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I have the following wireless hardware on a Compaq evo N600c laptop running lubuntu latest.

ciaran@compaq:~$ lspci -vvnn | grep 14e4
03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4320] (rev 03)

Following the instructions from here :

http://www.linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#b43_and_b43legacy

I opted for the legacy firmware installer, following instructions for internet install to the letter (with no errors). i.e. I successfully installed 

sudo apt-get install firmware-b43legacy-installer

In the nm-applet I now get 

Wireless networks device not ready (firmware missing)

I open up Additional Drivers, but the list is empty. I have commented out this line in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

#blacklist bcm43xx

Contents of firmware dir:

ciaran@compaq:/etc/modprobe.d$ sudo ls /lib/firmware/b43legacy/
[sudo] password for ciaran: 
a0g0bsinitvals2.fw  a0g0initvals5.fw    b0g0bsinitvals2.fw  b0g0initvals5.fw  ucode11.fw  ucode5.fw
a0g0bsinitvals5.fw  a0g1bsinitvals5.fw  b0g0bsinitvals5.fw  pcm4.fw       ucode2.fw
a0g0initvals2.fw    a0g1initvals5.fw    b0g0initvals2.fw    pcm5.fw       ucode4.fw

Edit:

from dmesg:

[ 4460.193382] b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43/ucode5.fw" not found
[ 4460.193393] b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43-open/ucode5.fw" not found
[ 4460.193401] b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to     http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware and download the correct firmware for this driver version. Please carefully read all instructions on this website.

Yours in hope.

ScrollerBlaster
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2 Answers2

4

converted comments as answer

To ensure that wireless works correctly with the BCM4306 wireless device try the following:

  1. Remove the b43-legacy package you have installed.
  2. Connect your laptop with a wired connection and test your internet connection works.
  3. Search in Dash for Additional Drivers and it should open a window and offer you to install the b43-cutter - activate this.
  4. If the above doesnt work, then the missing firmware can be found by installing the following package:
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer
fossfreedom
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1

I followed this guy's steps, except the last two lines were in /lib/firmware/, not in modules.

EDIT:

Above as a small shell script, for easy cut and paste.

#!/bin/bash

set -o errexit
set -o xtrace

TMPDIR=$(mktemp -d)

cd "${TMPDIR}"

wget "http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o"
wget "http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2"
tar xfvj "broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2"
sudo b43-fwcutter -w "/lib/firmware" "wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o"
sudo b43-fwcutter --unsupported -w "/lib/firmware" "broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver/wl_apsta_mimo.o"
sudo chmod 775 "/lib/firmware/b43"
sudo chmod 775 "/lib/firmware/b43legacy"

cd -
rm -r "${TMPDIR}"
ojs
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kiai
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