I’ve just installed 11.2-m3 from scratch. Wireless setup looked promising as
I could do the complete configuration during the install for the first time.
Unfortunately, I got no connection as the /lib/firmware/b43 and b43legacy
folders were empty. Could this be due to not having the add-on CD available?
–
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy
“I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.”
Graham P Davis wrote:
> I’ve just installed 11.2-m3 from scratch. Wireless setup looked promising as
> I could do the complete configuration during the install for the first time.
> Unfortunately, I got no connection as the /lib/firmware/b43 and b43legacy
> folders were empty. Could this be due to not having the add-on CD available?
Did you have network access when setting up wireless?
The firmware for b43 and b43legacy is copyrighted by Broadcom, and
they do not permit distribution of the naked firmware by anyone. That
is why the install_bcm43xx_firmware script has to download a driver
from another system and use b43_cutter to extract the firmware from
that driver.
Larry Finger wrote:
> Graham P Davis wrote:
>> I’ve just installed 11.2-m3 from scratch. Wireless setup looked promising
as
>> I could do the complete configuration during the install for the first
time.
>> Unfortunately, I got no connection as the /lib/firmware/b43 and b43legacy
>> folders were empty. Could this be due to not having the add-on CD
available?
>
> Did you have network access when setting up wireless?
>
> The firmware for b43 and b43legacy is copyrighted by Broadcom, and
> they do not permit distribution of the naked firmware by anyone. That
> is why the install_bcm43xx_firmware script has to download a driver
> from another system and use b43_cutter to extract the firmware from
> that driver.
Bit of a Catch-22 for me as I need the wireless system to work before I can
get network access - unless I buy twenty metres of ethernet cable and have
it draped all through the house every time I want to set up a connection.
I’d probably wind up catching my foot in it and going headlong down the
stairs. Four computers from three manufacturers and they all use Broadcom
chips but luckily two are laptops.
–
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks., UK. E-mail: newsman not newsboy
“I wear the cheese. It does not wear me.”
Graham P Davis wrote:
>
> Bit of a Catch-22 for me as I need the wireless system to work before I can
> get network access - unless I buy twenty metres of ethernet cable and have
> it draped all through the house every time I want to set up a connection.
> I’d probably wind up catching my foot in it and going headlong down the
> stairs. Four computers from three manufacturers and they all use Broadcom
> chips but luckily two are laptops.
You have a three options listed in increasing order of difficulty. (1)
If you have multiple versions of openSUSE on the machine, copy the b43
firmware files from the other partition. (2) Copy the contents of
/lib/firmware/b43 on one of your other computers onto some removable
medium and then onto the hard drive. (3) Follow the option of
downloading the driver file on some other system that is described in
sticky #3 of the wireless forum.
Once you get the firmware onto this machine, I recommend copying the
firmware onto a USB stick using the command:
sudo tar cvf /<usb mount point>b43_firmware.tar /lib/firmware/b43
Once you have that, it is trivial to untar and recover the firmware.
you could also use ndiswrapper if you have Windows on the same computer. I used that to pick up the driver package from Broadcom (the WL kernel module)… ndiswrapper is all that seems to work for me in M2…
rick0 wrote:
> you could also use ndiswrapper if you have Windows on the same computer.
> I used that to pick up the driver package from Broadcom (the WL kernel
> module)… ndiswrapper is all that seems to work for me in M2…
Is your problem due to the NetworkManager applet difficulty in 11.2
KDE (http://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=508561)? If so, you
can use the “traditional ifup” method. The Gnome applet also works.