HOWTO Get Broadcom Wireless Working with Linux
 

This post originated from a thread in the LQ Suggestions & Feedback forum. Suggestions and corrections are welcome (especially corrections).

One of the most common questions from users here at LQ goes something like this:

In many cases, the wireless chip in question turns out to be Broadcom. This post attempts to lay out some steps to take to get your Broadcom wireless working.

Important: If your wireless doesn't work, be sure to test the wired connection before doing anything else. This does two things:

1. If the wired connection does not work, you may be facing a larger problem, and
2. It ensures that you can connect via ethernet to download the packages you may need to enable your wireless.

If the problem is confined to the wireless, there is a good chance that the drivers were not installed. This often happens when the wireless card is manufactured by Broadcom, which has been slower than many other manufacturers in porting drivers to Linux. (Note that there is some Broadcom support in the kernel. I have an older Acer Travelmate 1000 with a Broadcom chip that worked just fine without any special action on my part under both Fedora and Slackware.)

The steps below will help:

Checking your network configuration:

Open a terminal and run the command ifconfig -a. This will report your network configuration for all your network interfaces.

This is the output of ifconfig -a on my Dell 1545n laptop running Slackware --Current. The connections are

• eth0: normally the wired connection.
• lo: the loopback or local address.
• wlan0: wireless LAN 0 (Note: some systems will identify this as eth1).

If you have a wireless card and you don't see wlan0 (or eth1), you system may not be seeing the wireless chipset.

Determine the wireless chipset:

Run the lspci command in a terminal to display the wireless chipset. Note that the brand name of the card is often irrelevant. For example, Dell Computers may sell cards with the Dell brand name, but the chip inside the card has likely been manufactured by a third-party vendor, frequently Broadcom.

This is the output of lspci on my Dell 1545n laptop. The item in bold identifies the wireless chipset. Note that the lspci command shows PCI devices. The command to show USB devices is lsusb.

If the device does not appear in lspci, you can fall back on the dmesg command to doublecheck it. Be prepared, though, for a lot more output; dmesg dumps the entire list of devices detected by the kernel.

Identifying which Broadcom driver you need:

The two drivers are the B43 and the B43-Legacy drivers. This information on identifying which one you need is taken from the LinuxWireless page on Broadcom drivers and Linux. That page is excellent background on Broadcom and Linux. What follows does not apply the Broadcom USB devices, only to Broadcom PCI devices.

Here are a few highlights from that page:

The lspci -vnn -d 14e4 command will tell you whether you need the b43 or b43 legacy drivers. I have highlighted the significant part; it can be interpreted by cross-referencing it at a table at the LinuxWireless link above.


This indicates that the specific chipset is BCM4312. Note that lspci had also identified the chip as BCM4312.

Distro-Related Resources:

Some distros may install Broadcom drivers automatically. For others, you may need to enable additional repos beyond the default list in your package manager. The Broadcom drivers are not open source, and distros have different policies regarding "binary blobs." Here is some information for various popular distros:

Ubuntu:

When I used Ubuntu (up through v. 11.10), I needed to enable the "Proprietary Drivers for Devices" repo to obtain the Broadcom drivers; I installed v. 12.04 in VirtualBox, and it appears that those repos are now enabled by default. I was not able to test them, though.

Also, in Ubuntu System Settings-->Hardware, there is an "Additional Drivers" item. In the past, I have used that to obtain Broadcom drivers for my Dell Mini 9 netbook.

Here is the Ubuntu's HOWTO on Broadcom drivers.

Mint:

The situation with Mint is similar to that with Ubuntu. In my Linux Mint 13, the Broadcom drivers are present in the repos and the "Additional Drivers" item in Control Center-->Hardware. LMDE (Linux Mint Debian Edition may be different, because Debian is agressively free as regards proprietary software. This article from the Mint forums should help. My Mint computer does not have Broadcom, so I have not tested this.

Debian;

Debian is aggressively free as regards non-open source software, but does offer help on it's wiki on enabling Broadcom.

Fedora:

I don't have much direct experience with Fedora. I did use if for while on the Acer Travelmate and the Broadcom wireless worked out-of-the-box, but, as I said, that's an older chip and the support is in the kernel. There is a nice HOWTO on the Fedora forums.

SalixOS:

SalixOS has a very nice page on how to get Broadcom working; it worked flawlessly for me the first time on my Dell Mini 9.

Arch:

Here are two links from the Arch Wiki that will help you with Arch: a general article on wireless and Arch and one specifically about Broadcom and Arch.

