dell inspiron broadcom chipset what to do for wireless

narayans · #1 7th February 2012, 11:34 AM

I am a new user to Fedora 16.I installed on my laptop I have a Broadcom wireless
chipset lspci -vnn shows

Code:

0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
	Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
	Kernel modules: ssb

How can I install the driver for my wireless device.I use a Ubuntu machine where I could do so by enabling restricted software repositories while connected on LAN, is there some thing similar on Fedora?

hadrons123 · #2 7th February 2012, 12:20 PM

Code:

wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources...0.10.5.tar.bz2 
tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2 
cd broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver
su
b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta_mimo.o

Do this in your Terminal....

or follow this guide...

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=239922

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=262594

narayans · #3 7th February 2012, 04:31 PM

Thanks a lot this worked.I got my wireless working.

Code:

[root@tinitin driver]# b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware/ wl_apsta_mimo.o 
This file is recognised as:
  filename   :  wl_apsta_mimo.o
  version    :  410.2160
  MD5        :  cb8d70972b885b1f8883b943c0261a3c
Extracting b43/pcm5.fw
Extracting b43/ucode15.fw
Extracting b43/ucode14.fw
Extracting b43/ucode13.fw
Extracting b43/ucode11.fw
Extracting b43/ucode9.fw
Extracting b43/ucode5.fw
Extracting b43/lp0bsinitvals15.fw
Extracting b43/lp0initvals15.fw
Extracting b43/lp0bsinitvals14.fw
Extracting b43/lp0initvals14.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1bsinitvals13.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1initvals13.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0bsinitvals13.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0initvals13.fw
Extracting b43/lp0bsinitvals13.fw
Extracting b43/lp0initvals13.fw
Extracting b43/n0absinitvals11.fw
Extracting b43/n0bsinitvals11.fw
Extracting b43/n0initvals11.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1bsinitvals9.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0bsinitvals9.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1initvals9.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0initvals9.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0bsinitvals9.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0initvals9.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1bsinitvals5.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0bsinitvals5.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1initvals5.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0initvals5.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0bsinitvals5.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0initvals5.fw

Out of curiosity I want to know which driver is in use for my system and where did the installed firmware is present?

hadrons123 · #4 7th February 2012, 04:45 PM

Is your wifi working now?

If not try this.

Code:

ip link set wlan0 up

narayans · #5 7th February 2012, 06:36 PM

I have a Dell Inspiron 1440 laptop and using Fedora 16 x86_64 on it.
device is

Code:

0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
	Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
	Kernel modules: ssb

installed
the driver

Code:

wget  http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
cd broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver
b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware/ wl_apsta_mimo.o

I was able to connect to my broadband connection through wifi.
While working through this wifi I suddenly see the wireless disconnected.Any attempt to reconnect does not work.I reboot the laptop it again connects to the wireless connection.But then after working for some time the connection suddenly disconnects.
How can I check this situation and what should I be doing in this situation?

sea · #6 7th February 2012, 06:40 PM

What kernel are you running?

But in general, you might look:
1) http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=275862
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=275753
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=275839
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=275944
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=275950

stoat · #7 7th February 2012, 10:03 PM

Threads merged.

Another reasonable thing to try is the Broadcom 802.11 STA Linux driver (aka broadcom-wl, kmod-wl, or wl) available from the RPM Fusion repo. No promises for the described problem, but it is known to work with the BCM4312 chipset.

narayans · #8 8th February 2012, 07:09 AM

My kernel
3.2.3-2.fc16.x86_64

Quote:

Originally Posted by hadrons123

Is your wifi working now?

Yes after your message I was able to connect to my wireless network.Things worked smoothly as they should.But later on I discovered some how wifi got disconnected.I initially noticed the problem when doing a suspend and resume but later found that this was some thing frequent with the driver you mentioned for my device.

Quote:

Originally Posted by stoat

Another reasonable thing to try is the Broadcom 802.11 STA Linux driver (aka broadcom-wl, kmod-wl, or wl) available from the RPM Fusion repo. No promises for the described problem, but it is known to work with the BCM4312 chipset.

I saw this link as suggested above
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpo...44&postcount=2
but in my case how to install the STA Linux driver given the fact b43 driver or firmware as sugested above is already there on my machine?
I mean how do I remove the already present driver?

Quote:

yum install broadcom-wl
Loaded plugins: langpacks, presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
No package broadcom-wl available.
Error: Nothing to do

stoat · #9 8th February 2012, 02:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by narayans

...but in my case how to install the STA Linux driver given the fact b43 driver or firmware as sugested above is already there on my machine?
I mean how do I remove the already present driver?

The b43 driver is a kernel module. When the broadcom-wl driver is installed, the b43 module usually no longer loads. So the b43 firmware that you installed will just sit there doing nothing. It is not necessary to remove it. But just FYI, and in case you just want to do it, you can remove the b43 firmware and "undo" what you did to use b43 by merely deleting the folder /lib/firmware/b43 which is where all those extracted firmware files went.

Quote:

Originally Posted by narayans

yum install broadcom-wl
Loaded plugins: langpacks, presto, refresh-packagekit
Setting up Install Process
No package broadcom-wl available.
Error: Nothing to do

That happened because you have not installed the RPM Fusion repos. See here to do that...

http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration

But after you do that, don't do what Edanny101 posted in your link. Simply do this...

Code:

yum install akmod-wl
reboot

narayans · #10 9th February 2012, 04:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by stoat

yum install akmod-wl
reboot

No this did not worked.
I deleted b43 from /lib/firmware installed

Code:

yum install broadcom-wl

but what I notice is after the connection is active slowly after 5-10 minutes of working on this machine the connection dies i.e. in the top right hand corner gui it shows me that I am connected but there is no connection actually.Want to remind that if I reboot then again I am able to connect to the wireless again but then after 5-10 minutes I again get disconnected.
This phenomenon occurred both with broadcom-wl driver and b43 driver.

But if on the same time I am connected to LAN also the wireless connection does not disconnects as I mentioned above.This is also an observation with broadcom-wl and b43 driver.

The wireless disconnects after 5-6 minutes of browsing activity only if I am completely using wireless i.e. I am not connected via LAN either with machine in problem.

hadrons123 · #11 9th February 2012, 04:57 AM

its not the wifi card driver.possibly bug in networkmanager. You could try wicd-gtk.

edit:
This has the list of bugs in networkmanager.

https://admin.fedoraproject.org/pkgd...NetworkManager

narayans · #12 9th February 2012, 05:32 AM

Ohh so do I need to uninstall any thing existing first to make wicd-gtk work

hadrons123 · #13 9th February 2012, 05:35 AM

no not really.

Code:

yum install wicd-gtk

Edit:
You can remove Networkmanager with yum.

or

Code:

systemctl disable NetworkManager.service

narayans · #14 9th February 2012, 06:27 AM

Upon install

Code:

yum install wicd-gtk

I get following after a reboot

Code:

Could not connect to wicd's D-Bus interface.Check the wicd log for error messages.

where do I find wicd log I checked /var/log but there was no file name wicd.log in fact I disabled the network manager by your method

Code:

systemctl disable NetworkManager.service

and did a reboot after that also I get the same error

Could not connect to wicd's D-Bus interface.Check the wicd log for error messages.
In fact after doing a
systemctl disable NetworkManager.service even the lan stopped working.So I had to re enable it.

hadrons123 · #15 9th February 2012, 06:40 AM

try this in your terminal as root and reboot.(I asume you had wicd , wicd-common installed as an dependeny when you installed wicd-gtk.)

Code:

systemctl enable wicd.service