Bcm43xx-fwcutter or ndiswrapper

[boomerian]

Gateway MT6451 Laptop; bought used and came with Vista system restore disks - no thanks. Had heard good things about recent Ubuntu success with the Broadcom (4311) chipset for wireless.
After full install of Kubuntu, used KPackage to update all packages and install ndiswrapper and the bcm 802.11 STA driver.
Should I also install the "fwcutter" package?
I'm not at home right now, so don't have access to the laptop in question (currently wired), but will try to get details about the bash responses pasted in later tonight.
I was hoping this would "just work." Does re-starting help? Thanks in advance...

[chili555]

b43-fwcutter finds and extracts the firmware needed to operate the native driver, b43. If ndiswrapper is installed correctly, b43-fwcutter is not needed. Let's troubleshoot your ndiswrapper install first.

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper -l
iwconfig

I, or one of my highly experienced colleagues, will look for you tonight.

[boomerian]

Here you go. The first two bash entries just returned me to the prompt (no message - error or otherwise, no response):

ian@Minnmax2:~$ sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
ian@Minnmax2:~$ ndiswrapper -l
ian@Minnmax2:~$ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

ian@Minnmax2:~$

What now, my friends?

[bkratz]

carlee's posting here (post #7)

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...49#post8827649

using the native broadcom drivers is probably the most trouble free method for the 4311.

A quick alternative that seems to work for most people ( some not) can be found here using the sta driver

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1368699

Either way you may have to remove the ndiswrapper module.

[boomerian]

Nothing working so far...

ian@Minnmax2:~$ sudo modprobe wl
[sudo] password for ian:
FATAL: Module wl not found.
ian@Minnmax2:~$

Any suggestions?

[bkratz]

Nothing working so far...

ian@Minnmax2:~$ sudo modprobe wl
[sudo] password for ian:
FATAL: Module wl not found.
ian@Minnmax2:~$

Any suggestions?

I think it is time to look at the output of

lsmod
(LSMOD in lowercase)

copy/paste the output back here so we can see what modules are loaded.

[boomerian]

Here you go (thanks!)...


ian@Minnmax2:~$ lsmod
Module Size Used by
isofs 31620 1
udf 80900 0
crc_itu_t 1852 1 udf
ppdev 6688 0
joydev 10240 0
snd_hda_codec_si3054 4636 1
pcmcia 36808 0
snd_hda_codec_idt 59844 1
snd_hda_intel 26920 2
snd_hda_codec 75708 3 snd_hda_codec_si3054,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_int el
snd_hwdep 7200 1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm_oss 37920 0
snd_mixer_oss 16028 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 75296 4 snd_hda_codec_si3054,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,s nd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_dummy 2656 0
snd_seq_oss 28576 0
snd_seq_midi 6432 0
snd_rawmidi 22208 1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_midi_event 6940 2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
iptable_filter 3100 0
ip_tables 11692 1 iptable_filter
x_tables 16544 1 ip_tables
tifm_7xx1 5372 0
tifm_core 7832 1 tifm_7xx1
snd_seq 50224 6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_mid i_event
yenta_socket 24296 1
rsrc_nonstatic 11644 1 yenta_socket
pcmcia_core 36528 3 pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic
snd_timer 22276 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device 6920 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi ,snd_seq
psmouse 56500 0
serio_raw 5280 0
i2c_piix4 9932 0
snd 59204 17 snd_hda_codec_si3054,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_int el,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_o ss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_tim er,snd_seq_device
soundcore 7264 1 snd
snd_page_alloc 9156 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
k8temp 4188 0
shpchp 32272 0
lp 8964 0
parport 35340 2 ppdev,lp
ohci1394 29900 0
video 19380 0
output 2780 1 video
ieee1394 86596 1 ohci1394
sky2 46528 0
radeon 636000 2
ttm 36212 1 radeon
drm 159584 4 radeon,ttm
i2c_algo_bit 5760 1 radeon
ati_agp 6760 0
agpgart 34988 3 ttm,drm,ati_agp
ian@Minnmax2:~$

Cheers! Boomerian

[Dragonbite]

Community Wiki Documents on Broadcom wireless drivers.

Broadcom BCM43xx Chipset
This page aims at getting your BCM43xx chipset based wireless network card to work in Ubuntu.

Personally I've used

sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter

and it has worked each time.

My wireless card (for reference)

$ lspci
<snip>
01:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4309 802.11a/b/g (rev 03)

Unfortunately I haven't had the same luck with KDE as with Gnome, except for Fedora 12 (which saw the Broadcom out-of-the-box) but that was with previous versions of Ubuntu, not anything in the 9.'s

[bkratz]

Seeing the above mentioned url it has a section labeled

"Installing drivers for the BCM4311,4312,4321,4322 Cards

~$ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source"

since your card is the BCM4311 this is the section I would follow.

[boomerian]

Thanks, all. I have confirmed that I have the "kernel-source" - everything seems right in that regard. I can't find any reference to "wlan0" so I'm thinking that Kubuntu is not recognizing my wireless card. (iwconfig and ifconfig only shows the eth0)
The laptop is certainly not receiving any wireless signals. I have removed the ndiswrapper packages, and assume that the b43 driver is included in the stuff I downloaded from the Broadcom site (bcm 802.11 STA).
I struggled with an old Linksys WMP54G adapter (also Broadcom) in my old Celeron desktop, and I'm kind of bummed that after five years of messing with these Broadcom wireless chipsets, no Linux distro has been able to figure it out, so that it "just works."
I have gone through the threads referenced - I seem to be missing "wl" (?), but can't find a package that seems to provide it.