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Old 06-04-2008, 02:09 PM   #1
dellthinker
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b43 on Fedora 7


Hi all. I've been straining my brain and time on trying to get my Broadcom 4311 working with Fedora 7. I've read threads where people have had the same distro/same version/same wireless card working. But every time i try to get it to work for me it never does. I read this article: http://fedorasolved.org/mobile/fc-wi...3xx-yum-extras and did everything they said to do and still no results. I even took time to read the entire page and noticed this:

Quote:
followed the above instructions exactly but they did not work (I use Fedora 7 with 2.6.23.8-34.fc7 kernel and a Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)).

According to these instructions I saw (with lsmod) that I have the b43 module and should have used the b43-fwcutter.

Instead, after several failures, I used the bcm43xx-fwcutter and it worked like a charm.

The difference is that the b43-fwcutter creates a folder called b43 and puts some drivers in it, while bcm43xx-fwcutter creates some files called bcm43xx-* directly in /lib/firmware. My installation requires the latter.

If you are having the same problem as I had, you can see the kernel log (/var/log/messages) and find that when you try to activate your WiFi (with "ifconfig wlan0 up", for example) a message appears like the following:


firmware_helper[3548]: Loading of /lib/firmware/bcm43xx_microcode5.fw for b43 driver failed: No such file or directory
kernel: b43-phy0 ERROR: Microcode "bcm43xx_microcode5.fw" not available or load failed.


Finally, you should remove the files that either fwcutter creates between tests, or you might get additional strange error messages.
Here are my specs:

Quote:
Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 [AirForce 54g] 802.11a/b/g PCI Express Transceiver (rev 02)

2.6.23.17-88.fc7
Now i _know_ there's a way to get wireless working on my laptop. ndiswrapper doesnt work so i chose to use bcm43xx-fwcutter-006 - Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. What am i missing and what do i need to do? Thanx in advance!
 
Old 06-06-2008, 05:33 AM   #2
Larry Webb
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It appears the /lib/firmware/bcm43xx_microcode5.fw driver file will not load for one reason or the other. Make sure there are no other files in the /lib/firmware directory before trying to install the driver. If you have tried to install ndiswrapper you will have to remove it and its dependencies. From a past experience I can tell you that the two do not mix.

Last edited by Larry Webb; 06-06-2008 at 05:35 AM.
 
Old 06-10-2008, 02:55 PM   #3
dellthinker
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Larry Webb View Post
Make sure there are no other files in the /lib/firmware directory before trying to install the driver.

Are you saying that i should rm everything in that dir before installing the driver?
 
Old 06-10-2008, 03:01 PM   #4
Larry Webb
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Check and see if you have a bcm43xx driver installed
 
  


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