How to: Broadcom Wireless cards

[nickm]

****In my edgy knot 2 testing I found that edgy users can stop the guide after competing stage 4 or 4b as it 'just works' with out network-manager if you fill in the SSID and set the wireless device to DHCP in the "networking" option under System > Administration****


This Should work with Apple hardware as well as PC's.

How to get a wireless card working in Ubuntu 6.06 or 6.10) with a Broadcom chipset 43xx


This guide assumes 2 things:

• Wired Internet access on the machine with the wireless card on it, in my case i had a 10/100 LAN card that i was using as i couldn't get wireless to work which gave me full access to internet - although it is possible to put the files required on a CD and then add that CD as a repo in synaptic on the wireless machine, how to do this is not covered here, you could even extract the firmware on a different PC and place it in the right location on a remote PC using a CD/Pen drive taking a .deb of network manager with you.
• A CLEAN install of dapper or edgy, most of the problems/failures in the responses to this guide have been because of unclean installs giving configuration that gets in the way of this guide and stops it from working, my dapper was installed during the Flight 5 stage and updated from there to knot 2 so its not necessary to reinstall from 6.0* or even if it has been updated from breezy but you might want to think about reinstalling if you've messed around with Ndis prior to this.

Okay so you have a wireless card that shows up in ubuntu but doesnt connect to any wireless network?

The reason the card shows up but doesn't work is because ubuntu is only distributed with its driver (so it can recognize it) not with its firmware (so it can USE it) for legal reasons.

However you can take the firmware out of the windows drivers and put them into ubuntu and make the card work!

Follow these steps to get your wireless card working under ubuntu dapper 6.06:

To find out if your card has a broadcom chipset run the following command:

 lspci | grep Broadcom\ Corporation

If that returns a string of numbers followed by the words Broadcom Corporation and then some more numbers then your in luck!
But if not, try my guide anyway, it cant do any harm and it might work for you, its largely untested for cards other than mine and the success stories posted here so give it a go and see!

Here is my output from doing this:

lspci | grep Broadcom\ Corporation
0000:02:0d.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)

It seems that if you get the following string back: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02) that this guide is VERY unlikly to work for you although it does sometimes, dont ask me why, but basically every "no" vote and "this didnt work for me" post comes from a BCM4318 user....

Prerequisite

• Ubuntu dapper
• A wireless card that shows up in Ubuntu
• A driver installation CD (for Windows) OR a driver for your card from the internet
• Access to the Ubuntu Universe Repository

1 ) Ensure you have access to the other ubuntu repos
follow the intructions on the second heading from this page to ensure you have the universe enabled
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MOTU/Package...iversePackages

2 ) Copy your windows driver to your desktop

Use this driver with preference to any other:
http://boredklink.googlepages.com/wl_apsta.o
if this fails, your could use any of these:

• Copy the driver from the CD that came with the Card
• Copy it over from your windows partition if you have access to it, it will be located here: /Windows/System32/Drivers/bcmwl5.sys
• Obtain it from here -http://sidulus.textdrive.com/bcmwl5sys.zip
• Get any driver for your card of any date from their website - use this if initially you are not successful first tome try some newer/older drivers

3 ) Install bcm43xx-fwcutter
Open a terminal (dont worry) and type the following:

sudo apt-get install bcm43xx-fwcutter

It will ask for your password and may ask you to press y to install, but dont worry its really easy

GUI Alternative: go to System in the top Gnome bar then Administration then Synaptic Package Manager
From here click Search and search for bcm43xx-fwcutter

Right click on its entry in the package window, select Mark for Installation and then click apply

4 ) Extract your Cards firmware from the driver
Open a terminal (dont worry) and type the following:

sudo bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware ~/Desktop/wl_apsta.o

This will create lots of new files in the /lib/firmware directory, this is the firmware part of the driver that will make your card work with ubuntu!

4B ) Extract your Cards firmware from the driver
Just to be safe we'll put the driver in the kernel folder too

sudo bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware/`uname -r` ~/Desktop/wl_apsta.o

you may have to repeat this step each time the kernel is updated or you may not, your results may vary.

Note The location and name of the .o file for this command may differ in your case, if you really get stuck type bcm43xx-fwcutter and then hit space, find your file using the GUI and then drag and drop it into the terminal.

5 ) Install Network Manager
I find that this is the best way to manage wireless connections

sudo apt-get install network-manager-gnome

It may ask for your password and may ask you to press y to install, but dont worry its really easy

You may find that Network Manager adds itself to system > preferences > sessions >startup programs
or you may not, if you find its not inlcuded, add

 nm-applet --sm-disable

as found here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...0&postcount=32 , Network Manager might not work for Apple users, he says that a program called wifi-radar worked for him instead so if network manager is no good for you try this program instead
This might apply for non apple users as well
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/WifiDocs/Dri...4e5d044ef78d2f

6 ) Bookmark this page and Reboot
Press Ctrl + D and then click on add

Then log out & reboot
Return to this page after logging back in again


7 ) Use your new Wireless connection
From what i remember network manager should now show up by your clock and display your current connection, if your lucky it will show a series of bars, this means your now using your wireless connection so lucky you!

If it doesnt, right click on it and tick "Enable Wireless" then left click on it
and select the wirless network of your choice.

