wifi firmware missing in FC15

[anbusatish]

Hi,

I am using HP multimedia series laptop dv6830us. And have recently installed Fedora core 15. The internet works with LAN cable, but the wireless option says, the firmware missing. Could not get it installed, your time to help is hightly appreciated. The configuration details as below

The output of uname -ia is,
Linux localhost.localdomain 2.6.40.6-0.fc15.i686 #1 SMP Tue Oct 4 00:51:19 UTC 2011 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux

The ouput of 'rpm -qa| grep wl'
iwl6000-firmware-9.221.4.1-2.fc15.noarch
iwl1000-firmware-39.31.5.1-1.fc15.noarch
iwl3945-firmware-15.32.2.9-5.fc15.noarch
python-iwlib-0.1-6.fc15.i686
iwl5150-firmware-8.24.2.2-2.fc15.noarch
iwl100-firmware-39.31.5.1-2.fc15.noarch
iwl4965-firmware-228.61.2.24-3.fc15.noarch
iwl6000g2a-firmware-17.168.5.1-2.fc15.noarch
iwl6050-firmware-41.28.5.1-3.fc15.noarch
iwl5000-firmware-8.83.5.1-2.fc15.noarch


The output of 'rpm -qa| grep kernel'
abrt-addon-kerneloops-2.0.2-5.fc15.i686
kernel-2.6.40.6-0.fc15.i686
kernel-2.6.38.6-26.rc1.fc15.i686

lshw is not working
@localhost ~]$ lshw -c network
bash: lshw: command not found...


Can someone please suggest me how to solve this probem.

Thanks,
Satish

[stoat]

Try to identify the wireless chipset.

If the device is using the PCI bus, then lspci -k might identify the chipset and the driver requesting firmware. Cut out and paste here the Network controller section of that command result.

If it's using the Universal Serial Bus, maybe lsusb will give some reader an idea to tell you. Post all of that.

And since a driver is probably being loaded but not working because of the firmware issue, you can try posting the output of lsmod | sort.

[anbusatish]

output of lcpci -k
==============
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 30cc
Kernel driver in use: ata_piix
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 30cc
Kernel driver in use: ahci
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 30cc
Kernel driver in use: i801_smbus
Kernel modules: i2c-i801
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company BCM4312 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller
Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
Kernel modules: ssb
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 01)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 30cc
Kernel driver in use: r8169
Kernel modules: r8169
07:09.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 05)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 30cc
Kernel driver in use: firewire_ohci
Kernel modules: firewire-ohci
07:09.1 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 22)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 30cc
Kernel driver in use: sdhci-pci
Kernel modules: sdhci-pci
07:09.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 12)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 30cc
Kernel driver in use: r592
Kernel modules: r592
07:09.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 12)
Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device 30cc
Kernel driver in use: r852
Kernel modules: r852

output of lsusb
============
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0408:030c Quanta Computer, Inc. HP Webcam
Bus 007 Device 002: ID 03f0:171d Hewlett-Packard Wireless (Bluetooth + WLAN) Interface [Integrated Module]

