After installing 8.04, I never had a chance to test wireless until now. I was always plugged the ethernet in under my desk. I notice one time at home that Fn-F2 was not enabling my wireless radio. I checked hardware drivers in System->Administration->Hardware Drivers. My Broadcom B43 wireless driver was in use but no enabled. When I clicked enable, it would install drivers and prompt for a restart. After a restart, it was again unchecked as enabled.
I looked on the ubuntu forums and google to see if anyone else was having problems. I found this tutorial but the last step was causing me trouble so I decided to modify it for you.
First, you can find out what Wireless Card you have by typing
lspci
Mine is:
Broadcom Corporation BCM4309 802.11a/b/g (rev 03)
I like to keep everything I download to install in a properly named “Installs” folder
So lets begin. This will allow us to build the driver
sudo apt-get install build-essential
Now make the Installs directory and download b43-fwcutter which will allow us to extract firmware for Broadcom driver
sudo mkdir ~/Installs
cd Installs
wget http://bu3sch.de/b43/fwcutter/b43-fwcutter-011.tar.bz2
Now we are going to extract and compile
tar xjf b43-fwcutter-011.tar.bz2
cd b43-fwcutter-011
make
export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR=”/lib/firmware”
Now we are ready for the firmware and to properly install it.
wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2
tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2
sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod/wl_apsta.o
The output should look something like this:
This file is recognised as:
ID : FW11
filename : wl_apsta.o
version : 351.126
MD5 : 9207bc565c2fc9fa1591f6c7911d3fc0
Extracting b43/ucode4.fw
Extracting b43/ucode5.fw
Extracting b43/ucode11.fw
Extracting b43/ucode13.fw
Extracting b43/pcm4.fw
Extracting b43/pcm5.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0initvals4.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0bsinitvals4.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0initvals4.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0bsinitvals4.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0initvals5.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0bsinitvals5.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0initvals5.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1initvals5.fw
Extracting b43/a0g0bsinitvals5.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1bsinitvals5.fw
Extracting b43/lp0initvals13.fw
Extracting b43/lp0bsinitvals13.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0initvals13.fw
Extracting b43/b0g0bsinitvals13.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1initvals13.fw
Extracting b43/a0g1bsinitvals13.fw
After that, restart the computer and your radio should be working. Make sure, that in the BIOS, the wireless device is set to on/fn-f2. You can load BIOS by tapping F2 while the computer is turning on.
12 Responses
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Thanks for the tutorial — I was able to create the .fw files.
I have a Linux noobie question… I created the .fw files on my laptop for use on my old desktop, where I’m running 8.04 off a liveCD for now. My question: I have the .fw files on a USB stick: can I tell Ubuntu to look on the stick rather than in /lib/firmware for the files? Unfortunately my desktop will not boot from USB, so that’s not an option.
Thanks,
Nick
Awesome! Its working just perfect.
Cheers man!
Thank you SIR! That worked perfectly. I was having trouble getting Hardy to recognize my wireless. This worked perfectly well.
Great tutorial but as a new to Linux I could not get further than creating Installs directory. After command:
wget http://bu3sch.de/b43/fwcutter/b43-fwcutter-011.tar.bz2
system returned:
Cannot write to ‘b43-fwcutter-011.tar.bz2′ (Access Denied). What am I doing wrong?
Jacek
jacek, you need to log into terminal as a superuser, or root.
to do so, simply type:
sudo -s
password:
Now I have a question of my own… after this part:
b43-fwcutter-011# sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod/wl_apsta.o
I get the following:
sudo: b43-fwcutter: command not found
I’ve gone through this whole process 3 times and everything else worked successfully except for this command. I know I am typing it correctly because I am copy + pasting….
thanks!
pr4y, thank you for the hint. After spending few more hours I found the answer last night. Was stopped at the same place as you. Hope someone has figured out this one.
Thanks, Jacek
Hi pr4y,
I think I solved this puzzle. The issue is related to a search path for executable. The b43-fwcutter executable is located in the b43-fwcutter-011 directory and Linux will not search this directory, hence return: Command not found.
In order to execute the following command line:
sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod/wl_apsta.o
you will need to make a small modification and here it is:
sudo ./b43-fecutter-011/b43-fwcutter ….
and the rest is the same.
Hope this will help.
I installed driver successfully but cannot figure out where to find which radi bands are supported a,b or g.
Good luck, Jacek
Since I didn’t have an internet connection from Ubuntu to begin with, I went to the location directly in windows. Saved the files in a cd, then moved them to where I supposed is the directory in should go. For example, the fwcutter I moved this to the Installs directory. My problem: It didn’t look like the make worked as I saw numerous errors and warnings. Any idea?
what errors are you receiving? you need to install build-essential packages in order to compile (make) the firmware
It appears that you can’t copy the file in windows. I had to move my computer closer to the router in order to connect using wired. I ran the steps and the make worked.
now my problem is with getting b43-fwcutter to work. I’m getting that same message as PR4Y. I tried Jacek way but it didn’t work either.
figured out how to get b43-fwcutter to work. It needs to be installed. Here’s how you do it:
sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter
You should get a screen asking to install firmware. Since I didn’t want to proceed with this, I said no and then used the sudo way as described in the step above.
@grouch: so you were able to finalize your wireless?
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