Going in Circles

[mel-blanc]

Morning Jeremy

Read your message this morning and decided to repeat the procedure of loading
the Broadcom drivers. Booted from the flash drive and then ran:

sudo ubuntu-drivers devices

The bcmwl driver appeared in the list so entered the following in terminal

sudo apt install bcmwl-kernel-source

This completed and returned no error messages.

Looking around immediately afterwards I clicked on the down triangle int he upper
right of the GUI. Behold there was a selection for wireless. Clicking on it I was
presented with a list of Access Points in the area. Wahoo! Selected mine and
it connected. Opened a browser and surfed to Google, then a couple of news
outlets.

Then in a terminal window I entered shutdown -r now. The system prompted me
to remove the flash drive and it continued the shutdown, then started the reboot.

On reboot I went back to the down triangle in the upper right of the GUI but this
time there was no selection for Wireless. In a terminal I entered rfkill list and it
displayed the presence of the Broadcom Wireless card but indicated it was softblocked.

Entered rfkill unblock 1 (where 1 is the id of the device in rfkill list) and rechecked
the status of devices in the list. This time softblock was listed as no. Rechecked
the down triangle and still no indication of a wireless selection.

Ran wireless-info.txt again and the results are posted at: https://pastebin.ubuntu.com/p/tqFtXrPNzT/


When I run the device driver installation from the flash driver am I somehow
installing the drivers to the flash drive instead of the hard disk installation?
I am pretty ignorant relative to Linux and processes so please forgive me if
my question comes across as unwarranted.

[jeremy31]

On the version installed on the hard drive, in terminal do

sudo sed -i 's/WirelessEnabled=false/WirelessEnabled=true/' /var/lib/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.state
sudo depmod -a

Reboot

When you boot using the flash drive, you install only in RAM and it is gone when you reboot unless you do something like using chroot to change into the install but we tried that

I thought at one time that booting to the hard drive, then putting the USB in allowed someone to install using driver manager as all the files needed to install the driver are on the USB somewhere in the /pool directory

[mel-blanc]

When you boot using the flash drive, you install only in RAM and it is gone when you reboot unless you do something like using chroot to change into the install but we tried that

I thought at one time that booting to the hard drive, then putting the USB in allowed someone to install using driver manager as all the files needed to install the driver are on the USB somewhere in the /pool directory

I need to perform a sanity check at my end here.

• To install the drivers as discussed do I need
  to boot into the flash drive or the installation
  on the hard disk?
• When I boot to the flash (thumb) drive, I run
  ubuntu-drivers devices. Then the
  bcmwl-kernel-source
  driver is listed. I then have been running:
  sudo apt install bcmwl-kernel-source
  
  That is the corner case which when completed
  that wireless connectivity is achieved. But I am
  wondering if the procedure is installing to RAM
  disk as opposed to the hard disk installation?
• Do I need to boot to the hard disk and install the
  drivers from the flash drive? If so how is that done?
  The reason I ask is when I boot to the disk, then
  insert the flash with the 18.04 ISO, and run
  ubuntu-drivers devices the bcmwl-kernel-source
  is not listed.
• Alternatively, once the wireless is working once
  the Broadcom driver is installed when booting
  from the flash drive, is there a way to copy the
  ram disk install and save it as a bootable ISO?

Thanks

Mel

[jeremy31]

I would burn the ISO to DVD boot into the hard drive install, insert DVD go into Software & Updates, enable the cdrom, then see if it can be installed in additional drivers

[mel-blanc]

Jeremy

Trudge back through the installation for the umpteenth time and made notes
of each step of the installation procedure for post install review and comparison
of observed behaviors vs installation steps and switches.

During the installation there is a step where you select the type of install.
Below the selection of the type of install is an optional selection for installation
of drivers which Ubuntu determines is needed.

Long story short I selected the normal install and did not check the option for
the 'OPTIONAL' driver installation. After setting the switch to install drivers and
rebooting, the system came up with an active wireless device using the
bcmwl-kernel-souce.

I appreciate all your effort and apologize for spinning your wheels for my
assertion of a short between my headsets.

Regards

Mel

[jeremy31]

Ah, third party drivers and software
I have never installed Ubuntu on a laptop with a Broadcom card before, the one actually had an Intel card that I swapped with a Broadcom to do some Bluetooth testing with