How to: Broadcom Wireless cards

[Tiede]

I followed this to get my broadcom 4318 card to work in dapper (and it worked purrrfectly). Now that I've upgraded to edgy, I'm noticing some odd behaviors: sometimes, it works, well... But then out of the blue, it stops...
And reboot as I may, it still doesn't work... Then after a while, everything works fine again... Is someone else noticing this?

P.S: I did try (many times to no avail

sudo rmmod bcm43xx
sudo modprobe bcm43xx

[Sokraates]

So I take, that ubuntu's default driver work for you. That's strange, since the bcm4318 is not supported (at least not rev2). You get the exact typeof your chip by typing "lspci" in a console. At least on my HP nx6110 it would only work with ndiswrapper.

You might also want to take a look at this thread and maybe try the script, though in my case I needed to install both ndiwrapper-utils1.1 and ndiwrapper-utils1.8. The script also produces a nice log-file.

The steps performed by the script are explained here, if you prefer to do everything manually (it won't hurt for troubleshooting).

[Sparticuz]

I'm having an interesting problem. I've got everything installed right (using ndiswrapper, the firmware thing didn't work). It's detecting my card, the 4311, and it's even getting an IP address from the router, but it's not getting on the internet. I have done this on multiple different AP's too, but still no internet. I do have to type my ESSID in, it's not scanning in network config, or network manager, but it is in wifi-radar.

[4KvRMU7Nnv]

AHHHHHH!!! WTH!?!? I have done this exact procedure like 8 times after I proceded to kill ubuntu each time. I was doing it this time and it doesn't work?!!!?!??!? Now it says that my driver is old?
wtf?! it never was before! in fact i have installed it earlier today before i killed linux again and it worked! WTF! sigh...ill instll ubuntu again......but it takes like 30 minutes!!!!!!! GGRRRRRRRRR.

[blackest_knight]

Hi
I just installed Edgy EFT and I have an HP Compaq NX6110 which has the BroadCom BCM4318 Version2 Chipset.

It's working fine and it was very quick and easy to install, no NDISWrapper needed but you do need to have had it working in Dapper natively.

So you need to backup some things from Dapper before you install Edgy.

Edgy has a file for broadcom chipsets ending in .Ko this is the operating systems side of the Driver, this will not work because it needs the cards firmware (from the manufacturer to talk to)

basically the driver is in two halves one half provided by the os is the .ko file the other half is provided by the wireless card manufacturer in
Dapper you used BcmCutter to cut the windows driver into bits

well Edgy needs those bits.
/lib/firmware/ has the bits you need inside that folder is bits of wireless driver and a number of folders (your linux kernel and supporting files live in them) ignore the folders just get those individual files out of there on your dapper install and put them somewhere safe.
install edgy and then put those files back into edgys /lib/firmware/
and reboot.

heres an easy way
open two terminals and
sudo nautilus
in each of them

that will bring up two file browser windows with root access
navigate to your saved firmware folder and to your edgy firmware folder
copy the files from savedfolder to edgy lib/firmware/ folder

ok reboot
now open a terminal window
type
$iwconfig
you should get

lo no wireless extensions.

eth1 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"Myrouter" Nickname:"Broadcom 4318"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.462 GHz Access Point: 00:11:50:45:85:35
Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power=18 dBm
RTS thr: off Fragment thr: off
Link Quality=56/100 Signal level=-51 dBm Noise level=-72 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

eth0 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

good
now lets get a lease

$ sudo dhclient

Password:
There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.pid with pid 4848
killed old client process, removed PID file
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.4
Copyright 2004-2006 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit ,,,

Listening on LPF/eth0/ mac address
Sending on LPF/eth0/ mac address
Listening on LPF/eth1/ forum thinks
Sending on LPF/eth1/ mac addresses are smileys
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPREQUEST on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK from 192.168.x.1
bound to 192.168.x.2 -- renewal in 985072504 seconds.
$

bingo connected not done anything else except come on here and tell you how i did it.

