point: Invalid
          Bit Rate=11 Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm
          RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

I have also tried doing "ap any" and "rate 11M" or 54M as suggested by a post with no success.

Also I am using shared mode.

[smylie]

The module depends on PCI && IEEE80211 && IEEE80211_SOFTMAC && NET_RADIO && EXPERIMENTAL

Use \ to find it in menuconfig. When done the bcm option will magically appear.

my god man. i've been using linux since 1997 and I never knew you could hunt thru menuconfig like that! i hate to think how many hours of hunting round that would have saved me =)

i do have one more question . . . how did you find out what the dependancies on making it appear are?

thanks heaps =)

smylie