Linksys wpc54gs

English Network/Internet
1

Hello everyone,

I just installed OpenSuSE 11.1 on my thinkpad T41, and the only way for me to be able to go online is to have my Linksys wpc54gs working, so I was wondering if anyone out there can help a noob like me. I really like SuSE and I don’t want to switch back to Windows.

I tried to look over the different threads but I couldn’t catch how to do it.

I went to Hardware Information and I was able to see this:
"info.product = ‘BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller’
pci.device_subclass = 128 (0x80)
info.udi = ‘/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_14e4_4318’
pci.device_protocol = 0 (0x0)
linux.sysfs_path = ‘/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1e.0/0000:02:00.0/0000:03:00.0’
pci.vendor = ‘Broadcom Corporation’
info.parent = ‘/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_104c_ac46’
info.vendor = ‘Broadcom Corporation’
pci.linux.sysfs_path = ‘/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1e.0/0000:02:00.0/0000:03:00.0’
pci.product = ‘BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller’
info.linux.driver = ‘b43-pci-bridge’
pci.subsys_vendor = ‘Linksys’
pci.product_id = 17176 (0x4318)
pci.vendor_id = 5348 (0x14e4)
linux.hotplug_type = 2 (0x2)
pci.subsys_product_id = 73 (0x49)
linux.subsystem = ‘pci’
Kernerl Driver: ssb

so, please someone help me with this issue.

Many thanks in advance.

2

Hmm, did you read the stickies ? especially the contributions from lwfinger ? some good info there

Andy

3

yes I did read the very first one but it didn’t help because I was not able to proceed casue I was getting different results. But I know that it can see my device:

raf@linux-ka23:~/Desktop> /sbin/lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82855PM Processor to I/O Controller (rev 03)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82855PM Processor to AGP Controller (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 81)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC’97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC’97 Modem Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon RV250 [Mobility FireGL 9000] (rev 02)
02:00.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4520 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
02:00.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI4520 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
02:01.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82540EP Gigabit Ethernet Controller (Mobile) (rev 03)
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

4

Look at the stickie entitled “Welcome”. About 2/3 the way down, you will see a
section on installing Broadcom firmware when you do not have Internet access
from Linux. I think that situation applies to you.

Larry

5

Welcome to the OpenSUse forums

in the third of three posts, or stickies, at the beginning of the this wireless forum

Welcome - openSUSE Forums

is this advice from the redoubtable deltaflyer about half-way down the page

(the first two stickies provide very good background reading and other instructions and were written by the very knowledgable (and equally redoubtable) lfinger)

to return to deltaflyer’s post: 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.

For those devices that support 802.11a/b/g, 802.11a operation is not yet supported.
compliments of LarryFinger

You will note in the above advice, that if you do not have internet access; (ie you cannot plug an ethernet cable from computer to router)

it says:

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.

I am pointing you towards this information; I am not a wireless expert; it is you who go ahead and install; linux is for adults

all very best wishes though, and let the forum know how things are going

6

thank you so much, i am going to go ahead and follow the directions as instructed :smiley:

thanks again,

P.S I hope it will work.

7

Thanks for the help guys, i spend 2 days trying to get this to work, and no luck…i guess i am going back to Windows

8

before you go back to windows, do you want to detail where you got to, in the above advice? see if the forum can help you get going .

folks will try and help you through each step if needed

9

wartor wrote:
> Thanks for the help guys, i spend 2 days trying to get this to work, and
> no luck…i guess i am going back to Windows

If you really want to go to Windows, be my guest. This is not that difficult -
hundreds of users have figured it out. There is only one variant of the BCM4318
that has any special difficulty, and the driver takes care of that. Of course,
it is possible that yours is the second.

What does ‘dmesg | grep b43’ show?

Larry

10

Thank you for getting back with me guys, and I truly apologize about my frustration. My main problem started when I was trying to go to the link that pdc_2 gave me, and I quote:

“Using any method that you have to access the Internet, download this
http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/b...0.10.5.tar.bz2”
Every time i clicked on it it gave me an invalid link…

also, I did “dmesg | grep b43”

and this was the results:

b43-pci-bridge 0000:03:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
b43-pci-bridge 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> Link[LNKA] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
b43-pci-bridge 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
b43-phy0: Broadcom 4318 WLAN found
input: b43-phy0 as /devices/virtual/input/input9
firmware: requesting b43/ucode5.fw
b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file “b43/ucode5.fw” not found
b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to b43 - Linux Wireless and download the latest firmware (version 4).
input: b43-phy0 as /devices/virtual/input/input10
firmware: requesting b43/ucode5.fw
b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file “b43/ucode5.fw” not found
b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to b43 - Linux Wireless and download the latest firmware (version 4).

thank you for your time,

11

wartor wrote:
> Thank you for getting back with me guys, and I truly apologize about my
> frustration. My main problem started when I was trying to go to the link
> that pdc_2 gave me, and I quote:
>
> “Using any method that you have to access the Internet, download this
> http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/b...0.10.5.tar.bz2”
> Every time i clicked on it it gave me an invalid link…
>
> also, I did “dmesg | grep b43”
>
> and this was the results:
>
> b43-pci-bridge 0000:03:00.0: enabling device (0000 → 0002)
> b43-pci-bridge 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A → Link[LNKA] → GSI 11 (level,
> low) → IRQ 11
> b43-pci-bridge 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
> b43-phy0: Broadcom 4318 WLAN found
> input: b43-phy0 as /devices/virtual/input/input9
> firmware: requesting b43/ucode5.fw
> b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file “b43/ucode5.fw” not found
> b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to ‘b43 - Linux Wireless’
> (http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware) and
> download the latest firmware (version 4).
> input: b43-phy0 as /devices/virtual/input/input10
> firmware: requesting b43/ucode5.fw
> b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file “b43/ucode5.fw” not found
> b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to ‘b43 - Linux Wireless’
> (http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware) and
> download the latest firmware (version 4).

As you see above, you need to install firmware. If you have Internet access when
running Linux, the solution is as simple as opening a terminal and entering

sudo /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware
sudo /sbin/modprobe -r b43
sudo /sbin/modprobe -v b43

After that, your BCM4318 should be working. Test it with

sudo /usr/sbin/iwlist scan

The above command should show you AP. You then only need to right-click on the
NetworkManager applet and add a new connection.

If you do not have Internet access when running Linux, it is a bit more
complicated. In that case, connect to the Internet using whatever system you
have available. Then open a browser and connect to

http://tinyurl.com/3ammcm

Download the file named broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2

Save that file on a thumb drive, or whatever it takes to get in into your Linux
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

Of course, take care to enter those commands exactly as written. The downloading
of the file plus those 3 commands will accomplish exactly what the
“install_bcm43xx_firmware” script does. At this point, do the commands:

sudo /sbin/modprobe -r b43
sudo /sbin/modprobe -v b43

and you should be ready to configure as above.

Larry

12

And again.

Why not use the ready made packages available from packman?

PackMan :: Informationen zum Paket b43-firmware

or

PackMan :: Informationen zum Paket b43legacy-firmware

13

Thats what I did to get it working, WarTor, I think this would be the best option if nothing else worked.

Good luck!!