Thanks, i hope this helps...


Issues:
----------------------------------------------------
Ensure the router you are connecting to supports 802.11 B connections
as this is what the card is now set up to use, check if your router has a "mixed"
setting rather than a G only setting which it should as G is backwards compatible with B
----------------------------------------------------
For anyone that is having problems, try this:

modprobe bcm43xx

and reboot
----------------------------------------------------
Information about networkmanager

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NetworkManager
----------------------------------------------------
people seem to be having trouble getting this specific card: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02) working using this guide, take a look at this post for help:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...4&postcount=43
or
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...&postcount=218 if your looking to Ndis instead
----------------------------------------------------
If you find your driver comes in a windows EXE format, typically this will just extract the drivers and can be run using Wine and then collected from your wine directory in the same places you can find them in windows
you could try renaming them to filename.zip and seeing if they open that way too.

[markmcspadden]

A little adjustment...

The command "bcm43xx-fwcutter /home/$USER/Desktop/bcmwl5.sys" creates the firmware files in the directory you are current in...it cannot be assumed that is the "Desktop".

I couldn't figure out why it wasn't creating the files, then I stumbled across them in my "~" directory (where I ran the command). Not a huge thing, but I wouldn't consider myself too much of a linux newbie and it got me.

Other than that...great work...I have wireless without the pain of the ndiswrapper manual install!!! Thanks a ton!

[nickm]

Hey, thanks, im glad i helped someone
out of interest what card is it?

I did put a little note about that in step 3 when i made it, i'v made it a little more prominent for other people

[spd106]

Nice howto nickm, it deserves to be a sticky in my opinion.

Could you add a way for users to check what kind of cards are likely to work ie

$lspci
0000:02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)

Cheers

[nickm]

thanks spd106, i'll make an ammendment now

I decided people should be able to digg it too:
http://digg.com/linux_unix/Get_your_...king_in_Ubuntu
that way people can find it right away untill google adds it

[nickm]

Nice howto nickm, it deserves to be a sticky in my opinion.

Cheers

well, if any mods want to do it, i promise to maintain it....

[imrumpf]

ian@ian-laptop:~/Desktop/SP32158A$ bcm43xx-fwcutter bcmwl5.sys
Sorry, the input file is either wrong or not supported by fwcutter.
I can't find the MD5sum 69f940672be0ecee5bd1e905706ba8ce :(

what is that supposed to mean?? :S:S

[nickm]

that means that the specific file you have isnt supported by fwcutter, it checks the firmware md5sum against a list of what it knows works and yours hasnt come up

see for yourself

 nickm@ubuntu:~$ bcm43xx-fwcutter -l | grep 69f9 (yours)
nickm@ubuntu:~$ bcm43xx-fwcutter -l | grep c3e (one i know works)
wl_sta.o        3.31.16.0               a/b/g  c3e663cb78b2fc299088de69fc11a9a9

all i can suggest is that you look for a newer/older driver on the internet for your card and try it agian with that...

[Vaan]

Thank you!

Wow, thank you soo much. This was an excellent guide. I cannot express my gratitude enough for taking the time to make such a wonderful guide.

I spent most of my day yesterday trying to setup my wireless on my laptop following the guides on the wiki. After messing around for quite some time, I finally got it to work. However, it wasn't even working all that great (I had to constantly config the wireless each time I rebooted via terminal).

Then unfortunetly I had to reinstall my unbuntu (Dapper Drake btw) becuase of some problems I had trying to install KDE. Any how, I told myself I would reread over the wiki again today.

To my unfortunate surprise, when I went to go look in the wiki today (search broadcom) all the guides that were there yesterday now redirect to a new guide that is terrible. I almost lost it. It was there one day, and gone the next (literally).

I didn't know what to do. So I tryed my luck to search on the forums, and up came this thread, my life saver.

Not only was this explanation much faster than anything else I've read, but it actually works completely for me. I love the new network manager that I didn't even know existed. Thank you for telling us about it, works much better than the default. I can just click and switch wireless connections easily.

In my opinion, not only should this thread be made a sticky, but someone should add it to the unbuntu wiki. This will help many people and spread the word out on how to once and for all get these cards to work.

Thanks again, really appreciate it.

Also I noticed this thread is under the Breezy section. I'm actually using the latest version of Dapper Drake (6.06 I believe) and I notice most users are having broadcom problems with Dapper. If it could be moved somewhere to a more general place, that would be very helpful for future users I'm sure.

Update

Also I didn't have my driver CD at hand during this whole process. Luckily I was able to copy the driver (bcmwl5.sys) from my windows disk (under /Windows/System32/Drivers/bcmwl5.sys) and extract it that way to my unbuntu firmware directory. For future members reading this helpful I guide, I would like to add that you can grab the latest version of this driver from here -> bcmwl5.sys (if you could add that into the guide somehow it would be great)

[nickm]

Thanks Vaan, i didnt even realise there was a dapper and breezy section, i have PMed a mod to rectify this, Thankyou!

I will also incorporate your update into the instructions an another method of obtaining the driver files.

I am testing my own modification to the guide at the moment which enables an entire step to be removed, it seems in Cutter you can specify where the files are created to, so if i specify that they are created to /lib/firmware you wont have to move them by hand! i'll give it a go and get back to you all tonight. - **implemented**