I have version six of fwcutter, and I have the bcmwl5.sys bin file, but I'm totally lost on what to do next... I'm fairly new at Linux and decided to totally switch over when Windows refused to recognize my hard drive seven hours ago. I have Fedora Core 7 installed, and it recognizes my wifi card, but I get an error at startup; I forgot the exact text, but Googling the filename led me to fwcutter.

How do I compile fwcutter and run it?

Take a look at my help site, I've got some detailed instructions there (link in my sig). But basically, you need to unpack the tarball of fwcutter, then drop into the directory that was created and run make. That should create a functional fwcutter binary.

Once you've got the binary, you just run fwcutter /path/to/bcmwl5.sys and that should create a bunch of firmware files (look for files ending in .fw). If that goes well, then (as root) run make installfw, which will copy the firmware files to /lib/firmware.

By the way, you probably want to replace bcmwl5.sys with wl_apsta.o, at least for this. You get a better set of firmware files with wl_apsta.o.

I worked hard at using the Broadcom driver on an HP laptop, but no go. Finally gave up and used ndiswrapper, which is doing fine. I was using Slackware 10, but the distribution doesn't matter, since I downloaded and compiled ndiswrapper. I got the MS Windows driver from the HP site, using cabextract on the sp file that HP supplied.

It's funny you should ask. If you will go to my contribution on this matter, you will find the answers you seek.

Some notes in order to make things work properly:

1) Per Hangdog's advice, blacklist the bcm43xx module. It WILL cause lockups when ndiswrapper gets invoked.
2) compile ndiswrapper and wpa_supplicant, and use the latest versions of each (1.47 and 0.58 respectively). DO NOT use the versions that are shipped with the Slackware disk. They simply don't work, PERIOD!
3) Upgrade your kernel to at least 2.6.17.13. Neither ndiswrapper or wpa_supplicant will work with the standard 2.4.33 kernel that ships with Slack 11. Trust me on this. I spent days trying to get everything working before I upgraded to a kernel that could support what I was doing. If you want to go for the latest and greatest version of the linux kernel (highly suggested), go to their URL, and get version 2.6.22.1. I am currently running that kernel on both my laptops, and I can say that everything that works under Windoze also works under Linux...including Flash.

Blessed be!
Pappy

I run MEPIS 6.5.02, and I can tell you exactly how I got the wireless up on my machine, but alas I have to go to work. I will post it tonight if anyone would like. Also, the default windows driver that CAME with this machine did not work. I only got intermittent results. I had to use a driver I got from elsewhwhere. If you'd like that driver, email me.

klrtmto at yahoo dot com

Change the original directions, or change subject: this is Ubuntu-specific, isn't it?

But it works just the same way on every other distribution (only the module blacklist file may differ).

Basically, bcm43xx driver that comes along some kernel configurations, does not work for all the cards (like mine) of 43xx. In that case you can use NDISwrapper + a Windows driver which works, but if your distribution automatically loads bcm43xx module to the kernel, it crosses your NDISwrapper driver, resulting in a non-working wireless environment. Solution is to either remove bcm43xx completely from the kernel, or if it's a module, simply blacklist it: after that NDISwrapper driver is the only one in place, and works (if you've got the correct driver).

Steps shortly:
1) download and install NDISwrapper; either use your distribution's binary package management tools (don't forget ndiswrapper-utils!), or simply download the source and compile it, then install it.
2) blacklist module bcm43xx; this means adding a line "blacklist bcm43xx" to /etc/modules.d/blacklist file, but on some distributions the file is different (or not created initially); documentation on the web shows where this file is.
3) install the Windows driver (.inf, .sys files) with NDISwrapper; this can be done before step 2 also. You may use NDISwrapper's -l option to list the driver(s) and see if hardware is present.
4) Load ndiswrapper module to your kernel, and make sure it's loaded during bootup; either add it to the config file for modules that should be autoloaded, or simply add a modprobe line to your rc.local or equivalent
5) Reboot, this is required in some cases for the driver to work all right.
6) Now you should have ndiswrapper module loaded, bcm43xx module unloaded, Windows driver installed with NDISwrapper, and finger on the button. Press the button to enable your wireless device, and a light should pop up. Rest is history.

