BCM4321 wireless in OpenSuse 11.1?

English Hardware
#1

I have a HP Pavilion which I have installed OpenSuse 11.1 on.
I am trying to get the internal wireless to work. It is a Broadcom BCM4321 kernel SSB.
I am pretty new to Linux but got as far as installing this:
PackMan :: Package details for broadcom-wl
I used the 11.1 64bit version.
What do I do next though as nothing seems to haev changed?!
I also found this page with extra details on but cannot get the modprobe to work:
Fix BCM4311/4312/4321/4322 Wireless in openSUSE 11.1 and earlier | SUSE & openSUSE

I just get errors.

Any help appreciated but as I said I am a ‘newbie’ :slight_smile:

Andrew

#2

ajf novell2007 wrote:
>
> I just get errors.

First of all, this should have been posted in the wireless subforum.

Secondly, “I just get errors” conveys no useful information. Posting the command
used and the resulting error is important.

#3

Firstly, I know errors isn’t all that helpful but thought as a starter it might have been something I simply haven’t done.
The laptop is not with me at present so I cannot get the exact wording. I think it was along teh lines of unknown command.

Secondly I was unsure whether to post in networking or laptop hardware as it is specifically a laptop card I am using.

Thirdly, lighten up a bit! :slight_smile:

Andrew

#4

ajf novell2007 wrote:
> Firstly, I know errors isn’t all that helpful but thought as a starter
> it might have been something I simply haven’t done.

The b43 driver is in the mainline kernel it supports most broadcom chips,
but needs additional firmware. Install the firmware with
‘install_bcm43xx_firmware’ as root.
4311-, 4312-, 4321- and bcm4322 are supported by the non-free broadcom-wl
driver available on Packman repository.

> The laptop is not with me at present so I cannot get the exact wording.
> I think it was along teh lines of unknown command.

This is almost certainly caused by the user. But we don’t like this kind
of guessing.

> Secondly I was unsure whether to post in networking or laptop hardware
> as it is specifically a laptop card I am using.
>
> Thirdly, lighten up a bit! :slight_smile:

This might help you to ask questions better in the future:
HOWTO ask smart questions http://catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

Kind regards,
Andreas Stieger

#5

Thanks for the reply. I will try out the firmware install you suggest.

Also, apologies to both of you for my previous two posts. I guess I was having a bad day there. Not my usual manner of posting!

I will confirm the error I was getting when running the modprobe command.
I was basically just following the directions given on the site I linked to.

Andrew

#6

This is a new driver for broadcom 802.11n cards, b43 will not work. After installing the broadcom-wl package and ‘modprobe wl’, you need to configure the wireless card. Afterwards, set the card up with yast. If you don’t wish to use networkmanager to handle the connection, you can always use ifconfig, iwconfig, and dhclient.

I’ve been testing the driver out and there is definite improvement over using ndiswrapper, the only other option until now.