[SOLVED] Zenwalk 7.4 Broadcom (BCM4312) wifi not working

Resauce · 11-06-2014, 08:21 AM

Hi

I am using Zenwalk 7.4 with 3.10.25 Kernel on a netbook

My wifi device resp. interface is not listed in iwconfig and ifconfig
I tried the following hint from a user http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...-6-4-a-879531/ with these files http://zenwalk.pinguix.com/user-acco...6-2.6.37.4.txz
and http://zenwalk.pinguix.com/user-acco...486-74.1mm.txz and zenpkg with no success.

Code:

lspci | grep BCM
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5906M Fast Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
07:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

Thanks.

business_kid · 11-06-2014, 11:53 AM

Exactly the same stuff I have in my old laptop. There are several Gotchas

1. If you have something like 'Fast Ethernet Switching' set in the bios, it will disable wifi if the ethernet is configured, and vice versa.
2. The rc scripts probably only set up one network interface.

3. The Broadcom 4312 needs firmware from the windows driver cut out by bw-fwcutter. Follow the directions here
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

Use the version mentioned of b43-fwcutter. It is tricky to use and should spit up some stuff that it's extracting. If it doesn't check your syntax.

Lastly
4. wpa supplicant doesn't want your wifi password in the config file, it wants the long version, as supplied by wpa_passphrase. The command is

Code:

wpa_passphrase   Your_essid   Your_password

and it gives you back a few lines for the config. note that WEP is not supported by the linux driver.

Resauce · 11-06-2014, 12:49 PM

Great it worked. The link you provided was useful. I downloaded http://www.lwfinger.com/b43-firmware...00.138.tar.bz2 and http://slackbuilds.org/repository/14.../b43-fwcutter/
and installed the cutter first (luckily I used Slackware before so b43-fwcutter installation was no problem)

and then I ran as root

Code:

tar xjf broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2
b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware broadcom-wl-5.100.138/linux/wl_apsta.o

I unloaded b43, bcma, brcmsmac and wl via modprobe -r and rebooted the machine.
Now iwconfig shows the wlan0 interface.

I think setting up a connection wont be hard.

Again thank you very much.

edit: Forgot to mention that I downloaded http://mirrors.slackware.com/slackwa...-29-i486-6.txz before and installed it with

Code:

installpkg wireless-tools-29-i486-6.txz