Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 (Wireless) driver??

[superm1]

Wow, very interesting. Do you have any idea why Broadcom finally decided to release this? I knew they had Linux drivers all along, since something needs to be driving the Broadcom chips in wireless routers that run Linux, but my sense had always been that Broadcom was extremely uncooperative with the Linux community and refused to release any kind of drivers publicly. I hope they didn't decide to release these drivers now just to screw over the bcm43xx/b43 people who have spent so long tediously reverse-engineering stuff, by negating all of their efforts.

This has been a request from Dell for them to get a driver to support the Broadcom cards in Dell laptops as they are much less expensive than the Intel cards generally. The intention is a functional monolithic driver now and gradually opening it up over time.

It's not just to "screw over" the b43 people, but Broadcom is one of those companies that takes some time to work well with open source. If you go back a few years a similar scenario happened with the tg3 driver and their closed driver. It's now open and when bugs pop up every so often Broadcom does pop in and help out.

Also, is there any reason why we should want to use Broadcom's drivers instead of those of the b43 project? After all, b43 is pretty close to supporting every chipset with the basic features, and I think that advanced stuff is supposed to be on the way. I'd think that until Broadcom releases the full source of its drivers, b43 would be preferable.

Yes and no. For some people functionality is more important than a fully open driver. Take a look at how many people use the closed source nvidia drivers.

First yes:

• This driver is legally sound. Extracting firmware from a driver hosted on a website that doesn't actually have the rights to redistribute the driver is quite a gray area.
• Also, this driver supports a handful of adapters that aren't yet in b43.
  It also has some better performance than the b43 drivers from what i've seen. Once you get it up and running, you'll see that scans are very snappy and it can do large transfers without losses in speed.
• This driver doesn't need the internet to install. Once it's properly in the archive and not proposed, and shows up on some CDs, you will be able to do installs without needing to grab firmware from somewhere

Now no:

• It's hard to go on a company's word that they will open a driver up and play nice, especially Broadcom. Using their closed driver doesn't help the situation.
• Using this driver may slow the efforts of the reverse engineering on the b43 driver with less eyes on it. You can look at the flip side still that this driver can help the reverse engineering since you can actually look at it's operations on a Linux system too.

I understand why we should at least test Broadcom's drivers to see how well they work, but is there anything you can say about projected future plans, at least on Ubuntu?

The current plan is to keep this driver in the archive, but to still offer B43. So when you get the restricted drivers popup, you will have both options and be able to choose and swtich between the two with a reboot.

Are we going to abandon b43 in favor of Broadcom's driver, and if so are we going to make sure that Broadcom makes the drivers free?

No as indicated above, they will both be offered. Dell and Canonical are both driving efforts to ensure that Broadcom is opening their drivers. With the quantity of Ubuntu systems being shipped outside the US to places like China, Dell does have the ability to speak with the dollar and will be doing so.

When I get a chance I'll see about using Broadcom's driver on my bcm4306 chip and let you know if it works (I know they don't say anything about supporting 4306).

Hopefully some luck with the 4306

[Cenotaph]

Just thought i should mention that with my bcm4318, i'm experiencing the best results with the latest b43 driver (that's present in kernel 2.6.25 and 2.6.26). the b43 in 2.6.24 suffers from the same small range issue that bcm43xx did, and ndiswrapper is not playing well with network manager in my rig for some reason.

To install it in hardy you should get compat-wireless-2.6 from http://www.linuxwireless.org and follow the instructions. The firmware for this driver is also different from the one hardy's b43-fwcutter package in ubuntu downloads, so if anyone wants to try it be sure to check b43's page in linuxwireless for firmware installation.

compat-wireless will be included in the linux-backports-modules from the next kernel version in hardy, it's already in hardy-proposed repository actually, but until it's fully tested i recommend using the source from linuxwireless.org

i haven't tried the broadcom driver still cause im happy with this solution, but it's nice to see broadcom finally releasing some drivers for their cards. I guess that after a lot of time with driver woes for this card, we will get two good options in intrepid. quite ironic.

[alex_mayorga]

Well I should mention, the 4318 that this thread is about actually isn't advertised as "supported", but it's possible that it does work. The driver is advertised to support 4311, 4312, 4321, and 4322

Unfortunately I have this card on a Inspiron 1501:

$ lspci -vvnn
...
05:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN [14e4:4311] (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:0007]
	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: 32 bytes
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 18
	Region 0: Memory at c0200000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
	Kernel modules: ssb, wl
...
$ uname -a
Linux inspiron-1501 2.6.27-7-generic #1 SMP Tue Nov 4 19:33:20 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

Yet on 8.10 I'm not being offered the STA driver but only the B43 driver, that unfortunately won't work at all (it associates just fine using WEP but it's not possible to ping the default gateway when unwired)

What do I do to have jockey offer me STA?

