Broadcom wireless

[DShelbyD]

So, there's a willingness to build the 4312, which is not free, for Mageia 2 -- but not even a willingness to respond to a request for the free 4306, 4311(rev1), 4318, 4320? I just don't understand.

[salebih]

Any progress on this one ?

I have Broadcom43225 I have tryed urpmi dkms-broadcom-wl but unfortunately "No package named dkms-broadcom-wl" and I have enabled all repos :/

[doktor5000]

I have tryed urpmi dkms-broadcom-wl but unfortunately "No package named dkms-broadcom-wl" and I have enabled all repos :/

Seems not, it is in nonfree release:

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[doktor5000@mageia1 ~]$ ufn broadcom
Nonfree Release:dkms-broadcom-wl-5.100.82.38-3.mga1.x86_64

[DifferentialPrime]

<scratch>

[doktor5000]

Sorry, but what does <scratch> mean?

[DShelbyD]

After a good bit of testing and packaging activity yesterday, there is a solution provided by packager José Jorge. it should appear in Core Updates as soon as there are some approvals. It has been tested on both i586 (by José) and x86_64 (by me) systems and is for the following chipsets only: Broadcom 4306, 4311(rev1), 4318, and 4320.

As I type, the 4 required package updates are in Core Updates Testing (by enabling that repo, you can get them now):
drakx-net-0.97.1-2.mga1.noarch.rpm
drakx-net-applet-0.97.1-2.mga1.noarch.rpm
drakx-net-text-0.97.1-2.mga1.noarch.rpm
libdrakx-net-0.97.1-2.mga1.noarch.rpm

After installing these 4 package version updates (previous versions will not work),
* right click on net_applet in the panel, choose 'configure network' (or go to Mageia Control Center "Network & Internet"))
* choose wireless
* choose wlan0
A small box will appear with no text, indicating that activity is taking place. What is happening is that the system is retrieving a couple of packages, including b43-tools and b43-openfwwf. It may ask to download an additional package (for me wpa-supplicant was not on my system at the time -- it was a fresh installation).

After a few seconds the process will finish, and you can configure your wireless for your network.

I raise one caution: I opted to allow NetworkManager to control the wireless device, but when I rebooted, I had to reconfigure the device. Because I've seen this issue in Pardus, and because I'm suspicious of NetworkManager at the moment, my advice is to leave NetworkManager out of this. Mageia's network configuration tool in Mageia Control Center is sufficient and reliable. After letting Mageia control the device, wireless worked after reboot without further intervention.

Many thanks to José Jorge of the Mageia packaging team and MrsB of the QA team for their perseverance. I'm marking this baby "Solved"!

[DShelbyD]

The updates have been pushed to Core Updates. They are no longer in Core Updates Testing.

[DShelbyD]

In Mageia 2, the package b43-openfwwf supplies firmware for the following Broadcom wireless chipsets only: 4306, 4311 (rev. 1), 4318, and 4320.

I installed from the Mageia 2 Live CD (KDE). The CD activated my 4318 on boot; however, after installation the chipset was not working, and there was a message (with a typographical error!) as follows:

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Some packages (b43-openfwwf) are required but aren't available. These packages can be found in Mageia or in the official non-free package repository. The following component is missing: /lib/firmware/b43/ucode5.fw  The required files can also be installed from this URL: http://www.ing-unibs.it/~openfwwf/

The typo is in that URL: The hyphen should be a period, so that it reads: http://www.ing.unibs.it/~openfwwf/

Exasperated that the Live CD had activated the wireless but there was an annoying process to be followed to make it work after installation, I shut down my old Compaq V2000 notebook machine without further action except to configure the repositories. Today I booted it again and went to MCC to try the configuration again. Immediately the b43-openfwwf was automatically installed, the wireless light came on, and I was able to supply the WPA2 password to get the wireless working. And I'm using Network Manager.

