Unable to activate Broadcom STA Wireless Driver

[bitterfriend99]

Hello.

I am using Linux Mint 8 Helena x64 Edition on Dell Studio 15 laptop which has Dell 1520 Wireless-N Mini Card. It does work when I boot from Live CD of Helena, connect to a wired network and download & install the proprietary drivers when prompted. But on the installed system, I am unable to activate the Broadcom STA driver. I tried completely removing and then reinstalling bcmwl-kernel-source and dkms packages from package manager.

When I go to Administration -> Hardware Drivers and click on Activate for Broadcom driver, at first there used to be a window which said Downloading and it used to go away after few seconds and nothing used to happen. Then I installed few updates. At the time of writing, I have installed all the available updates. Now after clicking on Activate, I get this error :

Sorry, installation of this driver failed.
Please have a look at the log file for detains: /var/log/jockey.log

I am attaching the jockey.log file with this post.

After googling, I found that it is a known bug in Ubuntu 9.10. Hasn't it been fixed yet? I badly need to use wireless network. What do I have to do to get my wireless working?

[Newbie] PS : It hasn't been long since I've been using a Linux distro. [/Newbie]

[Iowan]

Here is a similar thread - perhaps some of the suggestions will help solve your problem.

[bitterfriend99]

Thank you Iowan for your time.

Sadly, that thread couldn't solve my problem.

Actually my wireless card is BCM 4353, which I couldn't find listed on any of such bcm related threads.

Here is the result when I ran lspci :

xxxxx@xxxxx-laptop ~ $ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Arrandale DRAM Controller (rev 12)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Arrandale PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev 12)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 06)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 06)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 06)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev 06)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev 06)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 06)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 06)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a6)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 06)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 4 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 06)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset SMBus Controller (rev 06)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M92 [Mobility Radeon HD 4500 Series]
02:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc R700 Audio Device [Radeon HD 4000 Series]
04:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation Device 4353 (rev 01)
07:00.0 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd Device e822 (rev 01)
07:00.1 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Device e230 (rev 01)
07:00.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Device e852 (rev 01)
07:00.3 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd Device e832 (rev 01)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03)
ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 02)
ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 02)
ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation QPI Link 0 (rev 02)
ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation QPI Physical 0 (rev 02)
ff:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 2d12 (rev 02)
ff:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Device 2d13 (rev 02)

And relevant part of result of lspci -vvnn :

04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation Device [14e4:4353] (rev 01)
   Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:000e]
   Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-
   Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
   Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
   Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 7
   Region 0: Memory at f0500000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
   Capabilities: <access denied>

After referring the tutorial https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...Driver/bcm43xx (which I found in the thread pointed by you), I installed b43-fwcutter package (though 4353 is not listed there particularly). Also ran apt update on bcmwl-kernel-source and dkms. bcmwl-kernel-source was updated, while dkms was already up-to-date. I still get the same error. The current jockey.log file (after installing fwcutter and running apt update) is here : http://pastebin.com/f3cf50669

[bkratz]

I did find this interesting thread that says that this device is
usable with the "wl" driver which is what the 4311,12,21,22 use.
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=230901

So maybe something here will work ( I hope)
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1368699
Will keep looking though

[bkratz]

This might also be helpful ( still looking) see the readme.

http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php


Here is another

http://forums.opensuse.org/network-i...om-4353-a.html

[bitterfriend99]

This might also be helpful ( still looking) see the readme.

http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php

Can't thank you enough bkratz! Are you a doctor? If you are, I could use your help again, because I just broke my head while jumping excitedly...

Here is how to get the Broadcom BCM4353 card to work :

]

• Do not install any proprietary drivers when prompted. Remove the bcmwl-kernel-source package if it is installed.
• Download the appropriate driver (for x86 or x64) from here : http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php
• Follow the instructions in README.txt.
• Note : In instruction 4 in README, you will need root's privilege to execute modprobe and insmod. You can issue sudo.
  
• However, you have to load the module (issue modprobe and insmod) every time you boot. You may write a shell script and set it to execute at every boot.

[bkratz]

Can't thank you enough bkratz! Are you a doctor? If you are, I could use your help again, because I just broke my head while jumping excitedly...

Here is how to get the Broadcom BCM4353 card to work :

• Do not install any proprietary drivers when prompted. Remove the bcmwl-kernel-source package if it is installed.
• Download the appropriate driver (for x86 or x64) from here : http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php
• Follow the instructions in README.txt.
• Note : In instruction 4 in README, you will need root's privilege to execute modprobe and insmod. You can issue sudo.
  
• However, you have to load the module (issue modprobe and insmod) every time you boot. You may write a shell script and set it to execute at every boot.

No, the only doctor around here is Chili555! Anyway, I am happy that you got it working and appreciate your directions on how to do so. I am going to file this one away for future reference.

[paradox82]

I had very similar problem on my HP mini 210 and managed to fix it by running "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade". Seems its fixed in the new kernel 31.19.

[Caps18]

I had very similar problem on my HP mini 210 and managed to fix it by running "sudo apt-get dist-upgrade". Seems its fixed in the new kernel 31.19.

It seems like they broke it again in 32.22 (Linux Mint 9). All I did was install the audio drivers, and it made my wireless card stop working.

[soxos]

Hi,
had the same problem with my new Dell Vostro 3500
Broadcom 4543

The matter was just to go to System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers

The driver was there, but waiting a confirmation to be installed as it was not developed by Ubuntu devs.

pretty sweet.