Checking Firmware For My Wirless Card

English Network/Internet
1

I know another tiresome thread by some noob having trouble with his wireless connection sorry guys but I’m stuck.

Having a little trouble finding out if the firmware for my wireless controller is installed. I’ve been going through the threads Getting Your Wireless to Work and the Primer My wireless doesn’t work.

Here is what I get from /sbin/lspci

03:00.0 Network Controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 03)

Here is what I get from /sbin/lspci -n

03:00.0 0280: 14e4:4328 (rev 03)

I’ve tried running dmesg | grep firmware but for some reason it doesn’t work. So I ran dmesg | less and looked through 800 something lines(several times) but couldn’t find any mention of a driver not being able to load firmware. I also looked through boot.msg and didn’t see failure to load firmware there either.
I also used YaST=>Network Devices=>Network Settings but it only shows my lan controller. I also tried to add the wireless connnection in Network Settings.

Just tried something else while typing this post dmesg | grep b43 and I get these 2 lines which I don’t understand, but I assume if I got it to return anything it might mean the b43 firmware is installed.

b43-pci-bridge 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A-> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19

b43-pci-bridge 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64

2

have a read at this post

Dell Vostro 1500 Wireless - openSUSE Forums

in post #7 he followed the advice of lwfinger in post #2 of

Wireless Broadcom BCM4311 - openSUSE Forums

(but you need internet access, ie like an ethernet cable connected)

and did

sudo /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware

sudo /sbin/modprobe -rv b43

sudo /sbin/modprobe -v b43

if you haven’t an ethernet cable, deltaflyer recommended

To install the BCM43xx firmware if you do not have a connection in Linux, do the following:

Using any method that you have to access the Internet, download this
http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/b...0.10.5.tar.bz2

Then copy it into your home directory. Once you have it there, you should enter the following:

tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
sudo mkdir -p /lib/firmware
sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware \ broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver/wl_apsta_mimo.o

These three commands will skip the download step and extract the firmware in the same way that the /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware does.

let us know how you get along

3

The reason is simple, this card is not (yet) supported by the in kernel driver.

You will have to blacklist b43 and use the proprietary driver from broadcom instead .

Read:

Kernel module configuration - openSUSE

and

Choosing the correct kmp-package for your installation - openSUSE Forums

and have a look at

Software.openSUSE.org

4

Akoellh wrote:
> zach_wilson;2047762 Wrote:
>> Here is what I get from /sbin/lspci
>>
>> 03:00.0 Network Controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n
>> (rev 03)
>>
>> Here is what I get from /sbin/lspci -n
>>
>> 03:00.0 0280: 14e4:4328 (rev 03)
>>
>> I’ve tried running dmesg | grep firmware but for some reason it doesn’t
>> work.
>
> The reason is simple, this card is not (yet) supported by the in kernel
> driver.
>
> You will have to blacklist b43 and use the proprietary driver from
> broadcom instead .

You will also need to blacklist ssb.

5

Hm, I hope you won’t kill me for that Larry, but you are (only) partially correct.

If there is no other device which needs ssb (some wired NICs like b44-devices do), then blacklisting b43 and ssb will be the easiest way.

If there is one, then it will get a little more complicated.

So before blacklisting ssb, the complete output of


/sbin/lspci -nnk|-A2 -i net

should be checked to see if a wired ethernet device needs ssb.

6

Akoellh wrote:
> lwfinger;2047896 Wrote:
>> You will also need to blacklist ssb.
>
> Hm, I hope you won’t kill me for that Larry, but you are (only)
> partially correct.
>
> If there is no other device which needs ssb (some wired NICs like
> b44-devices do), then blacklisting b43 and ssb will be the easiest way.

AFAIK, it is not possible to use b44 with the Broadcom-wl driver. The
standard version of ssb will grab the b43 device and it will not be
available for wl.

7

Well, actually it is, but a little tricky, it’s all about timing.

As I read in one of your previous posts, that you actually understand some German (and even if it is not good enough to perhaps understand all the text, you will certainly understand the code for this workaround), here an example for Ubuntu from a german forum.

http://forum.ubuntuusers.de/topic/broadcom-43xx-wlan-karte-wird-nicht-gefunden-/

This will also work with openSUSE (using /etc/init.d/boot.local), although the solution is a bit hackish (I would have another idea how to solve it under openSUSE with using MODULES_LOADED_ON_BOOT and putting the modules in the correct order), but never had the chance to get a “guinea pig” in one of the several fora I use actively, so it’s only an idea.

8

Ops, ****, the link got lost and as you seem to be using NNTP and won’t see edited postings, here the link again for NNTP users.

Broadcom 43xx - WLAN-Karte wird nicht gefunden (trotz ndisrapper) › Forum › ubuntuusers.de

9

Akoellh wrote:
> Ops, ****, the link got lost and as you seem to be using NNTP and won’t
> see edited postings, here the link again for NNTP users.
>
> ‘Broadcom 43xx - WLAN-Karte wird nicht gefunden (trotz ndisrapper) ›
> Forum › ubuntuusers.de’ (http://tinyurl.com/ybdwjw4)

OK, if I understood that correctly, one needs to prevent b44 and ssb
from loading, then load wl, followed by b44 (which will also load
ssb). It works because the BCM43xx ID is already owned by wl.