OpenSUSE:

The Unofficial Guide to OpenSUSE has directions for enabling Broadcom.

Slackware:

Packages for enabling Broadcom are available at Slackbuilds dot org.

• The broadcom-sta driver.
• The b43-firmware.
• The b43-fwcutter, which extracts the firmware from the firmware package and makes it available to the kernel.
• The b43legacy-firmware.

I needed three of these four elements and a lot of help from LQ to get the wireless going on my Dell 1545n:

• the broadcom-sta driver
• the b43-fwcutter, and
• the appropriate firmware--in my case, the b43-firmware, not the b43-legacy-firmware, to get my Broadcom working on that computer.

I also recommend using wicd as your network manager on Slackware; it's in the Slackware Extras.

There's also an article on Broadcom on the new Slackwiki currently being developed.

I hope this helps. If you still need to post about your Broadcom chip, including the output of some of the diagnostic commands listed above will help others help you. Please make sure to enclose it in "code" tags, which become available when you click "Go Advanced" down there at the bottom of the Quick Reply window.

Problem Solved!
 

Thanks for your help, frankbell. I'm online!

Not working in Mint 13.
 

This is a compaq presario. The driver appears to be installed, and the Additional Drivers window says "installed and working".

See:
lspci -vnn -d 14e4:
05:02.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4318] (rev 02)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN [103c:1355]
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 20
Memory at c0204000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
Kernel modules: wl, ssb

But ifconfig -a shows no wlan0. I know the little button on the panel is in the right position, since I booted xp and it was working OK. When this is working the little light on the button is light. It is not now.

Where do I go from here? This is a 64 bit install.

Thanks, Jim.

I did notice that the list of supported cards in the description in the Additional Drivers window didn't include the 4318.

What distro? It can make a difference in the how-to. Also, some distros report "eth1" instead of "wlan0." Please post the output of ifconfig -a.

You might try Googling "broadcom 4318 [distro name]"--I searched for "broadcom 4318 linux" and found articles about Mint, Fedora, and Ubuntu on the first page.

My subject mentioned Mint 13. I've pretty much exhausted the google references.None of them that I could find went beyond getting the driver activated. I guess it's assumed that if the driver is working then surely there is a wlan device. I have had problems with Network Manager in the past. I had better luck with wicd, but haven't replaced Network Manage just yet.

Thanks

Sorry for missing the reference in your subject line.

It looks as if the system is not recognizing your Broadcom. Wicd might be worth a try; I prefer it to gnome-network-manager myself. On one of my computers, simply installing wicd was enough to wake up the Broadcom chip, but I can't remember what chipset it was using and can't access it right now.

I found a couple of threads that might help:

http://linux-bsd-sharing.blogspot.co...m-bcm4318.html

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=194&t=70670

Please let us know what happens; I sure we can sort this out.

Hi, Frank,

Here's the results of the suggestions from your first link:

Another post (not one of your references) said to try:
That results in a kernel panic from the install step.
Also after rebooting dpkg is broken. Any attempts to use apt-get or dpkg result in an error message suggesting you do dpkg --configure -a. When you do that, the previous install attempts to complete and panics again. Bit of a catch-22. I think I'll have to boot a live disk and see if I can clean things up with a chroot.

Please post the output of the command

I went back and removed firmware-b43-installer and reinstalled it. Modprobe b43 tossed an unknown option. Dmesg said it was an unknown "blacklist". The only blacklist I had was in grub line, 'cause it wouldn't boot without it. I figured let's take it off and see what happens.

Now I have a wlan0, but I can't do anything with it. Wicd says no wireless network found. I put wlan0 as the wireless device in the preferences config menu.

I don't know what to do next.

Jim.

In order to assure myself the hardware was still working, I booted a Centos live disk. The wireless network came up running. I poked at it so see if there was anything different, but didn't find anything. When I rebooted Mint, the light came on and the wlan0 was present and working.

The only think I can think of is that the boot into Centos enabled something on the chip.

I have a blue light, a wireless connection and am happy.

Thanks,
Jim.

Usually, Linux doesn't need a reboot for this sort of stuff, but maybe that's what was needed.

It sounds like when, when I worked support, we would tell the caller, "It was an FM problem," which loosely translates as "freaking magic." (Of course, our callers were techs who knew what "FM" meant, so it was sort of an inside joke with them.)

Anyway, glad it's fixed.

