How to get Broadcom Wireless to work in Ubuntu 8.04

. Saturday, April 26, 2008
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This is a guide on how to use fwcutter in Ubuntu 8.04 to work properly to recognize Broadcom wireless chipsets using the b43 drivers. The b43 drivers are only compatible with the following chipsets:

Supported

bcm4303 (802.11b-only chips)
bcm4306
bcm4309 (only the 2.4GHz part)
bcm4311 rev 1 / bcm4312
bcm4311 rev 2 / bcm4312 (needs patches for 2.6.24)
bcm4318

Unsupported

The 802.11a part of the 4309 and 4312 is not supported.
There is no support for any Draft 802.11n features.
BCM 4328/4329

Ok here we go with the fun stuff. If you have any troubles please go to Linux Wireless and search around in there.

First install fwcutter, just open synaptic package manager and search for fwcutter, you need to install from your ubuntu 8.04 cd!

2) Then download this:
http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2
(This file WONT download properly with IE7!. Use Firefox or Opera. IE7 malformed the file making it unreadable.)

ok now open up a terminal and type the following

export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR="/lib/firmware"

then press ENTER

tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2

then press ENTER

cd broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod

then press ENTER

sudo b43-fwcutter -w "/lib/firmware" wl_apsta.o

then press ENTER

At this point the driver should be installed and it should be working. To make sure, go to system -> administration -> hardware drivers. There should be a check box checked and it should say "in use". I hope this has worked for you. If you have any problems, post them here and I'll do my best to help you.
-CT

PS, if the opition above dosnt work, try here

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I get an error message when I get to the last step.

Help please

Mike Henninger said...

Worked like a charm. Thanks.