I really liked that one signature "Ubuntu is an African word meaning
“I can’t configure Debian.”

10

Exactly.

Cough

Thank you.

(Hint Hint)

:slight_smile:

11

Thanks for all the responses. I’ll work with this tomorrow and hopefully get everything sorted out.

12

Charge paddles… clear… and this thread is back from the dead. Never did get this sorted out but I have some free time again so I figured I’d try again with openSUSE 12.1 gnome 3.2. I guess I should start again with the output from /sbin/lspci -nnk. (Cut it down to just the info on the wireless card).

03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:4328] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1500 Draft 802.11n WLAN Mini-card [1028:000a]
	Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge

Step 1 - I did a clean install of openSUSE and tried setting everything up in network settings under YaST. This didn’t work but had to try anyway.

Step 2 - I ran sudo /usr/install_bcm43xx_firmware went back into YaST and this time it wanted to download something called il (i think that’s right was sleep deprived while doing this) but it never made a connection with the server. I let it retry a few times then stopped it at that point it prompted me for the openSUSE install disk. I Inserted the disk and it copied over some files (can’t remeber what). After that I double checked my wireless settings and tried to open Firefox but no luck.

The one thing I haven’t tried is black listing the b43 and using the proprietary driver. At the time I had no idea how to do that. Now I think I’ve got it I just go to etc/modprobe.d/50-blacklist.conf and add the line #blacklist b43. Then find and install broadcom’s driver at Index of /sources.

Just checked the openwrt.org site while writing this and I have I’m not sure which tarball i should grab.

13

According to this wiki article https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Broadcom_wireless the broadcom-wl driver should work.

First thing I tried lsmod | grep “ssb|wl|b43” to see what wireless drivers where already installed. Both ssb and b43 where there.

Next I removed the ssb and b43 modules with rmmod ssb then rmmod b43. Also went Into YaST and removed b43-fwcutter. Don’t know if I needed to remove that or not.

Then I went to blacklist both ssb and b43 in gedit only to find out I couldn’t save the changes I made to 50-blacklist.conf. So I opened a terminal and gave read write permissions to user, group and others but still couldn’t edit 50-blacklist.conf.

Finally I went ahead into YaST and installed the broadcom-wl and broadcom-wl-kmp-desktop packages. Now at least I have the ability to set up my wireless settings through the gnome app (before the add option was greyed out). So I entered my settings but It never made the connection and I’m pretty sure it’s because my SSID is not broadcasting.

I think I’m close to getting this just need to find out why i can’t edit the blacklist file and how to get connected to my router with SSID broadcasting turned off.

14

Then I went to blacklist both ssb and b43 in gedit only to find out I couldn’t save the changes I made to 50-blacklist.conf. So I opened a terminal and gave read write permissions to user, group and others but still couldn’t edit 50-blacklist.conf.
No, you don’t adjust the file permissions. You need root privileges to edit system files.

For KDE

kdesu kwrite /etc/modprobe.d/50-blacklist.conf

Gnome

gnomesu gedit .....

Or you could use a CLI editor eg nano, mc (you may need to install first)

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/50-blacklist.conf
15

Hi have the same wireless chipset but I’m still running openSUSE 11.4

10:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:4328] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [103c:1367]
        Kernel driver in use: wl

Have you configured with network manager yet? (The Gnome and KDE versions are a little different).

You may also want to install rfkill (if you haven’t already)

zypper in rfkill

It is a small CLI utility that can report and adjust the status of your wireless hardware. For example, to check status

/usr/sbin/rfkill list

SDB:WiFi - openSUSE

This may be useful to others searching

16. Wireless Driver Installation - Making Your Broadcom, Ralink etc. Wifi/Wlan Work

16

Thanks deano_ferrari for the help. I’ve got ssb and b43 blacklisted and when I enabled broadcasting of my SSID I was able to connect to the router then two minutes after that Comcast had an outage in my area. At least if was only out for a day this time. Reading SDB:WiFi now and I think I see how to get it to connect without broadcasting my SSID. One interesting thing though when I ran /usr/sbin/rfkill list just a few minutes ago It only returned info for bluetooth but nothing on the lan or wlan. Don’t know If it maters scince both seem to be working fine.

17

Thanks deano_ferrari for the help. I’ve got ssb and b43 blacklisted and when I enabled broadcasting of my SSID I was able to connect to the router then two minutes after that Comcast had an outage in my area. At least if was only out for a day this time. Reading SDB:WiFi now and I think I see how to get it to connect without broadcasting my SSID.

Glad to hear you got it working.

]One interesting thing though when I ran /usr/sbin/rfkill list just a few minutes ago It only returned info for bluetooth but nothing on the lan or wlan. Don’t know If it maters scince both seem to be working fine.

If its working, I don’t think is a problem.