Thanks much frank. Awesome thread I had some issues early on with the b43/legacy distinction but you put it right out front. Nice and easy

Cheers

Thanks. I proposed the thread hoping that someone could benefit from my struggles with Broadcom.

I certainly don't know all the answers--I'm basically an advanced hobbyist--but if I can help someone farther down the road, I'm happy.

Don't make the same stupid misstake I did
AFAIK all laptops have an external hardware wifi switch even though windbloz ignores this switch
with linux it matters whether it's on or off
so you may have it setup right but it still will not work until the switch is turned on
so check the switch

frankbell

nice tutorial

some suggestions if you care to ponder

1) You may wish to explain that there is the driver...maybe from a kernel
and firmware.....typically from a packages called firmware-something

(true for debian and a quick search for broadcom ---mainly non-free software shows)
broadcom-sta-common
firmware-bnx2
firmware-bnx2x
firmware-brcm80211
firmware-linux-nonfree
bluez-firmware
firmware-b43-installer
firmware-b43legacy-installer
firmware-crystalhd


2) altho I have diff hw, I like the gui wicd-gtk

which AFAIK is independent of most desktop environments/window managers
----and altho it looks like a wireless only control panel
-------it also does ethernet

cheers

rob.rice
+1

and don't forget with laptops to look at enabling wifi and or bluetooth in the bios

Zorin and Mint wireless driver
 

Do you think this would also work for Zorin OS?

Linux-Wireless Networking
 

Every time I open terminal and enter a code for a wireless installer (sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer) this is what I get below. Manually run what does this mean?

David


: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem.

Linux-Wireless Networking
 

I addition to this error code----dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run 'sudo dpkg --configure -a' to correct the problem. I also notice which I happen to view a video from youtube on the subjet (terminal) that my startups have just three applications in and only two of them are functioning. I tried to run sudo command but nothing. Maybe this the issues with the wireless network nothing is loading at startup.

I would like thank everyones feedback and help regarding my many issues with Linux Mint 17. However, I've decided to do a complete reinstall on both computers using again the Mint Mat 17 and Zorin 9 OS's. Well, once I did this I immediately search for the drivers which I could not find so I followed the instruction of this website for the drivers and that fixed the problem. Got my wireless working every hting is fine so far.

Thanks all,
David

http://linux-bsd-sharing.blogspot.co...m-bcm4318.html

Wireless with Linux Ver. 14.04 and Netgear Wireless Adapter.
 

I was having problems with trying to use a really small Cat 5 type adapter. I called Netgear after trying eveything I could think of for
Months and never could get it to work. Then they said that those Cat 5 Wireless Adapters are not built for Linux so I went down to my local
Walmart and got a range extender installed it via instructions and Wolaw it was immedite the connection worked and have been wireless for a
year or so with my Linux Ubuntu ver 14.04. It however does not run at the speed coming out of the Netgear Router. I am still very happy to
see it work for me. I am hoping that the password will keep local people from using it. I am using Skype too on the wireless range extender
works just fine.

In newer versions of Ubuntu (14.04 LTS was the one I checked), "Proprietary Drivers" is now listed as "Additional Hardware" and can be found as a tab under Settings-->Software and Updates.?

After a few days of searching, I'm at the end of my rope. Here's what's going on:

I've got a BCM43227 chipset and according to wiki.debian.org/wl the proper proprietary Broadcom driver is wl. I installed wl and lspci shows it in use. wlan0 shows up in ifconfig. eth0 is just fine and is allowing me internet access. I'm using wicd as my network manager and it scans but doesn't find any wireless networks -- same goes for iwlist. My network's SSID is not hidden and is running.

What am I not seeing? Please and thank you, any help is much appreciated.

lspci -vnn -d 14e4:
ifconfig
iwconfig
iwlist wlan0 scan
lsmod | grep wl
I'm not sure what to make of this but thought it might be interesting to include. Might be nothing:

dmesg

I think you can use the command wlan0 up on terminal to try see if wlan0 channel is enabled and then test internet.
If not work your problem is on point access you dont have any point access enabled maybe is your network manager try to see info about this please.

Around internet you have some guides try to see info about like -> https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php..._configuration

wlan0 was already up on both ifconfig (as seen above) and ip link but I went ahead and ran the commands to turn them up anyway. No change. I also double-checked that rfkill was not soft/hard blocking wifi and tried toggling wifi on/off on the laptop. In the wicd GUI preferences, the wireless device is set to wlan0. It still seems to scan but finds no wireless networks.

