No wireless on laptop

English Network/Internet
#1

Laptop is a Dell XPS M1330 with Broadcom BCM4321 wireless n card. It shows in lspci as follows

0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 03)

I followed the sticky here
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/484106-Broadcom-firmware-is-needed-for-b43-but-I-have-no-network-an-easierwork-around

During the install part it gives errors but says installed and to reboot. After reboot there is still no option for wireless and the directories for b43 and b43legacy are there but empty.

The readout from install is

cp: cannot stat 'broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2: Cannot open: No such file or directory
Extracting b43 firmware
tar (child): broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2: Cannot open: No such file or directory
tar (child): Error is not recoverable: exiting now
tar: Child returned status 2
tar: Error is not recoverable: exiting now
Cannot open input file broadcom-wl-5.100.138/linux/wl_apsta.o

b43 firmware successfully installed.

Extracting b43legacy firmware
Cannot open input file wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o
b43legacy firmware successfully installed.
You may want to reboot now to allow the driver to access the new firmware

Did I do something wrong?

#2

Read the stickys in the Wireless Forum, first post is about Broadcom…

#3

Yes, that first post is the one I had referred to. It gave errors but also said successfully installed. However, the b43 and b43legacy folders remain empty and there is no check box of wireless. I can only see the check box for airplane mode. I do know the laptop also has onboard LAN port and too is running on a Broadcom chip, I’ll check to see which one as I forget.

Would it be possible to use an ethernet cable to connect laptop to desktop via LAN ports and have the laptop receive internet from the desktop machine? The desktop gets internet from a usb wifi dongle, I’m only allowed to connect via wireless in my apartment.

Either way I will read over the sticky posts again. Don’t think I missed anything, so assuming I must have done something wrong. Or is it possible that the errors mean the built in wireless card is non functional?

#4

Try it once more.
But do not run:

sudo bcm43xx_firmware/install_bcm43xx_firmware_no_net

Instead:

cd bcm43xx_firmware/

Get root with

su

Type in your root Password.

zypper install -f b43-fwcutter

./install_bcm43xx_firmware_no_net
#5 
zypper install -f b43-fwcutter

this wanted to go online for update via opensuse repo and due to no net connection gave option for abort/retry… I chose abort

./install_bcm43xx_firmware_no_net

then ran this one and it gave a long readout of installation, no errors. rebooted and now the wireless check box is available. but it is greyed out and not able to be enabled

the b43 and b43 legacy directories do have contents in them now!

#6

I don’t see an edit button available for my posts, sorry to have to add another reply.

Just wanted to say it’s working just fine now, turns out I had to turn on the wireless with an actual switch on the side of the laptop! Once that switch was set to the ‘on’ position the wireless check box became available. Networks show up and it connected right away!

Thanks very much for the help!!