Try to make these HOW-TOs either not distribution-specific or if you do, make the thread subject reflect that. You can edit the subject by editing the first post of the thread, I believe (never tried myself).

This is also widely known "howto", easily found from the web. Still, good someone wrote it up. I'm not sure but I feel it actually was posted here at LQ already, but not necessarily as 100% it's own thread.

Poll answer: not helpful for me, too distribution-specific, and I've figured this out on Slackware the day I got the machine with this card for the first time.

EDIT: note that if you upgrade your kernel, you might have to reinstall the wireless driver - this is why binary installation of NDISwrapper could be easier for newbies, as it's hopefully upgraded along with the kernel automatically (for source-installations you'll have to recompile ndiswrapper for your new kernel, to get the module match the new kernel version).

For UBUNTU LINUX there exists an archive, in many places on the web, where there are the needed Windows drivers for bcm43xx wireless card, and a script that, when run, automatically installs NDISwrapper, the Windows driver for it, and does all the rest mentioned in this thread: blacklisting the existing driver and making ndiswrapper auto-modprobed during boot. It's pretty old news already, it's been around for the earlier Ubuntu versions, and using it is a matter of running the script while having an internet connection (for the script to be able to download -> install ndiswrapper).

i un-packed the tar file on my desktop and cd to that dir and used the make "command" it seamed to do what it was suppose to do with no errors than when i used to "make install" command it gives me this error...

make -C driver install
make[1]: Entering directory `/home/bailey239/Desktop/ndiswrapper-1.47/driver'
Can't find kernel build files in /lib/modules/2.6.21-1.3228.fc7/build;
give the path to kernel build directory with
KBUILD=<path> argument to make
make[1]: *** [prereq_check] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/bailey239/Desktop/ndiswrapper-1.47/driver'
make: *** [install] Error 2


i guess i need to direct it to the kernel build file? any suggestions?

You need to install the kernel source code package. It should either be on the Fedora installation disks or you can get it form a repository.

Is their any way you could explain how to go about doing that. i have the install disk. I also don't know what to go to in fedora to get to the repository.

I think this: ftp://ftp.uci.edu/mirrors/fedora/lin...8.fc7.i386.rpm
is what you want. Download it, then "rpm -i <filename>".

i guess now it is using the wrong driver or something "bcmw15" i would give the exact text is gave but following a different post i rebooted my computer. i have the driver that is suppose to work for my broadcom 4318 wireless card but i don't know how to get the old driver out and the correct one in??

Removing a driver:

ndiswrapper -r bcmwl5

That will remove it from the /etc/ndiswrapper directory. Then just load the new driver with ndiswrapper -i drivername.inf. Be sure you've got both the .inf and .sys file in the same directory.

I tried that and it say's "couldn't delete /etc/ndiswrapper/bcmwl5a.inf" and yes that i guess is the correct driver for my card but the first time i installed it i didn't have both sys and inf files in the same dir. so how would i either add the sys file or remove that inf and try it from the beginning?

Hm. I might have misled you a touch on the ndiswrapper -r command. If you just enter ndiswrapper at the console, you get a list of appropriate commands, and the -r flag is listed as the way to remove an old driver. However, the ndiswrapper man page says that the -e flag is the way to go. So here is what I would do:

- Try running ndiswrapper -e bcmwl5 (or maybe bcmwl5a) and see if that removes the driver. If it doesn't, don't worry.

- Install the new drivers (with .inf and .sys in the same place) with ndiswrapper -i

If that doesn't do the trick, go into /etc/ndiswrapper and delete all the directories and file by hand and then re-install the driver.

i do belive i am a little further, and befor posting this i tried the next step as described, when i installed the drivers this is the text i got

I think i didn't get the blacklist command to work, i know that i am suppose to blacklist the bcm43xx driver but when i tried this is what happened
linux-laptop:/etc/ndiswrapper # sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
sudo: gedit: command not found