Fedora live and broadcom wifi

[Marfis]

I wanted to try out Fedora 16. I am relatively new to Linux espacially to Fedora. Therefore I only created a live system with persistence using LinuxLive (http://www.linuxliveusb.com/) on an sd card. On my Acer laptop (Extensa 5635ZG) I can't get wifi to work but Ethernet works. I tried many different drivers/kernel modules (eg b43, maybe I did something wrong) but I don't even get a wifi option in the network settings.

My network hardware:

[liveuser@localhost ~]$ lspci -vnn | grep -iA2 net
07:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43225 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4357] (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device [105b:e021]
	Flags: fast devsel, IRQ 10
--
09:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Atheros Communications AR8131 Gigabit Ethernet [1969:1063] (rev c0)
	Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI] Device [1025:0253]
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 46

I don't know if it's relevant but I created my own initrd.img to be able to boot from my internal sd card reader (pci).

Could somebody please help me?

[stoat]

Originally Posted by Marfis

I tried many different drivers/kernel modules (eg b43, maybe I did something wrong)

According to linuxwireless.org, that BCM43225 might be supported by b43 included in newer kernel versions. Honestly, I can no longer keep all of the Broadcom stuff organized in my head. Anyway, even if your kernel's b43 does support your wireless chipset, it still needs firmware that you have to install. You didn't mention that.

But the BCM43225 is now listed amongst the ones known to be supported by the new brcmsmac driver also in newer kernels. It's nice because it works without you having to install anything else. But it apparently was not included in the release version of Fedora 16's kernel. So provided you have not installed a bunch of conflicting stuff during your previous efforts, you may only need to update the kernel via the wired Ethernet and reboot (or try just restarting NetworkManager if you don't want to reboot that live system).

Originally Posted by Marfis

I don't know if it's relevant but I created my own initrd.img to be able to boot from my internal sd card reader (pci).

I doubt it matters because NetworkManager starts up well into the booting process and the filesystem stuff should be accessible.

[Marfis]

Originally Posted by stoat

According to linuxwireless.org, that BCM43225 might be supported by b43 included in newer kernel versions. Honestly, I can no longer keep all of the Broadcom stuff organized in my head. Anyway, even if your kernel's b43 does support your wireless chipset, it still needs firmware that you have to install. You didn't mention that.

But the BCM43225 is now listed amongst the ones known to be supported by the new brcmsmac driver also in newer kernels. It's nice because it works without you having to install anything else. But it apparently was not included in the release version of Fedora 16's kernel. So provided you have not installed a bunch of conflicting stuff during your previous efforts, you may only need to update the kernel via the wired Ethernet and reboot (or try just restarting NetworkManager if you don't want to reboot that live system).

Many Thanks!
Your reply was very helpful. Wifi works now. Just for the record: I had to copy the resulting kernel to the sd card to boot from it; as I expected the boot directory on a live medium is a fake.