I created some files on my laptop they might be useful if you put them in your lib/firmware folder I think they are ok

I use an open access point with mac address filtering you probably want more security than that.

I don't know why but I find when changing access points it is difficult to associate with a new access point, however if i boot windows and get a lease then rebooting into ubuntu there is no problem at all. (I don't have any evidence other than this seems to work)

[blackest_knight]

I've been playing with the data rates for the wireless card
sudo iwconfig eth1 rate 24M auto
works for me with no losses
sudo iwconfig eth1 rate 54M auto
and there are lots of losses

sudo iwconfig eth1 rate 48M auto

seemed ok but the internet seemed slow
there are a number of parameters you can try with iwconfig
but it looks like 18DBm is the maximum you can set the txpower
(you can lower it)

anyone able to do iwconfig on dapper and see what things are set to?

[zds]

Worked for me on my Compaq V2000Z AMD64 Turion with Broadcom 4318 using additional instructions at

http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...4&postcount=43

Thanks!

[rossjamesparker]

Looks like a good howto. Unfortunately this is not so much help for me though.... my cheapy conexant wireless card doesn't show in Ubuntu I guess it's down to the computer shop for me.

[eems01]

With Edgy, my wireless connection seems to go down after a while.

Then, when I try to reboot, I get:

bcm43xx: Controller RESET (Tx Timeout)

And this means I cannot shutdown/reboot without a power down.

Anyone else seeing this?

benb@zigzag:~$ sudo iwlist scan
lo        Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0      Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth1      Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:11:24:0A:34:F5
                    ESSID:"home"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11bg
                    Mode:Master
                    Channel:3
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
                              11 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
                              48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Quality=100/100  Signal level=-71 dBm  
                    IE: WPA Version 1
                        Group Cipher : TKIP 
                        Pairwise Ciphers (1) : TKIP 
                        Authentication Suites (1) : PSK  
                    Extra: Last beacon: 348ms ago
          Cell 02 - Address: 00:14:6C:D0:27:38
                    ESSID:"MAGGIE"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11bg
                    Mode:Master
                    Channel:11
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
                              11 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
                              48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Quality=100/100  Signal level=-30 dBm  
                    Extra: Last beacon: 4ms ago

sit0      Interface doesn't support scanning.

benb@zigzag:~$ cat /etc/network/interfaces
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Also seeing this issue on a dapper to edgy upgrade. Never a problem on dapper. I think edgy was ok for a few days after upgrading and then the past two days I have started seeing this. I've run all the updates since upgrade and maybe somehow they have made this issue?

[eems01]

With Edgy, my wireless connection seems to go down after a while.

Then, when I try to reboot, I get:

bcm43xx: Controller RESET (Tx Timeout)

And this means I cannot shutdown/reboot without a power down.

Anyone else seeing this?

benb@zigzag:~$ sudo iwlist scan
lo        Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0      Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth1      Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:11:24:0A:34:F5
                    ESSID:"home"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11bg
                    Mode:Master
                    Channel:3
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
                              11 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
                              48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Quality=100/100  Signal level=-71 dBm  
                    IE: WPA Version 1
                        Group Cipher : TKIP 
                        Pairwise Ciphers (1) : TKIP 
                        Authentication Suites (1) : PSK  
                    Extra: Last beacon: 348ms ago
          Cell 02 - Address: 00:14:6C:D0:27:38
                    ESSID:"MAGGIE"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11bg
                    Mode:Master
                    Channel:11
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
                              11 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s
                              48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Quality=100/100  Signal level=-30 dBm  
                    Extra: Last beacon: 4ms ago

sit0      Interface doesn't support scanning.

benb@zigzag:~$ cat /etc/network/interfaces
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

Believe I just fixed this issue by re-extracting the firmware to both the /lib/firmware directory and the /lib/firmware/2.6.17-10-386
directory. Logs so far have not shown this error again.

Edit: It died again.