This wireless activation process is a bit less complicated than where I left Mageia 1 in October 2011 (see the upstream notes) after Jose had packaged a fix. I add this late post to the thread (the beginning of which has been redacted since I last saw it in October) in hopes that it will help someone who has one of these 4 Broadcom chipsets and is trying to activate wireless networking in Mageia 2.

[drichard58]

OK - I hope I am not going to be muddying the water here, but when I installed Mageia, it loaded the b43-openfwwf driver and the wpa-supplicant, so when I went to configure my wireless & saw my access point, I thought I was home free. Unfortunately, when I tried to connect it just responds with "Problems occurred during the network connectivity test..."

Any suggestions for this or should I uninstall the b43-openfwwf and install the other?

[DShelbyD]

OK - I hope I am not going to be muddying the water here, but when I installed Mageia, it loaded the b43-openfwwf driver and the wpa-supplicant, so when I went to configure my wireless & saw my access point, I thought I was home free. Unfortunately, when I tried to connect it just responds with "Problems occurred during the network connectivity test..."

Any suggestions for this or should I uninstall the b43-openfwwf and install the other?

I think I saw the same message, but the NM icon on the panel indicated it was working. Also note that my hardware is the BCM4318, which, along with 3 other chipsets I named works with b43-openfwwf. If you have one of the 4, b43-openfwwf is what you need. Was it working with the Live CD prior to installation? I mean, did you configure it while running from the CD prior to starting the installation?

[drichard58]

No. When I did the install off the DVD, it would not let me set up the wireless (because I did not have the firmware loaded, I guess), but when I logged in the first time and went to try and install it, I saw that the openfwwf was already installed.

I tried several more times to connect (since it does show up on the list) and I did eventually get it to connect, but then it drops out & tries to reconnect about 30 seconds later. Seems like maybe something is not holding the connection.

[jeffreybruton]

David:

Thanks for the info on B43-openfwwf. With a fresh install of Mageia 2, worked first time for me with a Belkin PCI wireless card (BCM 4318 chipset) in a Dell C600 laptop. Chipset was shown using "lspci" at a command prompt.

Only drag in my mind is for newbies or the less experienced. With Internet connectivity via a wired connection, all searches in the Software Management GUI (accessed via Mageia Conctrol Center "MMC") for B43 or even the exact name of the package came up with no results. However typing "urpmi b43" at a root command prompt showed 4 results and one of them was B43-openfwwf.

"urpmi b43-openfwwf" at a root command prompt installed the package. After a reboot, lights on the Belkin card came on and going into the MMC to "Set up a new network interface..." in the Network & Internet section of the MMC, I configured a new wireless connection using "wlan0" and was off and running.

Why doesn't the package come up in a Software Management search, but works fine in a command prompt with urpmi?

Thanks again
Jeffrey Bruton

[DShelbyD]

Jeffrey, I don't have access to Mageia right now, and I won't for another week. I suspect that, in the Mageia Control Center "Add/Remove Software," you have available only packages with GUI rather than ALL. That option is at the top left corner of the MCC application.

If that's not the problem, I'm sorry to say that I have no idea why b43-openfwwf would not appear in a search.

David

[doktor5000]

Jeffrey, I don't have access to Mageia right now, and I won't for another week. I suspect that, in the Mageia Control Center "Add/Remove Software," you have available only packages with GUI rather than ALL. That option is at the top left corner of the MCC application.

That is the problem, as otherwise with that Filter set to ALL rpmdrake shows the same packages as urpmi.

[hintzy64]

I did a fresh install of Mageia 2 yesterday (finally saying goodbye to Mandriva 2011...) from the LiveCD onto a desktop machine with broadcom wifi and no nearby wired connection.

If I go through the network section of MCC and try to set up the wifi connection using b43, I am told that the b43-openfwwf package is needed to continue. And if I try to use ndiswrapper instead (I always kept a copy of the bcmwl5.inf and .sys files handy for any fresh install of Mandriva), it tells me the ndiswrapper interface wasn't found.

