Driver for Broadcom 4312 won't activate

[stigb]

I have a Dell laptop and I would very much like to be able to use wireless networks. Running lspci, I find that my network controller is

0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)

I go to System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers, and I find the "Broadcom STA wireless driver", which I would very much like to activate. So I click "Activate" and type in my password, and nothing happens.
I try to reistall the driver directly from the installation CD (/media/cdrom0/pool/restricted/b/bcmwl) and then I can see that I get some error messages in the terminal, which you can see below.

(Les database ... 136471 filer og katalogar er installerte.)
Gjer klar til å byta ut bcmwl-kernel-source 5.10.91.9+bdcom-0ubuntu4 (ved bruk av .../bcmwl-kernel-source_5.10.91.9+bdcom-0ubuntu4_i386.deb) ...
Removing all DKMS Modules
Done.
Pakkar ut erstattinga bcmwl-kernel-source ...
Set opp bcmwl-kernel-source (5.10.91.9+bdcom-0ubuntu4) ...
Adding Module to DKMS build system
Doing initial module build
/usr/sbin/dkms: line 35: patch: command not found

Error! Application of patch 0001-MODULE_LICENSE.patch failed.
Check /var/lib/dkms/bcmwl/5.10.91.9+bdcom/build/ for more information.
Installing initial module

Error! Could not locate wl.ko for module bcmwl in the DKMS tree.
You must run a dkms build for kernel 2.6.31-16-generic (i686) first.
Done.
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)

Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-16-generic

This is as far as I get, are there anybody who can help me? (I apologize that some of the language in the terminal is not English, I hope you understand it anyway.)

[stigb]

Additional information: My laptop is a Dell Latitude E5400, my Ubuntu is 9.10 Karmic, and my Linux kernel is 2.6.31.16. I tried following http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1266620 this tutorial, but I can't recognize any changes at all.

[leorolla]

Does this help?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1312603

[chenxiaolong]

You don't have the package "patch" installed. And the Broadcom STA driver is called bcmwl-kernel-source, so I don't know what the bcmwl package is for (maybe a typo). Anyway you need to uninstall the driver, install patch, and reinstall the driver.

sudo apt-get --purge remove bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo apt-get install patch
sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source

[stigb]

Hey, sorry for a late answer. Installing patch worked in the sense that bcmwl-kernel-source installed without any error messages. I had to delete the blacklist files I created in your tutorial, and then it kinda seemed to be working. In "Hardware drivers", the driver was activated, or rather: "This driver is activated but not in use." There still does not show up any wireless options on the networking icon. Thanks for the help so far, though.

[chenxiaolong]

That's okay So you've removed the blacklist files with "blacklist b43", "blacklist ssb", and "blacklist wl" right? If you did, you need to blacklist ssb and b43 again because those conflict with wl. Also, you will need to add "wl" to the file "/etc/modules" so it loads on bootup. I hope this works for you

[stigb]

It still doesn't work! I have checked quite thoroughly that I have followed your instructions and I have even reinstalled the driver twice. What's worse, another guy in my class has the exact same laptop with the same version of Ubuntu and he somehow got the wireless to work... although he has no idea as to how.

Is there any settings I should check? Jockey still tells me that "This driver is activated but not currently in use."

[chenxiaolong]

Are you trying to follow my directions in this forum: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1266620? In that thread, I was talking about the b43 driver, which is still in a testing state. The driver in Jockey is referring to the wl driver. If you followed the instructions in my other thread, you won't be able to use the wl driver, even though it's installed.

[stigb]

All I can say now is that it still does not work. I even --purge remove'd the packages I installed from your other tutorial, namely linux-backports-karmic and b43-bwcutter (if I spelled them out right)

[linux6994]

I did have similar troubles and swithed to Linux Mint Helena which is Karmic based. I loaded it and my bcm wireless driver worked great.