broadcom wireless problem

[nivesh]

hi,

i just finished installing hardy. it installed without any errors and is booting up in 36seconds ! including the default 10sec grub timeout. sweet !

this is a hpdv9000, hibernate, audio, compiz all works excellent !

I only have the problem with my broadcom wireless. It doesn't show up in my hardware drivers, but the hardware testing detects it just fine.


lshw -C network
sudo lshw -C network
[sudo] password for nivesh:
*-network
description: Network controller
product: BCM4312 802.11a/b/g
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
version: 02
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=0 module=ssb


any help would be appreciated.

thanks


nivesh

[kai60]

Hi mate,

I had the same problem and after several hours and nearly going back to 7.10 I was able to figure out how to do it.

First thing to do is to install b43-fwcutter from your 8.04 CD or download it from http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/utils/b43-fwcutter and just select the one for your architecture. Once you have that, download the tarball from this location: http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources...0.53.0.tar.bz2, extract the tarball in your home directory and find the file called wl_apsta.o.

Install b43-fwcutter and just say yes to everything that it wants to do. Open up a terminal and type:

sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware/2.6.24-16-generic ~/wl_apsta.o

where the last part is wherever the wl_apsta.o file is located.
Then type

sudo modprobe b43

Reboot

Once you are back in, check your wireless networks on the top panel and it should list all the available wireless networks, click on the one that you want to connect to and configure it and hey presto.

Hope that helps.

[thepisu]

I too have problems here with broadcom wireless... Tried your procedure with no luck.

I have an Asus WL-138G v2, it worked perfectly in Ubuntu 7.10... After update to Hardy, I reinstalled it with the "hardware driver" function, tried also using manually the b43-fwcutter.

The strange thing is that, the wireless card is recognized, I see also wireless network, names, signal and encryption type, but I can't join to my wireless network. It tries, but after sometime, gives up. Tried with WPA, WP2, and also with no protection at all..

Any ideas? It's really a problem for me...

I think this is a downside of Ubuntu. It's not good to have always problems with wireless cards, that are so widespread today... For anything else, Ubuntu can really compete in Windows XP / Vista!!

Hardware report:
Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

[Ash96]

Thank you very much Kai60, I was getting very frustrated, but your solution worked great for me!

[denarced]

yeah .. I have the same problem
worked great on ubuntu studio 7.10
and on hardy I get visual effects ..
but the wireless .. tried kai60's way
error came ..

root@ubulap:/home/denarced/Desktop/tar/kmod# b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware/2.6.24-16-generic wl_apsta.o
This file is recognised as:
ID : FW11
filename : wl_apsta.o
version : 351.126
MD5 : 9207bc565c2fc9fa1591f6c7911d3fc0
Extracting b43/ucode4.fw
failed to create output directory: No such file or directory

also tried the ndiswrapper .. works like it did 7.10 but Network doesn't
see wireless

[kai60]

Hi thepisu,

have an Asus WL-138G v2, it worked perfectly in Ubuntu 7.10... After update to Hardy, I reinstalled it with the "hardware driver" function, tried also using manually the b43-fwcutter.

The strange thing is that, the wireless card is recognized, I see also wireless network, names, signal and encryption type, but I can't join to my wireless network. It tries, but after sometime, gives up. Tried with WPA, WP2, and also with no protection at all..

Can you show me the output of your shell when you run through the commands and I might be able to help...

Cheers

[kai60]

Hi denarced,

root@ubulap:/home/denarced/Desktop/tar/kmod# b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware/2.6.24-16-generic wl_apsta.o

I am not sure why it says that, but I suggest that you come back to normal user and make sure that you use sudo as that is the way that it worked for me. Sometimes working as root in bash stops things working the way that they should. Don't ask me why that is though.

Good luck with it and let me know how you are going...

[TrevP]

Hi,

I'm having similar problems. I have tried the suggested solution with no luck. The firmware is extracted OK and sudo modprobe b43 appeared to be accepted as a valid command, but when I reboot, I have no connectivity even though my network applet appears to suggest that I am connected.The card worked perfectly under version 7.10.

Here is the output from lshw -C network:

*-network:1
description: Network controller
product: BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: e
bus info: pci@0000:00:0e.0
version: 03
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master
configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=32 module=ssb
*-network
description: Wireless interface
physical id: 1
logical name: eth1
serial: 00:12:17:94:4f:24
capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g

Any suggestions would be gratefully received! The wireless network overall is working fine as other devices connect to it with no problem.


Trev

[kai60]

Hi mate,

make sure that you use the network configuration icon as shown and if that doesn't work, please show me the output from

iwconfig

Good luck mate...

[thepisu]

Hi thepisu,



Can you show me the output of your shell when you run through the commands and I might be able to help...

Cheers

Thanks, here it is the result of the command you posted:

stefano@pisulinux:~$ sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware/2.6.24-16-generic ~/wl_apsta.o
This file is recognised as:
  ID         :  FW11
  filename   :  wl_apsta.o
  version    :  351.126
  MD5        :  9207bc565c2fc9fa1591f6c7911d3fc0
Extracting b43/ucode4.fw
Extracting b43/ucode5.fw
Extracting b43/ucode11.fw
Extracting b43/ucode13.fw
Extracting b43/pcm4.fw
Extracting b43/pcm5.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0initvals4.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0bsinitvals4.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0initvals4.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0bsinitvals4.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0initvals5.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0bsinitvals5.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0initvals5.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1initvals5.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0bsinitvals5.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1bsinitvals5.fw
Extracting b43/lp0initvals13.fw
Extracting b43/lp0bsinitvals13.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0initvals13.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0bsinitvals13.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1initvals13.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1bsinitvals13.fw

Then, I ran "sudo modprobe b43", no result in shell (it should be ok?).

Also, this is the result of "iwconfig" command:

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wmaster0  no wireless extensions.

eth1      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:""  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Tx-Power=27 dBm   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2346 B   
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

In "dmesg" command, I see a lot of these lines:

[ 1123.083749] eth1: Initial auth_alg=0
[ 1123.083762] eth1: authenticate with AP 00:1a:2a:a2:82:20
[ 1123.282417] eth1: authenticate with AP 00:1a:2a:a2:82:20
[ 1123.482267] eth1: authenticate with AP 00:1a:2a:a2:82:20
[ 1123.682146] eth1: authentication with AP 00:1a:2a:a2:82:20 timed out

Why a timeout problem? It's not possible to return to old bcm43xx drivers, that worked?