bcm43xx-fwcutter firmware help
 

I needed this driver for my Broadcom chip to work although after I installed it I went to the Restricted Drivers window and it was still there listed. So I checked enable and it brought up a window that says Specify Firmware location. Where would the firmware be located? I'm using Ubuntu 7.10.

fwcutter by default installs to /lib/firmware. If it's not there, try "locate firmware | grep lib"

Brian

It's not there. I can't find it, this is getting really frustrating. What will the file name say? fwcutter, bcm, bcm43xx? When I open up firmware there is a file that is labeled bcm43xx_microdell.fw but when I choose it it says "The firmware location or the firmware file itself you chose is not valid. Please make sure you select a firmware file in a proper location." When I open the file itself it says "this is just a fake file to prevent postinst scripts." This is the only file under firmware that has any name near what the original file name was.

Try installing the drivers manually...

In a terminal window, type:

sudo cp -a /lib/firmware /lib/firmware_backup
sudo rm -Rfv /lib/firmware/*
sudo dpkg --purge bcm43xx-fwcutter
sudo aptitude install bcm43xx-fwcutter

After it has finished installing the .deb package, a script should appear in the terminal window for post-install configuration, asking you if you want to download the firmware (say yes).

(This installed the firmware into /lib/firmware on my computer).

Actually, bcm43xx-fwcutter doesn't install to /lib/firmware by default. You want to use the "-w /lib/firmware/" argument when running it so that the fireware is installed there. I bet that the firmware was extracted to /tmp/ instead or in the directory where it was run. If that is the case, you could copy the *.fw files to /lib/firmware.

The "bcm43xx" kernel module expects to find the firmware in /lib/firmware.

I'm thought I was making headway but I finally figured out (really stupid on my part) that my card is a Broadcom BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI card. I'm guessing that the bcm43xx file will not work for my card?

From the bcm43xx-fwcutter-005 README:
Brian

Ah, I think that's right if you actually *use* bcm43xx-fwcutter: what I was talking about is the post install config script.

The script downloads the firmware for you into /lib/firmware, so ironically you don't need to actually use the bcm43xx-fwcutter program, just install it, and use the configuration script!

(---> It's a nice little feature of Ubuntu)



To the OP:

Have you tried this yet? (steer clear of the restricted drivers manager, for now)

If that produces no changes, you could email the bcm43xx project people to find out exactly whether your card is supported, or use ndiswrapper.
(Is your laptop on this supported list?
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43/devices )