Ubuntu 8.04 + Broadcom Wireless
March 28, 2008After a pretty smooth install of Ubuntu Studio 8.04 (Hardy Heron) Beta on my wife’s HP Pavillion dv6000 everything seemed to work well. Everything that is, except for the Broadcom Wireless. I just could not get it to switch on.
When trying to activate the proprietary drivers, the system would tell me I needed to reboot the machine for the changes to take effect. Once booted it would still not be enabled. Both physically and in the proprietary driver screen.
To solve my problem I used the following steps:
1. First off you need to ensure that you have the build essentials package installed so that you can build the b43-fwcutter.
sudo apt-get install build-essential
2. Once that is installed you can download and build b43-fwcutter.
wget http://bu3sch.de/b43/fwcutter/b43-fwcutter-011.tar.bz2
tar xjf b43-fwcutter-011.tar.bz2
cd b43-fwcutter-011
make
cd ..
3. Now we need to download the Broadcom firmware and install it. Note that the “FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR” must point to the directory where your firmware directory is. The one I have used below is what it is in Ubuntu.
export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR=”/lib/firmware”
wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2
tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2
cd broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod
../../b43-fwcutter-011/b43-fwcutter -w “$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR” wl_apsta.o
4. Now simply reboot the laptop and presto… the little wireless light should be blue 
March 29, 2008 at 12:07 am
You don’t say what Broadcom Network Controller
you were using.
March 29, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Thanks very much, that was really helpful.
Cheers
Barry Carr
March 30, 2008 at 10:43 am
Hi,
I have followed all the steps you have mentioned above, but in the last step I am getting an error, posted below :
root@maverick:/home/gino/broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod# ../../b43-fwcutter-011/b43-fwcutter -w “$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR” wl_apsta.o
This file is recognised as:
ID : FW11
filename : wl_apsta.o
version : 351.126
MD5 : 9207bc565c2fc9fa1591f6c7911d3fc0
Extracting b43/ucode4.fw
failed to create output directory: No such file or directory
Thank you for your help.
March 30, 2008 at 1:31 pm
I get a similar error as above…however mine at the end says the following:
Extracting b43/ucode4.fw
failed to create output directory: Permission denied
Anyone know how to solve this…sorry a beginner to this.
March 30, 2008 at 1:33 pm
Solved it…I ran the last command with sudo. Sorted.
March 31, 2008 at 10:49 am
Worked a treat for me! I didn’t bother with export line (first one in the second group of commands) and used replaced “$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR” with “/lib/firmware”. I could do this because I know that’s where my firmware is installed but I didn’t really see the point of exporting the variable if I’m only using it once.
Anyway, thanks for the hint, this is the first time I’ve had wireless working on Hardy.
March 31, 2008 at 11:56 pm
[...] little investigation threw up instructions (also enumerated on other sites) on how to use fw-cutter to install new [...]
April 1, 2008 at 4:21 am
THANK YOU! It works beautifully, fixed the Hardware Drivers dialog, and lets me run at full speed via WICD.
The only problems were I had to run the final command with “sudo” prepended and substitute the “$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR” with the explicit ”/lib/firmware” (sans quotes). I don’t know why it didn’t work with the $FIRMW~, but then again, it doesn’t really make sense to make the variable just for that one command (unless I’m missing something - I’m pretty new to command-line building and such)
THANKS, [chloe]
April 2, 2008 at 10:13 pm
Wahoo! This worked PERFECTLY! Thanks a ton! (I had tried my normal ndiswrapper route, with no success…
April 6, 2008 at 4:04 pm
hem, i’m going to try http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43, do you think i will success on my poor hp nx6125?
if you experience about that, i would be glad to hear from you (skype: sir_luke_73)
if this issue is already in this post i apologize, anyway… i need help..
nbfe… (learning is a neverending story in li(nux)fe…
April 6, 2008 at 5:31 pm
Shouldn’t that package be ‘build-essential’ without the s?
