Trouble installing fwcutter
 

I've only been using Debian 5.0.3 linux for a day and running into a problem getting my wireless connection up and running. I have been following the directions on the fwcutter site and have gotten stuck with a error that I have no idea what it is.

error:
:/home/user/b43-fwcutter-012# make
cc -Os -fomit-frame-pointer -std=c99 -Wall -pedantic -D_BSD_SOURCE -DFWCUTTER_VERSION_=012 -c -o fwcutter.o fwcutter.c
make: cc: Command not found
make: *** [fwcutter.o] Error 127

Much help would be appreciated.

oh yeah this my sound dumb but in the tutorial the next line says cd... What am I suppose to do?

Depending on precisely which Broadcom device that is, there are drivers either included in the kernel, or available right from Broadcom.

Perhaps posting for us the output from the following command:

shell# lspci

.. and maybe someone can point you in the right direction. But before much else, how thoroughly have you searched LQ? There are a number of pretty detailed threads involving Broadcom NICs and a variety of drivers, and I can recall several at least that became happily solved.

PS - You **might** have a bit of success if you type:

shell# export cc=gcc

before running your make command, but ideally, something's broken if you have to do this.

ok I didn't have gcc installed. ran command apt-get install gcc. The make command went through with no errors this time. Now I dont understand what "cd..." in the tutorial means.

My card is a BCM4306 14e4:4320

If you have a wired connection, you appear to be connected to LQ somehow! you can apt-get install b43-fwcutter if you have contrib in your /etc/apt/sources.list. Then you don't need to build it yourself.

I have a bcm4306 (rev 03) on my machine, unfortunately I only have the firmware for amd64 (64 bit) but I can probably point you in the right direction.

cd is the "change directory" command.

so "cd hello" will change directory into a folder named "hello" if one is in your current directory.

cd ../ will go up one level.
cd ~ will cd you to your home directory.
cd / will take you to the filesystem root.

Sasha

At first I tried the apt-get install b43-fwcutter and it didn't work. It worked for me in Ubuntu not Debian. I had to manually download and install.

FYI, when you extract a tar.gz, it extracts into a directory named b43-fwcutter-012, you would therefore have to cd (change directory) to that directory by issuing the command cd b43-fwcutter-012. It is in that directory that you a) read the INSTALL file, and follow the instructions therein, before running the make command

Thank you Grapefuitgirl I remember this command from windows, but I dont understand what directory they want me to go to or create?

the file installed into the b43-fwcutter-012 folder. I don't understand what to do? I'm completely new to this.

There should be a README file, or an INSTALL file. If it/they are rather small, post them for us. If they're not too small, post the particular lines of instruction you are reading.

Here's the tutorial from fwcutter site:


Use version 012 of b43-fwcutter.
Download, extract the b43-fwcutter tarball and build it:

wget http://bu3sch.de/b43/fwcutter/b43-fwcutter-012.tar.bz2
tar xjf b43-fwcutter-012.tar.bz2
cd b43-fwcutter-012
make
cd ..

Use version 4.150.10.5 of Broadcom's proprietary driver.
Download and extract the firmware from this driver tarball:

export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR="/lib/firmware"
wget http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/b...0.10.5.tar.bz2
tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
cd broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver
sudo ../../b43-fwcutter-012/b43-fwcutter -w "$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR" wl_apsta_mimo.o

Note that you must adjust the FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR path to your distribution. The standard place where firmware is installed to is /lib/firmware. However some distributions put firmware in a different place.

Here's the readme from the package:





BCM43XX Linux Driver Project
============================


About this software
-------------------

b43-fwcutter is a tool which can extract firmware from various source files.
It's written for BCM43xx driver files.

The project page is http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/


Usage
-----

b43-fwcutter FILE extracts the firmware from a source FILE to
the current directory, creating a directory
"b43" or "b43legacy" with files in it.
b43-fwcutter -i FILE identify the driver file; print information
but don't extract.
b43-fwcutter -w /tmp FILE extract and write firmware to /tmp.
b43-fwcutter -l prints a list of supported driver source files.

After extraction, copy the "b43" or "b43legacy" directory to your firmware
directory (usually /lib/firmware or similar, see below). Alternatively you
can use the -w option to b43-fwcutter.

Different distributions use different directories to load firmware from.
If the driver complains about missing firmware files look for the correct
directory. For some distributions you have to use /lib/hotplug/firmware
or /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware but other directories are also possible.

Because firmware file are stored in big endian, extraction doesn't depend
on the system you're using. You can use extracted firmware from any driver
on any system and also copy the extracted files to any other system (e.g.
if extraction on the target system isn't feasible.)


Where can I find some driver source files?
------------------------------------------

Please check the references at
http://www.linuxwireless.org/en/user...devicefirmware

It is recommended that you extract firmware for both b43 and b43legacy in
order to support both types of cards on your system.

Right, OK.. So, extract the archive using the "tar xjf.." command. This will produce a folder, apparently called "b43-fwcutter-012" in your current directory., So type:

shell$ cd b43-fwcutter-012

and you will now be inside that new folder.

Proceed with the 'make' command and whatever else it says.

As for the lower section of what you posted, it's the same idea. Looks like you can pretty much copy & paste those instructions into your console terminal one by one and execute them.

As for the $FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR, that is a variable, which by default will be null (empty). Check if you have a folder on your machine called "/lib/firmware" or "/usr/lib/firmware" and when you locate it, set the variable like so:

shell$ export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR=/lib/firmware # or whatever the directory path is to the firmware directory.

Cool? :)

Sasha

And, your more recent post appears to be a different part of a means to the same end, I think....
The first post (from the site) is instructions to build a driver.
The more recent post, from the documentation, is simply to install the firmware.

See how you make out with the first batch of stuff, and if stuff is still screwy or missing after that, either I or someone else actually using this stuff, such as maybe minrich who posted earlier, will try to help further.

yeah it is /lib/firmware. I just don't understand what directory I'm supposed to go to in this line:



wget http://bu3sch.de/b43/fwcutter/b43-fwcutter-012.tar.bz2
tar xjf b43-fwcutter-012.tar.bz2
cd b43-fwcutter-012
make
cd ..