Broadcom 4322 firmware missing on F15

[Varik]

I'm relatively new to Fedora, and I'm trying to figure out how to install the wireless driver for this installation.

What information do you need to help me solve this issue? I've tried a few guides, but they're all for >F14.

Thanks!


[Nevermind - SOLVED]

[NBZ]

Can I ask how you solved this?

I am getting a firmware missing error on Broadcom4312 firmware and cant seem to find a simple solution, so any pointers are welcome.

[stoat]

That message about missing firmware means the kernel is loading the b43 driver for your device. Some versions of the BCM4312 can use the b43 driver, but it requires firmware that you must acquire from elsewhere and install. To save you some time, here are the exact steps to try if you have a wire connection to the Internet for Fedora. Open a terminal and enter these commands one after the other. You can copy them directly from this page into your terminal...

wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
cd broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver	
su
b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta_mimo.o

After that, reboot and check NetworkManager for networks.

If you do not have an Internet connection in Fedora, then download that tarball on some other computer, somehow transfer it to the Fedora filesystem, and pick up the steps with the tar command.

If the commands above completed successfully and the wireless still is not working, then return for some suggestions to try.

If you never get anywhere with b43, all versions of the BCM4312 work with the Broadcom 802.11 STA Linux driver (aka broadcom-wl). I will help you try that next if b43 bombs with this card.

[NBZ]

Thanks - that did it.

Offtopic: Any idea if this will ever become officially supported or will there always be a need to get the firmware separately?

[stoat]

I don't know. Maybe. There already is some Broadcom firmware for b43 included in Fedora (b43-openfwwf), but it supports only four of the Broadcom chipsets that can use b43 (yours isn't one of them). Fedora Project has a strict FOSS policy. The firmware you installed is proprietary. Legal, but proprietary.

If that firmware works well with your adapter, then here is some stuff you should know. Those steps you did extracted the firmware files from the driver source object file and copied them to /lib/firmware/b43. There will be about three dozen .fw files in that folder. You can save a copy of those files somewhere, and the next time you install any Linux that uses b43 you can create the folder /lib/firmware/b43 and copy your set of .fw files there. No need to do the wget, tar, and b43-fwcutter steps ever again unless you just want to or something about all this changes. I've been copying that same set of firmware files from Linux to Linux to Linux for a long time. There are some newer versions of that driver tarball at OpenWrt, but I don't see any reason to change. I intend to continue using those files until they stop working or something else comes along to replace b43.

[jojosilvera]

I'm having similar problems with my wireless. I have BCM 4313. Need help in terms of working please

[ziko]

After fedoraplus (autoten) and codecs installation which, as I think, installs repo data for rpmfusion, I installed akmod-wl as follows:

su
yum install akmod-wl

--------------
note: you can install fedoraplus as follows:

su
yum -y --nogpgcheck install http://dnmouse.org/fedoraplus-1.1-4.fc15.noarch.rpm

[Mitsakos]

@stoat

Thanks for the hint friend!
I have installed Fedora 15 on by Dell Mini 10 and wireless firmware was missing. After your few commands wifi works flawless!

[alphy]

stoat, i did what you said and it installed it and i rebooted, but it says "connecting" to my wifi but never connects. Ive got a bcm4312.
Thanks