April 7, 2008 at 12:16 am
I had the same problem, so I did a apt-get dist-upgrade and then I was able to go to
System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers
to install the driver without any problems.
While it was installing, I clicked Details and saw that it downloaded and ran b43-fwcutter automatically.
April 8, 2008 at 3:30 am
Thanks man. I have been ubuntu with my Acer for 2 years now. Each time I update to a new version I have days of work getting my broadcom working. This tutorial was the first ever to work exactly as posted. Great job. Damn good joe.
April 9, 2008 at 5:43 am
i tried on my dv6000 and after the first command i get “E: Couldn’t find package build-essentials”
what now?
help!!!
April 9, 2008 at 5:44 am
i should have mentioned, this is my very first crack at a linux-based os. help the noobie!!!
thanks!
April 9, 2008 at 5:46 am
… guess i should get the package…
sorry for the bother
April 9, 2008 at 9:44 am
@petorious
Sorry about that. it is supposed to read like this:
sudo apt-get install build-essential
I see there was a comment about it but I”ve just been way too busy lately but it is fixed now.
Hope that helps.
April 10, 2008 at 3:29 am
Worked PERFECTLY on my Dell XPS M1330. Did all the ndiswrapper nonsense with 7.10, and during my install of 8.04 just now this worked great.
I also had to do “/dev/firmware” to get it to work too.
April 15, 2008 at 5:18 pm
Worked perfectly on my ubuntu
i was struggling with ndiswrapper etc for a long time
the only thing i needed to run fwcutter-009 instead of fwcutter-011
for my broadcom wireless otherwise it would give me some weird error
April 18, 2008 at 7:16 am
Hi, did exactly what you said (with the sudo and /lib/firmware changes to the command lines) right after loading 8.04. The blue light was on, but not talking to my router yet. Then Ubuntu downloaded an hours worth of updates. Now, no blue light, and System -> Administration -> Network shows no wireless. iwconfig shows no wireless. lspci shows
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI (rev 02)
i’m on an HP dv6000 running 32 bit on AMD Turion 64.
Any ideas? Please dont let me go back to xp…..
Help me Obiwan…………..
April 19, 2008 at 8:16 pm
i installed and it does not turn on my wireless……what next???
April 22, 2008 at 9:04 am
I have a problem… I followed these instructions for my dv6110us, and it worked great, except I dual boot and now it doe not work in Windows. I can not seem to find a firmware download anywhere to put it back? Can anyone help me?
April 25, 2008 at 7:18 am
Folks,
If the “sudo apt-get install ” commands don’t work, remember to start with a “sudo apt-get update” and wait a bit for the poor slammed ubuntu servers to respond. After the update, you should be okay.
BTW, I’m writing this on Ubuntu 8.04 running on a crusty old Dell Latitude D600 1.3GHz with 1GB RAM and it screams. And the BroadCom b43xx wireless card works fine now. Thanks, Penkin!
April 25, 2008 at 5:58 pm
How am I supposed to use apt-get install without a network connection?
April 26, 2008 at 6:04 am
Thank you so much for posting your guide. I followed your guide to the letter but got an error message when I ran the last command:
../../b43-fwcutter-011/b43-fwcutter -w “$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR” wl_apsta.o
Although I did get an error message when I executed the preceeding command, I attempted the command again using sudo in front of your command and I got an error message again. I rebooted my computer. Went into Hardware Drivers and noticed that my wireless card was being recognized now. I simply enabled the Broadcom Wireless card and allowed the driver to be downloaded and I was able to successfully enable the wifi and connect to my wireless network without any problems.
I do believe that Ubuntu and Linux in general really needs to focus on the problems of including and support wireless cards and chipsets. I do not understand why Ubuntu removed Resticted Drivers from Ubuntu 8.04. Do you know of a way to download and re-install this particularly useful feature?
