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I installed Ubuntu 10.10 on my Dell Inspiron 1521 and the LAN/Ethernet card was working perfectly but Ubuntu was displaying a message about not installing the Wireless drivers because it was restricted or something along that line.

I then went to the Synaptic Package Manager, searched for all Broadcom packages and installed them. So far so good.

I restarted my computer and to my surprise, my wireless works but my lan isn't! What the heck could be wrong?

I then uninstalled/removed all the packages I installed earlier hoping my ethernet would start working again but hey, nothing changed. My wireless card works and the ethernet still doesn't.

Is there any way of getting this fixed?

I checked and found my network devices were:

  • Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
  • Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN (rev 01)
Braiam
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Alex Essilfie
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2 Answers2

6

After a lot of sweat I figured it out.

Apparently, installing the new wlan drivers blacklisted the ethernet drivers.

I opened the file /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf¹ and commented out the line blacklisting the ethernet adapter (which was b44 by the way).

The file now looks like this:

# wl module from Broadcom conflicts with ssb  
# We must blacklist the following modules:  
#blacklist b44      <--Commented out this line
blacklist b43legacy  
blacklist b43  
blacklist ssb  
install wl /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install wl $CMDLINE_OPTS

End result, the ethernet works like expected. As a matter of fact, I'm replying over ethernet.



¹ My attention has been drawn to the fact that the filename may not be the same on all systems.
One user reportedly found the blacklist data in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-bcm43.conf. I am however unable to determine which configuration (version of Ubuntu, OS language, etc) this manifests on.

Community
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Alex Essilfie
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0

I installed Ubuntu 12.04 on my Dell Inspiron 6400 and my LAN / Ethernet card does not work.

root@MM061:~# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS, 943/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family PCI Express Port 4 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 
01)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7-M Family) SATA Controller [IDE mode] (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation N10/ICH 7 Family SMBus Controller (rev 01)
**03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)**
03:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller
03:01.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
03:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 0a)
03:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 05)
0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN (rev 01)

In Broadcom Web:(http://www.broadcom.com/support/ethernet_nic/4401.php download this driver. The following are general guidelines for installing the driver.

  1. Create a directory and extract the files:

    tar xvzf b44-<version>.tar.gz

  2. Build the driver b44.o (or b44.ko) as a loadable module for the running kernel:

    cd src
make

  3. Test the driver by loading it: 

    insmod b44.o

    or

    insmod b44.ko (on 2.6.x kernels)

    or

    insmod b44

  4. Install the driver:

    make install

See RPM instructions above for the location of the installed driver.

  1. To configure network protocol and address, refer to various Linux documentations.

    root@123-MM061:/home/123# cd b44-1.00g/
root@123-MM061:/home/123/b44-1.00g# ls
b44.4  b44.c  b44.h  LICENSE  Makefile

I do not know what cd src means

root@vince-MM061:/home/123/b44-1.00g# make
gcc -DMODULE -D__KERNEL__ -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -I/lib/modules/3.2.0-23-generic-pae/build/include  -DOLD_NETIF -DOLD_DMA -DNO_DMA_MAPPING_ERROR -O2   -c -o b44.o b44.c
amc
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user285305
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