How to: Broadcom Wireless cards

[stixdannov]

it seems that after following every step my wireless device has disappeared from the network settings menu. I have no idea what to do as i'm installing linux for the first time.

[shortstack]

you are my hero. i tried everything under the sun to get my wireless working and about 70 different websites and forums. i love you.

[sbentzen]

ok, just wondering, does this guide work for airport extreme, cause i am running an ibook g4, and would like to dual boot, though i really wonder if this works, i have a wep network aswell.

[dan828]

OK, after trying everything under the sun, since I first tried Hoary, I finally got it working with your method on my HP ZD7000 running Edgy now. Kudos to you.

[jrz]

When I tried the
{sudo bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware ~/Desktop/wl_apsta.o}
I got in reply
{Sorry, the input file is either wrong or not supported by fwcutter.
I can't find the MD5sum 0a0db830f28c54f6266043b063cec272 }
Do you know why this is?

A friend and I spent the day trying to get his wireless working and encountered the same thing. What we seem to have found was that by re-downloading the file several times we encountered the same error 3 times, each time displaying a different MD5sum, which led me to believe the file was being corrupted in transit and on the 4th try it was OK. So you may have to do the same thing, download the file again and use it and notice if it fails, does it display a different MD5sum, and if so you have just received another corrupted copy and must download again until you get a good copy. We were using Firefox to download with and I don't believe it checks what it downloads to assure the file is not corrupt.

[jrz]

Using a Compaq Presario V3042AU, AMD64 X2, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS i386 version freshly installed, and a Broadcom BCM4311 wireless, we followed the instructions carefully and still are unable to use the wireless.

My first question is, should we remove anything prior to trying a new approach, and if so what is the correct procedure as we would not like to leave many useless files around that may cause future concerns.

Second, although we read somewhere in the numerous posts that it is "IMPERATIVE that you use wl_apsta.o", I am wondering if it may be worth trying the Windows drivers I downloaded from Compaqs website and opened on a Windows system? And if so would we use just the bcmwl5.sys file alone which is included in the folder created by the Compaq download or are other files from that folder necessary as well?

Primarily we do not wish to proceed further until we are certain that we are not leaving files scattered that may cause conflicts when attempting other procedures.

Last question, What commands should we use to display that the wireless is installed properly and all settings are correct? Should we be able to set an IP address unique from the one we set for the wired connection, or does it use the same IP address to connect to the router?

The 'How to' is very useful, but an addition telling what to do when something doesn't work might be helpful also as once something is installed I'm not sure how to remove it, and if it doesn't work it would appear that what was installed should not be left.

Thanks

[cherokee]

Using a Compaq Presario V3042AU, AMD64 X2, Ubuntu 6.06 LTS i386 version freshly installed, and a Broadcom BCM4311 wireless, we followed the instructions carefully and still are unable to use the wireless.

My first question is, should we remove anything prior to trying a new approach, and if so what is the correct procedure as we would not like to leave many useless files around that may cause future concerns.

Second, although we read somewhere in the numerous posts that it is "IMPERATIVE that you use wl_apsta.o", I am wondering if it may be worth trying the Windows drivers I downloaded from Compaqs website and opened on a Windows system? And if so would we use just the bcmwl5.sys file alone which is included in the folder created by the Compaq download or are other files from that folder necessary as well?

Primarily we do not wish to proceed further until we are certain that we are not leaving files scattered that may cause conflicts when attempting other procedures.

Last question, What commands should we use to display that the wireless is installed properly and all settings are correct? Should we be able to set an IP address unique from the one we set for the wired connection, or does it use the same IP address to connect to the router?

The 'How to' is very useful, but an addition telling what to do when something doesn't work might be helpful also as once something is installed I'm not sure how to remove it, and if it doesn't work it would appear that what was installed should not be left.

Thanks

I had the broadcom 4318 rev 02

The way it is working I have to type sudo modprobe on reboot and log in.

Thanks for the work that was put in this card. I belive it will work out of the box soon

[jrz]

We had tried using modprobe as well and it didn't change any thing, so we are looking to trying some other solution, but wish to clean up every thing we have done so far first.

[lyceum]

I am also using 4311, if you get yours working, please let me know how. It sounds like I have followed the same steps as you, and my card will not configure. I can see wireless networks, but I can't use them. Thank you!

I do have to say, don't install netware manager. It messed things up even more for me.

[motrennoc]

Hi,
Great How to. It worked like a charm. That is up until a couple of days ago.
The (Broadcom) Dell true mobile 1300 miniPCI was working very well. It took some time to get WEP working but I finally did.

Then the wireless network tick under the network connection disappeared and it no longer "senses" the wireless connections avaiable. In network setting the Wireless connection says The network connection eth1 is active and it has the right network name and WEP key.

I tried removing (via synaptic) nm-applet and then reinstalling. But this did not help. I've tried "resetting" the DSL and wireless router. I've tried deactivating and reactivating the wireless connection as well as redoing the WEP key. I've turned the WEP protection off and it still doesn't "sense" the wireless net. I've tried to turn on/off the wireless card but there's no indication of it turning on off with fn-F2. I've run iwconfig and this is the output:
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"home" Nickname:"Broadcom 4306"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.484 GHz Access Point: Invalid
Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm
RTS thrff Fragment thrff
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

sit0 no wireless extensions.


Anyone have any ideas?