You should definitely post your guide in the Ubuntu Forums as soon as possible.
Thanks again for the guide.
April 26, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Thank you very much for the tutorial!
It worked perfectly, except by the last command that I had to replace to:
> sudo su
> ../../b43-fwcutter-011/b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta.o
Congratulations!
April 26, 2008 at 9:20 pm
What speed do you get? I’ve always used ndiswrapper in the past to get 54Mb speed because fwcutter would only get 18 or 23 or something like that.
April 26, 2008 at 9:44 pm
Thanks men, you safed my installation! You’re the only one talking about “sudo apt-get install build-essential”. That’s what a newbie like me needs…
If you copy/past from the website like me
: watch the quotes “. Terminal does not like the strange ” characters from the website! Just type them again or it will not work.
More info and other drivers versions can be found at:
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
April 26, 2008 at 10:06 pm
All you have to do is
1. sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
2. Change “blacklist bcm43xx” to “#blacklist bcm43xx”
3. Restart. You should get a restricted driver message.
4. Enable restricted driver
5. Restart and you are good to go
April 27, 2008 at 2:15 am
Cheers,
All I needed was:
sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter
and you’re prompted to download and extract the firmware.
April 27, 2008 at 9:42 am
[...] brief search on Google turned up a great tutorial on getting Ubuntu 8.04 to work with a Broadcom wireless adapter on an HP dv6000 ser…. Seeing as my machine is a zv6000 I figured following the instructions was at least worth a [...]
April 27, 2008 at 11:00 am
Bravo, my friend, bravo. If only folks could write instructions as clear and reliable as this.
April 27, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Dude, you rock, now the wireless on my acer extenza 4620z works!
April 28, 2008 at 12:45 am
This is just sad, and another perfect example of why Linux won’t replace Windows on the desktop over the next decade. It just doesn’t work! I LOVE Ubuntu Linux, and use it on two computers at home. The wired desktop upgraded fine. But I worked for HOURS with the Broadcom problems with the wireless and finally gave up completely and reinstalled 7.10. Many thanks for the posting, I know it’s a great help to many; but to other discouraged Linux users it’s just another example of a hackers OS still unsuitable for prime time. Unfortgunately, it just doesn’t work.
April 28, 2008 at 2:26 am
Sweet dude, works like a charm. Thank you very much for posting this. Keep rockin’!
April 28, 2008 at 3:52 am
i get this error,
This file is recognised as:
ID : FW11
filename : wl_apsta.o
version : 351.126
MD5 : 9207bc565c2fc9fa1591f6c7911d3fc0
Extracting b43/ucode4.fw
failed to create output directory: No such file or directory
even with sudo and didn’t work.
what am i doing wrong?
April 28, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Well, this worked to the extent that when the computer rebooted, my wireless light DID come on. However, I cannot detect any wireless networks! I also cannot use the FunctionKey+WirelessKey to turn the light off manually as I did in Gutsy.
Any ideas, anyone?
April 28, 2008 at 2:58 pm
Hey Juanfer2k,
Make sure you spelled everything exactly right. I had that same problem when I used ’sudo’, but I realized I had copied one word wrong.
April 28, 2008 at 8:07 pm
still no blue light
April 28, 2008 at 11:18 pm
I too had a problem executing the last line:-
../../b43-fwcutter-011/b43-fwcutter -w “$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR” wl_apsta.o
As I found that the b43-fwcutter script was not actually in the b43-fwcutter-011 directory. I found the alternative approach of:-
sudo b43-fwcutter -w “/lib/firmware” broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod/wl_apsta.o
run from root worked a treat, i.e. don’t use:-
cd broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod
from the line before.
April 28, 2008 at 11:27 pm
Thanks a lot. I got it to work by following these steps-
1. I rebooted after executing the build and make commands.
2. I checked the restricted hardware; ubuntu had already detected the required firmware. All I had to do was enable it and the wireless started working.