FWIW, here's also my bug report on this https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/bugs/286071

Thanks in advance

[pytheas22]

alex_mayorga: from what I understand (although superm1 would be able to tell you better), the module for the STA driver is called 'wl' and should be built into the Intrepid kernel. You should be able to activate it by typing:

sudo modprobe -r b43 b44 ssb bcm43xx
sudo modprobe wl

I don't think it requires any firmware, although I could be wrong--again, superm1 or someone else who has actually used the STA driver would be able to give you better information.

Also, you could always use ndiswrapper to drive this card if neither b43 nor wl will work; read this page for easy instructions.

[alex_mayorga]

Also, you could always use ndiswrapper to drive this card if neither b43 nor wl will work; read this page for easy instructions.

'wl' didn't work reliably for me, but ndiswrapper did the trick, thanks a bunch.

[WitchCraft]

Driver installation is always the same.


Graphics:
NVIDIA and ATI graphics card GL driver you needn't install, because they don't work anyway.
Else see wireless:

Wireless:
Download and install the latest kernel
Then search for the firmware, if necessary.

For Broadcom B43:
apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

For SuSe:
zypper install b43-fwcutter
/usr/bsin/install bcm43xx_firmware
zypper install fw

Sound:
Is in the kernel. Update the kernel, and problems are gone.
But when you update the kernel, you may need to recompile ALSA.
If there's no sound as root, you need to start the pulseaudio-daemon.
(/usr/bin/pulseaudio)

[ichase]

Greetings,
I have been reading about this broadcom issue to the point my head hurts. In the b43 page: b43 it states to type:

sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter

then says

You will be asked to automatically fetch and install the firmware into the right location.

All I get is, that b43-fwcutter is installed but does not asked to automatically fetch and install the firmware. I did this via ethernet with a good internet connection.
Now this is the part I do not understand. When I load Parted Magic Live CD, which loads itself into RAM, It recognized my WiFi and took a whopping 10 minutes to set up my WiFi. Parted Magic is based on an independent distro. So how can it so easily recognize the wife card. BCM4318 but a major distro can't?
There is probably an easy explanation for this and being a very new Linux user I do not know what it is.

All the best,

Ian

[guntu]

I recently installed Ubuntu linux on my Gateway PC, but the PC can pick up the wireless card but not show any access points. I ran "Hardware Testing" and learned that the card is a "Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)" I have tried to use ndiswrapper but I struck no gold. If someone can tell me how to use Ndiswrapper or a good alternative, The help would be greatly appreciated. (The computer has internet access now, but I don't want to carry the tower up 2 flights of stairs every time I want to download somthing xD.

Thanks in advance,
Simitra.

EDIT: BTW I am running 8.10 Hardy Heron.

A very common problem - I've had it once and again and see people have it all the time - yet the solutions is rather simple!

Try this http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9903527

If you still have any problems, let us know..

Godd luck

[bkratz]

A very common problem - I've had it once and again and see people have it all the time - yet the solutions is rather simple!

Try this http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=9903527

If you still have any problems, let us know..

Godd luck

You do realize this was posted almost 2-1/2 years ago, right?

[pytheas22]

Greetings,
I have been reading about this broadcom issue to the point my head hurts. In the b43 page: b43 it states to type:

sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter

then says
All I get is, that b43-fwcutter is installed but does not asked to automatically fetch and install the firmware. I did this via ethernet with a good internet connection.
Now this is the part I do not understand. When I load Parted Magic Live CD, which loads itself into RAM, It recognized my WiFi and took a whopping 10 minutes to set up my WiFi. Parted Magic is based on an independent distro. So how can it so easily recognize the wife card. BCM4318 but a major distro can't?
There is probably an easy explanation for this and being a very new Linux user I do not know what it is.

All the best,

Ian

As bkratz points out, this thread is quite old, and the b43-fwcutter probably doesn't work the way it used to (I no longer use a laptop with a Broadcom chip so I'm not sure).

It's hard to say why the wireless is not working for you without more information, however. It's possible the firmware is not installed (it would be under the /lib/firmware/b43 directory if it is), that b43 does not support your card and you need to use the Broadcom STA driver instead, or that there's some other problem. If you post the output of these commands we can probably help:

ls /lib/firmware
dmesg | grep -e b43 -e wlan -ie firmware
lshw -C Network
lspci -nn | grep -i broadcom
sudo iwlist scan

As for why your wireless card works in Parted Magic but not Ubuntu, it's probably because Parted Magic ships with the b43 firmware pre-installed. Ubuntu doesn't do this because there are some legal ambiguities regarding its right to redistribute the firmware. Parted Magic likely has less to worry about on the legal front than do Ubuntu and Canonical.