Broadcom wireless drivers

My Dell Inspiron B130 laptop has a 1470 wireless card (BCM 4311 (Air Force 54G) 802.11a/b/g PCI). I just installed openSuse 11.1, dual booted with XP, but Suse cannot see the wireless card. I read in the openSuse HCL list here: HCL/Network Adapters (Wireless)/Broadcom BCM43xx - openSUSE
how to download good Broadcom drivers from the Linux Wireless project.
I have two questions:

  1. The first page refers to downloading a firmware blob. If I install the firmware to the card, will it then stop working on the Windows side?
  2. Next it says to get online and run the script install_bcm43xx_firmware. This will download and self install. Catch 22: If Suse can’t use the wireless card, how am I to get online to download this file?

wildad wrote:
> My Dell Inspiron B130 laptop has a 1470 wireless card (BCM 4311 (Air
> Force 54G) 802.11a/b/g PCI). I just installed openSuse 11.1, dual booted
> with XP, but Suse cannot see the wireless card. I read in the openSuse
> HCL list here: ‘HCL/Network Adapters (Wireless)/Broadcom BCM43xx -
> openSUSE’ (http://tinyurl.com/9dy9d3)
> how to download good Broadcom drivers from the Linux Wireless project.
> I have two questions:

The b43 driver in openSUSE will drive your device. You do not need to download a
driver, just firmware. If you want to know the difference, that is covered in
the stickies.

> 1. The first page refers to downloading a firmware blob. If I install
> the firmware to the card, will it then stop working on the Windows
> side?

The firmware is the code used by the CPU on the card. It is reloaded everytime
the driver is initialized. It will not interfere with Windows.

> 2. Next it says to get online and run the script
> install_bcm43xx_firmware. This will download and self install. Catch 22:
> If Suse can’t use the wireless card, how am I to get online to download
> this file?

If you read the stickies at the start of this forum, the technique to sneakernet
the necessary file into Linux is described.

Larry

Thanks for the guidance.
Based on the following I could see that I am missing the firmware.
linux-414x:/ # dmesg | grep firmware
firmware: requesting b43/ucode5.fw
b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to b43 - Linux Wireless and download the latest firmware (version 4).
firmware: requesting b43/ucode5.fw
b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to b43 - Linux Wireless and download the latest firmware (version 4).
firmware: requesting b43/ucode5.fw
b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to b43 - Linux Wireless and download the latest firmware (version 4).
firmware: requesting b43/ucode5.fw
b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to b43 - Linux Wireless and download the latest firmware (version 4).
firmware: requesting b43/ucode5.fw
b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to b43 - Linux Wireless and download the latest firmware (version 4).

So, On my other computer I went to linuxwireless and downloaded fwcutter and the broadcom driver tar files, which I copied to a flash drive, then over to /user/bin. I then ran the Suse script and got the following.
linux-414x:/ # usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware
Downloading b43 firmware
curl: (6) Couldn’t resolve host ‘mirror2.openwrt.org
Could not download b43 firmware. Please look at /usr/share/doc/packages/b43-fwcutter/README.

Apparently the script insists on looking online, which it can’t yet do.

Next I tried to install the firmware following the procedure from the Linuxwirelsss site.
linux-414x:/usr/sbin # tar xfj broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
linux-414x:/usr/sbin # cd broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver
linux-414x:/usr/sbin/broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver # b43-fwcutter-011/b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta_mimo.o
-bash: b43-fwcutter-011/b43-fwcutter: No such file or directory

I do not understand all of the last command nor the results. Where should I go from here?

Read the stickies at the start of the wireless forum to see how to generate the
firmware when you have to sneakernet the file rather than download it the way
the the script /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware.

The error is due to an incorrect path to b43-fwcutter.

You have one other option - run the script above on the computer with network
access, then copy the files in /lib/firmware/b43 to the other one.

Larry

to attempt to install the firmware if you do not have an internet connection to your computer, the golden secret is I believe carried deep within DELTAFLYER’s stickie;

Welcome - openSUSE Forums

he says

if you have a broadcom chip-set, & a wired connection, this command, in a console, may help
Code:

sudo /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware

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.

Note: If the output of ‘lspci -v’ indicates that you have a BCM4310, BCM4328 or BCM4329, this procedure will not work. For those cases, you will need the Windows driver and ndiswrapper.

the howto is NOT in either of Larry’s stickies, excellent and comprehensive as they are in every other way:

Getting Your Wireless to Work - openSUSE Forums

this stickie (seems to me to )say only:

Once you have installed any required firmware

and the other, equally excellent and revered stickie

says

If you have missing firmware, check online to learn how to install firmware for your device.

so we could perhaps direct folks to the deltaflyer stickie?

That last post did it. Thanks a lot to both of you. I am typing this from my working internet connection over Suse 11.1lol!

great; enjoy Suse and linux;

keep an eye on the wireless forum if you have the time; you can help others who are likely to have the same problem; you can be a valuable helper!

best wishes