Wireless network adapter not working.
 

Hi,
I've tried to get my network adapter working on my laptop P3 with Ubuntu 9. I downloaded a b43 fwcutter at my home page but got lost then.
This are my hardware specs. The network card is the last item.

dell@dell:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82830 830 Chipset Host Bridge (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82830 830 Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 04)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM USB Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 42)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801CAM ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801CAM IDE U100 Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M6 LY
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 78)
02:01.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1420 PC card Cardbus Controller
02:01.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1420 PC card Cardbus Controller
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

I would sincerely be happy if I could use this card (my internal card is gone).

Thanking you in advance.

It shows the BCM4318 on the pci bus (internal). I had one of those on an old compaq presario. It was quirky to get going, but did work. A physical button for wifi on the laptop, which needed to be toggled to on or it didn't work, even with everything else setup right. In the early days of that card, I had to use ndiswrapper which was quite picky about the .sys and .inf files you used. And only worked with 32 bit drivers IIRC. Otherwise it worked.

Internal card gone would imply an external one, probably connected via USB?

$ lsusb

When not traveling I use another machine with working wifi and ethernet bridge through it. But that's just me being lazy. Plus the other machine can be in a better position for a good signal so I don't have to compute from a doorway to get network connectivity like an animal.

This article from the Debian Wiki might help: https://wiki.debian.org/bcm43xx

Thank you very much wih the quick response. I have done some tests which I'd like to share them with you.

uname -mr = 2.6.31-14-generic i686
lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net = broadcom corp. BCM4318
sudo apt-get purge bcmwl-kernel-source = bcmwl-kernel-source not installed - removed: dkms fakeroot patch
sudo apt-get install linux-firmware-nonfree = package linux-firmwarenot found
sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter firmware-b43-installer bcmwl = b43-fwcutter is newest version - firmware-b43-installer not found
(downloaded: b43-fwcutter_019-3_i386.deb)
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-fwcutter_019-3_i386.deb installer = package not found
rfkill list all = no effect
dmesg | grep b43 = no effect
sudo ls -al /lib/firmware/b43 | grep ucode5.fw = not found
sudo mkdir /lib/firmware/b43 = cannot create dir: file exists
sudo modprobe b43 = all config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper, it will be ignored in a future release
sudo ndisgtk = no valid driver.inf file
And I'm stuck again. Any better ideas? It seems to me that the whole problem is in the missing b43 driver. Though it's at my hardware list (Broadcom b43 wireless driver) I'm unable to activate it. (no proprietary drivers are in use on this system)
With my sincere thanks.

That's a pretty old 32 bit kernel.

$ apt-cache --names-only search fwcutter
$ apt-cache --names-only search installer | grep -i b43
$ sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter firmware-b43-installer

With a kernel and chipset that old, you wont need the "latest" versions. Although not sure if you'll need the "legacy" one over the other, doubt it. Both are mutually exclusive. There's firmware for the b43xx chipsets. Most wifi chipsets these days have firmware, and by definition those are proprietary / closed source. Hence the jank work around of a firmware cutter since the firmware itself cannot be "distributed" by other (normal?) means.

To install a .deb, try:

$ sudo dpkg -i package.deb

Also note that the cutter only extracts the firmware from a file (to the current directory?), it does not MOVE it to the expected location to be used.

Thank you. Unfortunately getting not found comments
dpkg: error subproces dpkg-deb returns an error code 2.
Well, I guess that's the end of my old faithfull. I don't intent to spend money on it anymore. Let it rest in peace. Amen.
Thank you for your time.

package.deb was implied to be firmware-b43-fwcutter_019-3_i386.deb as listed in a previous apt-get install. Which is not how one traditionally installs a .deb file by their full name. There's also other firmwares to try (via fwcutter, might need an older version of fwcutter for the --unsupported flag).

http://sources.openwrt.org/

For another chipset I required the http://sources.openwrt.org/broadcom-...0.10.5.tar.bz2 firmware where the distro would by default install the http://sources.openwrt.org/broadcom-...00.138.tar.bz2 firmware. There's also various kernel.org ways to get firmwares.

In post #1 you said that you are running Ubuntu 9. Unless that was a typo:-

Ubuntu 9 reached it's end of life in 2010.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

-::::::-Give Ubuntu 19.04 'Disco Dingo' a spin:-::::::-

http://releases.ubuntu.com/19.04/

Thank you for your assistance. As a matter of fact, I have used all these options and still more and only got error messages. There's something rotten in Denmark (or Finland). PS: I cannot use the 43 legacy. Your suggestions :
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer = couldn't find package
sudo /usr/sbin/install_bcm4318_firmware = no such file or directory
PS : I have the laptop since 2003 .There's nothing wrong with it except the wifi. I am thinking of installing another distro. My laptop cannot handle more than 256mb of ram. I don't know if that might help. I have set my eyes on antiX. I'll let you know.
Thanks everybody for the support.