April 29, 2008 at 6:17 am
Worked on my HP ZE4300 - I’ve been playing around with Linux for the longest time and have never gotten the wireless to work. This did work - thanks!
Also - the little blue light did not come on but I am connected.
April 29, 2008 at 7:37 am
This worked great! The hardest part I found was how to get the build-essential package installed. I tried the command without success, but used the Synaptic Package Manager and everything else worked great. Well, the “FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR” reference didn’t work either, but I just adjusted where I unzipped it to and moved the folder to the \lib\firmware directory.
Thank you so much!
April 29, 2008 at 7:50 am
# Paul Says:
April 27, 2008 at 2:15 am
Cheers,
All I needed was:
sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter
and you’re prompted to download and extract the firmware.
This worked for me with a gateway M350. Thanks.
April 29, 2008 at 3:42 pm
on nx6125 i used only:
sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter
it installed but didn’t work so went back to dual boot windows(vistax64) to see does wireless still work there. it was off (usually is always on?!) so I enabled and it worked good as usuall. after restart of windows back to 8.04 (which was in hibernate) wireless worked!
April 29, 2008 at 8:27 pm
@ofca: I had funny stuff like that too in earlier releases of Ubuntu with the bcm43xx driver. Apparently the driver doesn’t manage to fully initialise the card, or something like that, and switching to Windows can do that for you. But I don’t want to dual-boot now, and using ndiswrapper with the drivers provided by HP (I also have the nx6125) just gives me a more robust result…
(installation notes)
April 30, 2008 at 2:31 am
THANKS A LOT. Awesome attitude sharing those essentials that us, mortals, can´t manage. Truly generous of you to take the time to empower Linux Desktop users
April 30, 2008 at 8:24 am
thanks. This is a lifesaver. Definitely adding this to my del.icio.us so i can find it next time i reload ubuntu.
–ted
April 30, 2008 at 9:09 pm
Worked like a champ for my HP zd8000. The firmware I was using with Ubuntu 7.10 would load, but wouldn’t bring up the interface. This did the trick, didn’t even need to reboot.
May 1, 2008 at 12:02 am
Worked like a charm. I had just installed ubuntu on two laptops with this card and didn’t have direct access to the internet (due to not having wireless). Followed these steps and presto.
I don’t know thou if just letting ubuntu handle it once I had internet would have worked.
May 1, 2008 at 10:33 pm
My card (Belkin PCMCIA F5d7010 ver 1315) worked with this guideline but i had to do following:
in /etc/modprobe.d/blcklist file
blacklist bcm43xx
if i dont do above and put
#blacklist bcm43xx
then network was not working and both leds stay up on the card.
FYI: i am using Ubuntu 8.04 on DELL Inspiron 2650.
May 3, 2008 at 5:56 am
routine didn’t work for me, but I used the Synaptic Package Manager to fix it. Searched for “Broadcom” and the Ubuntu version of the driver package was there. Installed it, rebooted, and wallah. I didn’t have to disable/enable the wireless to get it to connect, but it’s working now and I’m typing this using the wireless to connect.
May 4, 2008 at 11:02 am
I try to do everything is was writing here, but nothing work.
I have a question. “How I can enable a device in ubuntu ?”
tx
Ed
May 4, 2008 at 5:58 pm
let’s say I run all comands in the first post (in red) and all work corect (last I run it with sudo and /lib/firmware)
I reboot Ubuntu 8.04 and nothing …
I comment in /etc/modprobe.d/blcklist file that #blacklist bcm43xx
I reboot Ubuntu 8.04 and nothing …
I install from packages all searched with “broadcom”, these 3 packages corectly
I have install the wireless driver via “wireless hardware”, it see broadcom, but in network manager don’t.
I reboot Ubuntu 8.04 and nothing …
I press wireless button several times.. nothing…
in Network Manager don’t appear the wireless section.
if run lshw I see the network wireless card - BC4312
so ? Ubuntu 8.04 is working with Broadcom wireless or not?
