How to turn on a Broadcom Wi-fi adapter in open SUSE
 

Let me preface this by saying that I've read an awful lot about the new openSUSE distro and broadcom adapter issues. The drivers (BCM_4315) appear to be installed but when I boot my computer the Wifi card has no juice. As in: the light won't come on and I can't scan for any networks.

Tried logging in as root and changing the ifcfg-wlan0 so that the power entry says "yes" and the device is set to start on boot in Yast. No dice.

Any ideas?

does the module bcm* list in 'lsmod'?
And a basic question. Does it work with other distros? kernel versions?

What version of openSuSE? 12.1? If newer than 10.x ifcfg is still there but not used. Look for (K)NetworkManager and get it running (it should be running per default, if not look into the logs). There should also be a plasmoid in the form of a small cellphone icon in the lower right part of the menu bar where you can activate networking (via networkmanager).

It works fine with knoppix. It's suse 12.1.....however....It's the live CD version. Not sure if that makes a difference. Network manager is running but I see no such icon. In fact wireless is greyed out in Networkmanager :/

1) It could be that the hardware is not being detected. Could you please post
the output of /sbin/lsmod (as attachment).

2) I'm also running openSuse 12.1. Inside /lib/modules, there are files b43.ko and b43legacy.ko. You can check
for their presence by running: "find /lib/modules -name 'b*.ko' | grep -i 'net'". If these files are present,
then either 'b43' or 'b43legacy' should show up in /bin/lsmod output.

3) I see a directory /lib/firmware, and inside that the directories 'b43' and
'b43legacy' are empty. So, another reason could be that you need firmware
file for your card, which is missing right now.

I got that icon by (re)-starting network manager from the lizard button (just type manager in the search field and click on network manager). You then have to activate networking and to fill in the information in the tabs for the desired connections.

Sorry for the delayed update. After considering the numerous broadcom issues discussed by other openSUSE users and the fact that I'm quite the Linux noob, I scrapped my openSUSE adventure untill a later date.

Acer Ferrari 4000 x64 - BCM4318 chip.
 

I've had a similar problem - no Wireless activity light and no connection. Happily, the hardwire connection worked so I could browse for solutions. Found this link useful and now am happily linking wirelessly (after remembering [doh] to click on the "enable wireless" box in KDE4 Network Manager)
Hope this helps - Now I want to sort out the bluetooth button/hardware too!
ooooohhhh - and here's the link
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Dr...devicefirmware

I'll add one more suggestion: since you said other distributions e.g. Knoppix work out of the box, you may want to find out how they get wifi to work i.e. which driver (+firmware) are they using. Then you can use the same driver/firmware/config with openSuse.

likely the one-click installer here would solve the issue it its the broadcom-wl that is requried.
http://packman.links2linux.org/packa...dcom-wl/328280.

actually I scrapped broadcom from my linux hardware. yes I keep a old one around for testing but if you did a search in here you would see this has been handled many times and the hardware can be used it is a firmware issue . But I am glad you found a good distro that suits you

For a lot of us that's not an option as Broadcom comes in many prebuilt laptops.