output of lsmod | sort
=================
[anbusatish@localhost ~]$ lsmod | sort
8021q 14154 0
acpi_cpufreq 8212 1
arc4 1085 2
b43 283439 0
bluetooth 165019 1 btusb
btusb 12468 0
cfg80211 126279 2 b43,mac80211
cpufreq_ondemand 4782 2
crc_itu_t 1243 1 firewire_core
drm 156267 4 i915,drm_kms_helper
drm_kms_helper 23178 1 i915
firewire_core 41740 1 firewire_ohci
firewire_ohci 22642 0
fuse 53547 3
garp 4938 1 8021q
hp_wmi 6803 0
i2c_algo_bit 4214 1 i915
i2c_core 21572 6 videodev,i2c_i801,i915,drm_kms_helper,drm,i2c_algo _bit
i2c_i801 8021 0
i915 332212 3
ip6table_filter 1215 1
ip6_tables 9828 1 ip6table_filter
ip6t_REJECT 3395 2
ipv6 235853 23 ip6t_REJECT,nf_conntrack_ipv6,nf_defrag_ipv6
iTCO_vendor_support 2070 1 iTCO_wdt
iTCO_wdt 10436 0
joydev 7219 0
llc 3726 2 garp,stp
mac80211 211966 1 b43
media 9214 2 uvcvideo,videodev
memstick 7187 1 r592
microcode 11689 0
mii 3639 1 r8169
mmc_core 66087 3 b43,ssb,sdhci
Module Size Used by
mperf 1137 1 acpi_cpufreq
mtd 24320 2 sm_common,nand
nand 38325 2 r852,sm_common
nand_ecc 3440 1 nand
nand_ids 3778 1 nand
nf_conntrack 56146 3 nf_conntrack_ipv6,nf_conntrack_ipv4,xt_state
nf_conntrack_ipv4 6874 1
nf_conntrack_ipv6 6429 1
nf_defrag_ipv4 1093 1 nf_conntrack_ipv4
nf_defrag_ipv6 7174 1 nf_conntrack_ipv6
r592 8656 0
r8169 32300 0
r852 8045 0
rfkill 12939 4 cfg80211,hp_wmi,bluetooth
sdhci 19904 1 sdhci_pci
sdhci_pci 7240 0
sm_common 6580 1 r852
snd 48471 13 snd_hda_codec_si3054,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda _intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_seq,snd_seq_dev ice,snd_pcm,snd_timer
snd_hda_codec 71160 3 snd_hda_codec_si3054,snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda _intel
snd_hda_codec_realtek 241906 1
snd_hda_codec_si3054 3104 1
snd_hda_intel 20567 2
snd_hwdep 4905 1 snd_hda_codec
snd_page_alloc 6035 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
snd_pcm 63521 3 snd_hda_codec_si3054,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec
snd_seq 43516 0
snd_seq_device 5033 1 snd_seq
snd_timer 15245 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
soundcore 5027 1 snd
sparse_keymap 2746 1 hp_wmi
ssb 41681 1 b43
stp 1391 1 garp
uvcvideo 51101 0
video 10684 1 i915
videodev 64081 1 uvcvideo
wmi 7601 1 hp_wmi
xt_state 942 2


Note:
After posting this comment I installed the rpm b43-openfwwf-5.2-6.fc15.noarch and the wifi firmware missing error went off and it is able to find the available wifi networks, but it never connects.

Thansks!
Satish

[stoat]

The OpenFWWF site claims to support four Broadcom chipsets, and there are anecdotal reports from members around here of two others possible working with it. But the BCM4312 is not one of those.

I recommend that you next try extracting the firmware from a proprietary driver available from OpenWrt. To try this idea, connect to the Internet via your LAN cable and run these one after the other...

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

NOTE: All those steps do is download a tarball file from OpenWrt, untar it, change terminal directories to the source directory, and extract about three dozen .fw firmware files to /lib/firmware/b43. That's all. It can be undone by merely deleting those .fw files, but they do no harm sitting there if you move on to some other driver method.

Reboot. Check NetworkManager for networks and try to connect.

If doesn't work at first, confirm that you have about three dozen .fw files in /lib/firmware/b43. If that looks okay, but it still doesn't work, then I think it's reasonable to move on to the broadcom-wl driver. Start with the RPM Fusion binary version. If that causes trouble, people lately are beginning to have more success compiling it from source, especially in the current and testing versions of Fedora.

[agarcia]

Thank You stoat. This worked like a charm !

I have a different brand laptop.....actually a Acer netbook and even a different Fedora version (16 Verne) but the broadcom chip happened to be the same as OP. Since the OP never posted the results I'm posting to confirm that this works, so that it may help others.

Thanks again !

[pg1989pg]

it was really a magic, i had learnt a good one thing today.thankx