I don’t understand why even show at Network Manager!
somebody know what I’m doing wrong?
May 4, 2008 at 8:26 pm
Thanks very much for you tutorial. My wireless light indicator are now on. However, after rebooting I can’t get my laptop communicate with the router. After looking here and there I did the following and voila, have wireless connection. In:
SYSTEM/PREFERENCES/Encryption and Keyrings delete any entry you have that contains a previous password phrase for your router.
When trying to connect you will be prompted to enter you router WPA-Personal password. Press CONNECT and you are ready. That works for me after following P3NK!N tutorial.
May 4, 2008 at 8:29 pm
I also followed the instructions above to no avail.
After almost a week with no wireless, I noticed Bug #226134
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux-source-2.6.24/+bug/226134
It seems iwl3945 does not work properly unless you create a file named /etc/modprobe.d/iwl3945 in which the following two lines are written:
alias wlan0 iwl3945
options iwl3945 disable_hw_scan=1
After creating this file and rebooting, wireless networks suddenly appeared in wicd.
May 5, 2008 at 10:45 am
Superb. Followed the instructions and viola wireless working now.
Thanks again.
May 6, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Thank you!
May 7, 2008 at 4:07 pm
Hmmmmm…. I tried the last command with “sudo” and it still said “failed to create output directory: no such file or directory”. But it did recognize the file. Here’s what I got (after downloading it, it ran this script on prompt):
joshua@Joshua-Ubuntu-MacBook:~/broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0/kmod$ ../../b43-fwcutter-011/b43-fwcutter -w “$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR” wl_apsta.o
This file is recognised as:
ID : FW11
filename : wl_apsta.o
version : 351.126
MD5 : 9207bc565c2fc9fa1591f6c7911d3fc0
Extracting b43/ucode4.fw
failed to create output directory: No such file or directory
Any suggestions???
May 10, 2008 at 8:10 am
I’m sorry but it didn’t work out for me even though I have followed the directions scrupulously. My router is Edimax and my laptop is hp compaq 6710b. Do I need to change something the command line?
My surprise was when I looked for hardware drivers in my laptop and found none.
Do I need to reverse the commands I wrote in the command line?
May 11, 2008 at 8:57 pm
in response to Gino near the top
when the error occurs type sudo -i to become the root, then cd till u get to ur user folder in ur home folder (eg /home/mike/) then run the last line again but like this ../../b43-fwcutter-011/b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta.o
it doesnt allow u to extract there first time cuz ur not sudo when running the command, and sudo’ing the command for some reason doesnt work.
but on the other hand, it extracted all the files correctly… but the wireless still doesnt turn on. im on a acer extensa 5620g laptop… not even sure if the wireless card is a broadcom so could be that its not a broadcom.. could be something else
May 11, 2008 at 9:02 pm
um in response to myself
i ran lspci in the termal and got this out of the mess
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
04:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
so im guessing it is a broadcom.. and it still doesnt work
any suggestions?
May 11, 2008 at 9:09 pm
hmm when u go to the /lib/firmware folder there is a b43 folder with a fat X on it and u cant view wats inside it. maybe that could be a problem, like it cant access the folder to get the files it needs or something. cant change the permissions either.
May 11, 2008 at 9:21 pm
ok got the permissions of the b43 right. the b43 folder was owned by root so had to become root (sudo -i), go to the folder and use chown -R mike:mike b43 to gain ownership (where mike is ur username). but this didnt help. still no wireless. therefor can deduce that it is not a permission problem
i am stumped now
May 15, 2008 at 5:39 am
Just an observation. If you, like me, have installed Ubuntu via wubi, make sure that you install firmware in the /lib/firmware/2.6.24-16-generic/ to get things running. And many thanks for this wonderfully easy solution to get the wireless working.