Installed KUbuntu 9.04 need to get Broadcom bcm4306 wireless working?

kayasaman · 06-04-2009, 01:34 PM

Hi,

I'm currently testing out an install of KUbuntu 9.04 on an Acer Ferrari 3000 laptop.

Everything is ok apart from the wireless which seems to not be working!

Currently I have read through:

(1)http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/deb...m-bcm4306.html

(2)https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...m4306.-548692/

(3)http://search.code-head.com/F-Kubunt...BCM4306-224751

(4)https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...er/Ndiswrapper

(5)http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail...ch/000804.html

(6)http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...cm4306-579997/

and finally:

(7)http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=405990

Previously I had CentOS 5.3 on this machine which was fine but there was something wrong with CUPS and the printer wouldn't show up in most apps for some strange reason.

Usually I use Debian Etch and previously Sarge so not sure 'how' similar the two OS's are, along with many other systems of course

which are totally different!

With CentOS 5.3 I used fwcutter, bc43xx-fwcutter package to get the firmware to work. Using the method described in link (5) and the bcml5.sys driver from the CD the wireless had no problem.

I did a few things now; the first thing was to install fwcutter, the b43-fwcutter package which also installed a lot of firmware into /lib/firmware/ dir including ../b43 and ../b43legacy.

I'm not sure if the proper driver is in though as the names don't make any sense, however using link (6) I could check:

Quote:

Look at the readme file for the bcm43xx and the fwcutter-bcm43xx packages ( /usr/share/packages/*). There is a text file that has links to the drivers you should use for various controller versions. Also make sure you have the wireless tools and wpa_supplicant packages installed.

which may indeed give a solution or alternatively use NDISWrapper which I tried to install the Debian way but got nowhere as I don't think that contrib and non-free repos exist in apt for Ubuntu?? (taken from link (1) )

I then did an apt-cache search for ndiswrapper and found two packages of which I apt-get'ted and it seems installed although I can't confirm but having ndiswrapper.conf within the /etc directory looks promising.

Basically the system has turned into a bit of a mess, and I'm really not sure what to do now!

I haven't added any drivers to ndiswrapper so I don't know if that will mess up the fwcutter package, although I could blacklist it in /etc/modprobe.d/ dir.

I do have a new device under ifconfig it seems, called wlan0 which probably means that my wireless has detected in some way but using "iwlist wlan0 it just gives me command not found"!

I tried to use install my own wireless bcml5.sys file using fwcutter which gave me an error of: "bad md5 checksum"....

To be honest I'm really not sure what to do now and any suggestions would be good as I'm not familiar at all with KUbuntu but I will look at NDISWrapper again as it may prove promising. I did modprobe b43 as suggested in the RedHat link (5) but still no luck

modprobe -l shows a whole bunch of drivers installed but didn't go through everything to check if mine was there...

Sorry this is such a messy post but any responses would be appreciated!

Many thanks

kayasaman · 06-04-2009, 02:34 PM

Ok I was able to sort this out!!

Basically all I need to do was to run ndiswrapper -i followed by the .inf windows driver file.

Then add it to modprobe and finally blacklist the fwcutter driver which seemed to be messing everything up!

Just to make clear:

Code:

cd /path_to_inf/..

ndiswrapper -i bcml5.inf {install the driver}
ndiswrapper -m {modprobe the driver}
ndiswrapper -l {list the installed driver(s) to make sure}

nano /etc/network/interfaces

{add the following lines}

Code:

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless_essid xxxxxx
wireless_enc xxxxxx

{substitute xxxxxx for own values}

Code:

modprobe ndiswrapper {done already but doing again won't hurt!}

Code:

ifconfig -a

{this will introduce a second wireless adapter called wmaster0 which was the old fwcutter attempt conflicting with ndiswrapper}

Code:

ifup wlan0

{this may or may not work depending on if fwcutter is loaded and conflicting or not - if using any non-Debian based OS do not use ifconfig wlan0 up it doesn't seem to work and I managed to forget about the ifup/down commands too in the mean time

}

Code:

cd /etc/modprobe.d

nano fwcutter.conf

{add this line}

Code:

blacklist b43-fwcutter

{this will disable modprobe probing for this driver}

{and finally....}

Code:

reboot

I hope this helps someone!

mojoel · 06-18-2009, 01:08 PM

Thanks for this. I'm going to try this out this weekend. I have a Compaq that I've had endless troubles with the wireless. The only flavor of Linux i could get to work was Mandriva Power Pack, but your tutorial gives me hope.

kayasaman · 06-18-2009, 01:16 PM

Many thanks for the reply - I am so happy that one of my sudo tutorials was able to help or inspire someone.

Usually I think I end up writing them for myself in case I ever have the same or similar issue. Would be nice if the guides work for others as well.

Let me know how it goes!!

mojoel · 06-22-2009, 09:32 AM

I am still shocked. I didn't have to refer to your tutorial at all. I was sure I would have to, based on my past experiences. It worked ALMOST immediately. I only had to tell it to use the Broadcom driver in the hardware settings. Then I told it to use the wireless and it detected my network! This is the very first time I've had Ubuntu working with my wireless on this laptop. I think it's getting closer to prime time!
Thank you!

kayasaman · 06-22-2009, 11:06 AM

No probs! :-)

Glad to hear things worked out...

I think you will like Ubuntu especially KUbuntu 9.04 if that is indeed what you installed.

Being a long time Debian user I was of the same arrogant opinion about Ubuntu as the whole of the Debian community but actually once you start to use it, it isn't that bad at all.

And in fact apart from a few minor bugs and glitches which I probably only noticed once or twice it is actually out performing my Debian systems of old. Especially with KDE4 GUI interface as I am no fan of KDE3.

Well I really hope that it all works out for you in the future to come, so that you're happy with the OS.

Regards.

TeeDawg · 06-22-2009, 08:30 PM

Kayasaman - thank you so much for your post. My brother and I are new to Linux and have had much trouble getting the BCM4306 wireless working on his HP Pavillion zx5000 laptop. I had to add in the blacklist to fwcutter as you described above - only then was I able to get it to work. You are absolutely genius.

~Teedawg

kayasaman · 06-23-2009, 09:21 AM

Quote:

Kayasaman - thank you so much for your post. My brother and I are new to Linux and have had much trouble getting the BCM4306 wireless working on his HP Pavillion zx5000 laptop. I had to add in the blacklist to fwcutter as you described above - only then was I able to get it to work.

First up welcome to the community!

Secondly don't make the same mistake I did when I first got introduced to it a few years ago at uni by thinking that Linux was another version of MS Windows or something that bolted on top of it!!

At least with your wireless working now you will have a lot more fun and freedom to use the network or internet wherever you are within 300ft proximity of your access point. So you've made a good start

If new to Linux you might want to try using the Gnome2 and KDE3/4 GUI utilities first as the Unix shell or terminal can be a bit daunting for newbees!!

I remember my very first session with Linux, my lecturer back then gave us a link to use a list of basic UNIX commands as a tutorial which the university kindly prepared in html format.
When I came to using ls -a (list directory contents and include all files and directories including hidden) on my account home I saw a lot of files and folders beginning with . and immediately I thought my account had been hacked....
Of course who would hack an account at a university that was just activated within say half an hour. In a panic I legged it to the IT admin guys and told them that my account had been hacked as there where many viruses and other bits in it that all began with a .
They laughed so much at that point of afterwards they explained to me that they where just system files created by applications and the desktop environment.
That was the beginning of a great relationship, as I got more into it and ask them a lot of more in depth questions and they would then show me a whole bunch on the network and describe what was what and how it functioned.

aaah... those where the good old days