Dell Inspiron 6000 Broadcom 4318 (rev 02) Hardy - no wireless

**venture68** · June 1st, 2008

I've read endless posts on this forum. Tried tons of different things. Disabled security on my home network. I just can't get Ubuntu to connect wirelessly. Unfortunately, this is a deal breaker for me since this laptop is upstairs away from our router.

So, here's my last attempt to get this to work before going back to XP. I can't spend any more time getting this to work. I *WANT* to use it, but I can't if wifi won't work. So I'm now begging for help.

I've installed a fresh copy (many many many times) of 8.04. It tells me about some proprietary drivers which I download. I reboot. My WiFi light is on. No connectivity to the network though.

Under Network manager wired and wireless are in roaming mode. When I pull down the tray icon I see that I am connected via wired mode. Under that it says Wireless Networks with nothing listed. I see Connect to Other Wireless Network and Create New Wireless Network.

Here's is some info that I see is usually asked for on the forums:

lshw -C network

*-network:0
description: Ethernet interface
product: BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
logical name: eth0
version: 02
serial: 00:14:22:ee:58:12
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=b44 driverversion=2.0 ip=192.168.0.153 latency=64 module=ssb multicast=yes
*-network:1
description: Network controller
product: BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 3
bus info: pci@0000:03:03.0
version: 02
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master
configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=64 module=ssb
*-network
description: Wireless interface
physical id: 1
logical name: wlan0
serial: 00:14:a5:4f:5b:20
capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g

lspci | grep Broadcom

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
03:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

lspci -n | grep '14e4:43'

03:03.0 0280: 14e4:4318 (rev 02)

lsb_release -d

Description: Ubuntu 8.04

Anyway, if you need to know anything else, I am new to Linux and Ubuntu (so far I love it except for this issue) so just tell me what to do to help diagnose the problem.

Thank you so much in advance.

**dustigroove** · June 1st, 2008

Have you tried using ndiswrapper and the Windows driver?
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Device/Broadcom_BCM4318_%5BAirForce_One_54g%5D_(Native_Dr iver)

Cheers,

**dustigroove** · June 1st, 2008

Some more info on the native driver method... appears that the firmware needs to be copied over?

http://www.debiantutorials.org/content/view/153/213/

Cheers,