The output from iwconfig identified the card, as did ndiswrapper -l, and the output of lsmod showed both b43 and ndiswrapper modules. (Sorry I don't have the exact output to post, I had to reboot to windows to get here. I can save the output to a text file to post it if needed.)

So I'm kind of dead in the water at the moment. I could move the machine down to the basement and plug it into my router directly, but if there's an easier way, I'll take it. Can I just download that one package and install it locally, or will it have other unsatisfied dependencies? Is that package available on the DVD? Ironically, I downloaded and installed from the LiveCD instead of the DVD because the download page states if you need WiFi or specific video drivers at install time, use the LiveCD...

I'm not too worried, I feel like wifi has never worked straight out of the box for me since I made that machine wireless 7 years ago, though it sure would be nice to get there someday. But I was always able to temporarily use ndiswrapper (which has seemed too flaky for long-term use in the past) until I got driverloader (dead) or b43 up and running.

Thanks in advance for the help, I'm really looking forward to exploring Mageia!
-John

[DShelbyD]

John, my Maryland neighbor:

Sandy approaches. Act fast!

The firmware can be configured from the Live CD. Proceeding with installation thereafter worked for me -- IF b43-openfwwf is for your particular Broadcom hardware. Just don't allow the Live installation to "remove unneeded software" early in the installation process.

If you don't want to go through another installation (the DVD does NOT contain the firmware because the firmware is "non-free"), then on your Windows machine go to ftp://mirrors.kernel.org/mageia/distrib/2/x86_64/media/core/release/, scroll down and fetch the rpm for your architecture onto a USB stick, and see if you can install it from there with MCC or the rpm command from terminal in your Mageia installation.

I hope this at least gets you started and you can complete the project before anticipated power interruption that surely is coming....

David

[hintzy64]

Ah, the "remove unneeded packages" step, I should have known! That's probably been my problem every time I go through this. I had glanced over the list of things it was going to remove, but I must have missed the b43 packages there. Assuming I have power when I get home from work today, I'll give your suggestions a shot.

Stay safe and dry!

Thanks,
-John

[doktor5000]

If I go through the network section of MCC and try to set up the wifi connection using b43, I am told that the b43-openfwwf package is needed to continue. And if I try to use ndiswrapper instead (I always kept a copy of the bcmwl5.inf and .sys files handy for any fresh install of Mandriva), it tells me the ndiswrapper interface wasn't found.

Hi there, maybe you could try to manually

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rmmod b43 ; modprobe ndiswrapper

as drakconnect has the habit of just not loading ndiswrapper module,
or at leat it used to back in the days, not sure if that has been fixed since as i didn't use ndiswrapper since ages.

If you want to use b43, you may want to have a look at http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drive ... ed_devices
if your chipset is supported by it. You get the PCI ID via

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lspcidrake -v | grep -i net

If you scroll quite a bit down on that page, there are also some alternative drivers listed, and also
instructions what needs to be done if you want to switch from one driver to another: http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drive ... en_drivers

[hintzy64]

Yes, I remember having issues with ndiswrapper not loading on boot and having to manually start it every time, which is why I only ever used it as a temporary measure until b43 is up and running. My chipset is 14e4:4320, which is on the supported list but with no alternate drivers. I feel like I have to go through this every time I do a fresh install, I should really start taking notes.

In any event, downloading b43-openfwwf on another machine and installing that package from the local copy worked! (no other dependencies, thankfully) I'm online and about halfway done installing package updates. Already enjoying this far more than all the ROSA stuff Mandriva has now.

Off-topic: I see you are in Leipzig! I have family there! Hope to come visit again someday, it's a wonderful place. (And working slowly on my German in the meantime...)

Thanks again for the help,
-John

[doktor5000]

Off-topic: I see you are in Leipzig! I have family there! Hope to come visit again someday, it's a wonderful place. (And working slowly on my German in the meantime...)

Heh. Feel free to ping me if you're in town for a free beer or so