Anyone gotten BCM4312 to work on F11?

[chadikins]

Hello

Looking to install F11, have been trying the livecd (beta). However, I cannot get my wireless card to work :(. It is a Broadcom 4312 chipset on a Dell Inspiron 1525. I like Fedora and would like to get wireless working for a full install.
I have gotten it to work on Mandriva, PCLos, and Opensuse with ndiswrapper. But in the Fedora forums I haven't seen anyone use it. I tried several things from different posts but did not work. Does anyone know if ndiswrapper will work? If not what will? Iit does can I install via yum?

Thanks

[stoat]

But in the Fedora forums I haven't seen anyone use it.Hello chadikins,

I don't know about Fedora 11 since I don't use it yet, but the context of that quoted statement there suggested that you meant Fedora in general. I just wanted to say that the BCM4312 is nearly unique in that it works with every Broadcom driver method currrently known and used. It is discussed here often and is well-known to work with any of these driver methods... The native b43 driver
The new Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA driver (aka broadcom-wl)
Ndiswrapper and a Windows driverYou can read details of all of those plus Dangermouse's script that automates the b43 steps in another BCM4312 thread here...Post #27 in "No Wireless on Fedora 10 (Broadcom BCM4312)" (http://fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1123497#post1123497) started by roadracerLastly, since you have been trying several other distros, to be fair you should try a stable version of Fedora such as 10. You are fiddling around with a pre-release version that is guaranteed to have all kinds of problems. I mean, of course do what you want. But get used to solving problems if you push on with 11 at this time.

[chadikins]

stoat

Thanks for the quick reply. I will try ndiswrapper. I may be fiddling but I tried F10 on livecd and had the same result. I like experimenting and solving which is why I am using the beta.
Thanks for the info. I will try the broadcom-wl and then ndiswrapper later.

Thanks

[Firewing1]

I have a similar card (BCM4328) and it works great with kmod-wl/broadcom-wl from RPM Fusion - I would give that a try.

[chadikins]

Will do. Thanks.

[AdamW]

Right - in my experience, wl is the most reliably successful option for Broadcom adapters, including the 4312.

[chadikins]

Tried installing kmod-wl and broadcom-wl via terminal. Everything was ok except for dependencies involving the kernel. I guess they wont work without these because I still couldnt get wireless to work. Tried skipping broken packages during install. Tried installing ndiswrapper but it wouldnt finish either without updates. Kind of afraid to update because the other night I tried updating via the GUI package manager and after it was done it crashed and I basically wasted my time (i am on livecd).
So, my question: do I have to have the kernel updates to install kmod and broadcom-wl? If so will I not have to restart after i am done? If so, will I not need to install to hd to make this work? And can I be sure this chipset will work?..:confused:

Thanks

[stoat]

Tried installing kmod-wl and broadcom-wl via terminal. Everything was ok except for dependencies involving the kernel.

So, my question: do I have to have the kernel updates to install kmod and broadcom-wl?That would be the easiest thing to do. Besides, you're going to eventually update the kernel anyway. Right? But no, you don't have to for now. There is a way to force the older kernel's kmod package versions to install by installing and using the yum allowdowngrade plugin. You can read about that in a similar thread linked below. That thread involved kmod-ndiswrapper instead of kmod-wl, but the issue and the concept is exactly the same. Read to the end because Psycho and I sort of thrashed around some at first until the idea was fully understood by us. But it worked.http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=200092

[chadikins]

Thanks. Will try tomorrow. If no luck, may try an install.

Thanks

[AdamW]

You could also install the akmod-wl package, which ought to work with any kernel.

[chadikins]

AdamW

Tried the akmod install. Didn't help.

stoat
Tried what you suggested in the link with the downgrade. Could not get ndiswrapper installed. Again I had dependency problems. I tried it with the kernel installed on the livecd with uname -a, so it looked like this:
yum --allow-downgrade install kmod-ndiswrapper-(whatever livecd kernel is).
If it matters, in PCLinuxOS I got it working with the broadcom-wl, but it was dkms-broadcom-wl. Not sure what the dkms is for or if it matters.
I am enjoying fedora, but would like to make sure I can get this stinking broadcom card working. Anymore ideas, I will be willing to try. Maybe we can figure this out for the 4312 card.

Thanks guys

[AdamW]

dkms is an alternative for handling third party modules that's similar to the kmod/akmod system which rpmfusion prefers. they do more or less the same things in slightly different ways.

well, if you get your kernel up to date, I'm pretty sure the wl from that repository should work. I've used it myself and it works fine.

[chadikins]

Ok. I just want to make sure there's nothing about this card that would cause problems in terms of getting it to work with Fedora.
Last question as I don't know much about Fedora: if I install 10 can I update to 11 without having to do a reinstall and can I do the same from the beta?

Thanks for your help!

[AdamW]

I had a system with a BCM4312 and got it working using wl on Fedora 10 no problems. Worked fine.

You can update from 10 to 11 without a reinstall; you can do it with the package manager but that's not very well supported, the preferred method is to use a tool called 'preupgrade', which does a sort of specially primed version of an upgrade installation. From 10 to 11 beta you'd have to use yum, and from 11 beta to final is yum again.

[chadikins]

Thanks. I will probably install 10 this weekend and give it a shot.

I had a system with a BCM4312 and got it working using wl on Fedora 10 no problems. Worked fine.

That was my main concern, so if you had this working with my chipset then surely I can too.
I will post back with results (in case I need help again :D)

Thanks again

[jsandys]

Hello
Looking to install F11, have been trying the livecd (beta). However, I cannot get my wireless card to work :(. It is a Broadcom 4312 chipset on a Dell Inspiron 1525. I like Fedora and would like to get wireless working for a full install.
Thanks
Personally I like the b43-fwcutter. It works with the CCRMA realtime kernel 2.6.29.1-rt4 in testing for F10 (wl-broadcom doesn't) on my laptop. No need to update a kmod with each new kernel version. You can sneaker-net it (copy the two files to a usb drive) onto a computer with no network. I had a lot of pain with broadcom since FC8 until I switched to fwcutter.
http://www.linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#fw-b43-new
I haven't tried tis with a live cd yet, but I bet it will work.
May 5, 2009 edit -----
After creating a Live usb of XFCE Preview i686 version, I copied the b43-fwcutter from the rawhide repository and the broadcom-wl as listed in the site above onto the usb. Then booted the usb, installed b43-fwcutter with rpm install, then cut the firmware with b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta_mimo.o. After the reboot the wireless worked fine.
-- Jeff

[chadikins]

Thanks. Installing F10 tomorrow. Can I install cutter with yum? (link doesn't work).
Will probably try whatever until I get it to work. I have learned alot from this thread.
Thanks

[chadikins]

Ok. Installed F10, easy install procedure :). Updated via yum, rebooted, enabled rpm fusion and installed kmod-wl/broadcom-wl and got wireless to work. No problem.
For anyone searching, I have a dell inspiron 1525 with broadcom 4312 chipset.
Thanks for all your help guys, I hope to use fedora for a long time.
(How can I mark this as solved?)

[AdamW]

Just a note that if I were you I'd also install akmod-wl just to be double safe. I think you can mark as solved by editing the title of the first post in the thread, if it was yours.