Any ideas or rays of hope out there? I don't want to revert to Windows 7 on this laptop... my boot-time is so much better right now. There's tons of forums with almost the exact same problem but grr nothing seems to work.

Wireless not work on my Puppy Linux Dell laptop.(Dell Inspiron 1150)
 

Hello Frankbell,

Thank you very much for your help.
I went through all the steps you mentioned , but still not Work.
I am not sure the wireless chipset and assume it is Broadcom.

Wireless not work on my Puppy Linux Dell laptop.(Dell Inspiron 1150)

see below:
I try but can't find wlan0: wireless LAN 0 in the ifconfig output see below.
and also run the # lspci , still not find , see below : also please see the
dmesg output .

1)
# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0F:1F:28:ED:99

inet addr:192.168.0.108 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:72 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:17 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:21866 (21.3 KiB) TX bytes:2253 (2.2 KiB)
Interrupt:7

lo Link encap:Local Loopback

inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:2 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:100 (100.0 B) TX bytes:100 (100.0 B)

2)
# lpspi
bash: lpspi: command not found
# lspci
00:00.0 Class 0600: 8086:3580 (rev 02)
00:00.1 Class 0880: 8086:3584 (rev 02)

3) dmesg output
ssb: Sonics Silicon Backplane found on PCI device 0000:02:02.0 b44 0000:02:01.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKB] -> GSI 7 (level, low) -> IRQ 7 ssb: Sonics Silicon Backplane found on PCI device 0000:02:01.0 yenta_cardbus 0000:02:04.0: CardBus bridge found [1028:017f] yenta_cardbus 0000:02:04.0: Using CSCINT to route CSC interrupts to PCI yenta_cardbus 0000:02:04.0: Routing CardBus interrupts to PCI yenta_cardbus 0000:02:04.0: TI: mfunc 0x00001002, devctl 0x64 b44.c:v2.0 eth0: Broadcom 44xx/47xx 10/100BaseT Ethernet 00:0f:1f:28:ed:99 yenta_cardbus 0000:02:04.0: ISA IRQ mask 0x0478, PCI irq 11 yenta_cardbus 0000:02:04.0: Socket status: 30000007 pci_bus 0000:02: Raising subordinate bus# of parent bus (#02) from #02 to #06 yenta_cardbus 0000:02:04.0: pcmcia: parent PCI bridge I/O window: 0xd000 - 0xefff pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0xd000-0xefff: clean. yenta_cardbus 0000:02:04.0: pcmcia: parent PCI bridge Memory window: 0xf8000000 - 0xf dffffff yenta_cardbus 0000:02:04.0: pcmcia: parent PCI bridge Memory window: 0x30000000 - 0x3 5ffffff Intel ICH 0000:00:1f.5: PCI INT B -> Link[LNKB] -> GSI 7 (level, low) -> IRQ 7 Intel ICH 0000:00:1f.5: setting latency timer to 64 cfg80211: Using static regulatory domain info cfg80211: Regulatory domain: US
(start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp) (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2700 mBm) (5170000 KHz - 5190000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm) (5190000 KHz - 5210000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm) (5210000 KHz - 5230000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm) (5230000 KHz - 5330000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 2300 mBm) (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (600 mBi, 3000 mBm) cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: US b43-phy0: Broadcom 4306 WLAN found (core revision 5) phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel' Broadcom 43xx driver loaded [ Features: PMLR, Firmware-ID: FW13 ] intel8x0_measure_ac97_clock: measured 55282 usecs (2663 samples) intel8x0: clocking to 48000 Intel ICH Modem 0000:00:1f.6: PCI INT B -> Link[LNKB] -> GSI 7 (level, low) -> IRQ 7 Intel ICH Modem 0000:00:1f.6: setting latency timer to 64 Clocksource tsc unstable (delta = -423904009 ns) usbcore: registered new interface driver hiddev usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid usbhid: v2.6:USB HID core driver b44: eth0: Link is up at 100 Mbps, full duplex. b44: eth0: Flow control is off for TX and off for RX. lp: driver loaded but no devices found pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0xc00-0xcff: clean. pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0x820-0x8ff: clean. pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0x3e0-0x4ff: clean. pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0x100-0x3af: clean. pcmcia_socket pcmcia_socket0: cs: IO port probe 0xa00-0xaff: clean. evdev.c(EVIOCGBIT): Suspicious buffer size 511, limiting output to 64 bytes. See http ://userweb.kernel.org/~dtor/eviocgbit-bug.html #