Problem with wireless in Karmic (Dell Inspiron 1318)

[ger_macaco]

I was running Ubuntu 9.04 on my Dell Inspiron 1318 and all the hardware was working fine.

I did a clean install of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic (x86) and now my wireless card is not recognized. There is no eth1 when doing ifconfig or iwconfig.

When running this command: lshw -C network I get a list of both cards, one with logical name eth0 (not wireless) and the other one without any logical name:

*-network
description: Network controller
product: BCM4312 802.11b/g
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:0c:00.0
version: 01
width: 64 bits
clock: 33 MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=0
resources: irq:17 memory:f1ffc000-f1ffffff

How can I solve this?
Many thanks

[Opie2010]

I'm having the exact problem after my install of 9.10. I also have a Broadcom device and it refuses to be recognized now where as it worked in 9.04. The only difference is mine has a logical name after running the last command in the OP's post.
*-network
description: Network controller
product: BCM4312 802.11a/b/g
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:0c:00.0
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=0
resources: irq:17 memory:fe8fc000-fe8fffff
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: NetLink BCM5906M Fast Ethernet PCI Express
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:09:00.0
logical name: eth0
version: 02
serial: 00:15:c5:86:b9:06
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=tg3 driverversion=3.99 firmware=sb v3.04 ip=192.168.1.20 latency=0 multicast=yes
resources: irq:30 memory:fe5f0000-fe5fffff
*-network DISABLED
description: Wireless interface
physical id: 1
logical name: wlan0
serial: 00:1e:4c:8c:f0:27
capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg

[ger_macaco]

Seems that now Broadcom BCM43xx drivers are disabled by default and have to be activated manually (like NVIDIA).

Edit: This solved the issue

[Opie2010]

How exactly did you do that?

[Noble Hacker]

I also had no wireless after upgrading from 9.04 to 9.10. (Dell 1520, Broadcom driver).
The solution for me was simple.
I went to System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers, to check the list of proprietary drivers. My Nvidia accelerated graphics driver driver was activated by default. As for Broadcom STA wireless driver, it said "The driver is activated but is not currently in use".
All I had to do was just highlight Broadcom STA wireless driver line, click the button Remove, located below, wait untill the driver was unloaded, and then just activated it once again. That did the job and my wireless was enabled.
Hope this will help someone

[Opie2010]

I also had no wireless after upgrading from 9.04 to 9.10. (Dell 1520, Broadcom driver).
The solution for me was simple.
I went to System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers, to check the list of proprietary drivers. My Nvidia accelerated graphics driver driver was activated by default. As for Broadcom STA wireless driver, it said "The driver is activated but is not currently in use".
All I had to do was just highlight Broadcom STA wireless driver line, click the button Remove, located below, wait untill the driver was unloaded, and then just activated it once again. That did the job and my wireless was enabled.
Hope this will help someone

This what I did for 9.04. In 9.10 I don't even see any proprietary drivers when I navigate to >hardware drivers :S

Edit: Through some miracle I fixed this problem. Thanks for helping nubs like me

[seoci]

I'm having the same issue. What did you end up doing to fix it?

[sergio jose dias]

Go to link:
http://pelenegra.blogspot.com/2009/1...do-bug-da.html
And try that solution.

[mnoyes]

Me too -- "through some miracle" -- can you be a bit more specific?

[the_maplebar]

I had the same problem, Broadcom STA driver did not show up in the Hardware Drivers utility. I figured out I could install it manually by installing the package

sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source

if you have a wired network connection this should work with no problem, also the package is available on the installation CD if you use that a an APT source