Broadcom BCM4318 – Ubuntu Intrepid
Posted: April 8th, 2009 | Author: admin | Filed under: Technology | 59 Comments »As many of you know and have seen from my little count down to the right hand side of this site Ubuntu Intrepid 8.10 – the latest version of the user friendly linux distribution has been launched.
Now wireless support has improved greatly over the past few years with more and more native drivers emerging and new work arounds cropping up every day but I have always had a problem with my Broadcom BCM4318 in my HP Pavilion Zv6000. So fingers crossed I installed the new version of Ubuntu and booted up, no suprise it didn’t work!
Now I could have downloaded numerous files and used the new Bcm43xx drivers which I believe have been kind of reverse engineered but i’ve tried that before and its more of a pain that it is worth. So I am going to explain clearly with step by step instruction how I personally have got my wireless inbuilt card working!
File Link: http://www.sampbar.com/downloads
Also: International users, should make appropriate adjustments if they are using a language other than English to variables such as commands which contain the English word “Desktop”.
Step 1.
After you have installed Intrepid and booted up Re-insert the installation disk, wait for the icon to display on the desktop then double click the icon.
Step 2.
Navigate to the folder “pool” -> “main” -> “n” -> “ndiswrapper”
and then first install ndiswrapper-common then ndiswrapper-utils.
Step 3.
Now open a terminal and enter the following commands or run step3.sh which can be located in the zipped folder linked near the top of the post:
echo -e ‘blacklist bcm43xxnblacklist wl’ | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
mkdir ~/bcm43xx; cd ~/bcm43xx
Step 4.
Now you need to find the .inf file from your wireless driver, I have included the file which came with my cd in the zipped file which is linked towards the top of this post this file personally worked with my laptop and wireless card. Move this to your desktop, my file is named bcmwl5a.inf
Step 5.
Now open a terminal and enter these commands or use the step5.sh file I have provided in the zipped file at the top:
cd ~/Desktop
sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5a.inf
sudo ndiswrapper -l
sudo depmod -a
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
sudo cp /etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces.orig
echo -e ‘auto loniface lo inet loopbackn’ | sudo tee /etc/network/interfaces
sudo ndiswrapper -m
echo ‘ndiswrapper’ | sudo tee -a /etc/modules
echo ‘ENABLED=0‘ | sudo tee -a /etc/default/wpasupplicant
Step 6.
Now I have included a wifi.sh file in the zipped folder near the top. You need to put this file in “/etc/init.d/” then type these commands in a terminal:
cd /etc/init.d/
sudo update-rc.d wifi.sh defaults
sudo chmod +x wifi.sh
This ensures the wifi starts on bootup!
Step 7.
Now enter your wireless network details in the network manager and reboot, hopefully it should all be working now!
If you encounter any problems please feel free to leave a comment!
This did not work for me… what a nightmare
Did you use the .sh scripts or enter the commands manually? Also which part exactly didn’t work?
Awesome, dude !
I just spent my day trying to get this Dell laptop of my mine working with the same onboard wifi chip. Your how-to was the one which actually worked out !
Just a few remarks, though:
“~/Desktop” won’t work for any language. Your scripts failed on my French version (”~/Bureau”)
ndiswrapper needs a file named bcmwl5.sys to be present in the working directory. To get this file, check your C:\windows\system32\drivers folder, assuming you have one on some computer
I meant… “brilliant, mate” !
I ran the .sh scripts…
The thing is, that the driver is properly installed on ndiswrapper. The thing is that my wlan0 doesnt exist. It reads the broadcom card as PCI and uses a driver called B43-pci-bridge. I have blacklisted everything even b44.
By playing around yesterday i finally managed to get the card unassigned by doing -rmmode b34, b44, ssd, etc and then assiging ndiswrapper but it gives me errors as if the driver isnt liked by ndiswrapper. This happened using the bcmwl5.inf not your bcmwl5a that you provided. It was downloaded from Broadcom webby so shud be legit. I tried again by uninstalling the bcmwl5 and installing your bcmwl5a and the normal sys file that wasnt in your download so i used the one from the original firmware..
I really have no idea how to go on now… Been trying for the past week. It really is a nightmare
Osfaband:
If you install Gitso (https://launchpad.net/gitso) I will quite happily have a go at setting up your wireless card for you. Just leave me a comment with your email address once you have got Gitso installed and I will email you my IP so we can have a go at getting your wifi working!
Venom:
Sorry about that! I really didn’t think about different languages when writing the guide so I will add a note about the ~/Desktop! I have now also included the .sys file in my .zip download so nobody else should have any problems.
Im so glad it worked for you!
Thanks for the help mate. Now it worked even tho i used a different guide. From http://onlyubuntu.blogspot.com/2008/10/how-to-setup-broadcom-wireless-bcm4312.html
I figured out my driver wasnt very good at all for my bcm 4318 rev 2.
Thanks for all the help. you contributed to the working of my wlan!
Very grateful!
Congratulations! Can I please encourage you to digg this post if you use digg, as then it may be able to help other people struggling to setup their wifi.
Well i don’t use digg but i made a stumbleupon review! Hope that helps!
I have tried countless tutorials for my Broacom 4318, and nothing has worked until I tried your tutorial. It worked great! Thanks so much!
I used your guide and saw no wireless activity at first. Then I ran the command “iwlist wlan0 scanning” and network manager picked it up.
I’m getting errors in step 5. Is this line correct?
sudo cp /etc/network/interfaces /etc/network/interfaces.orig
Should that be cd, not cp, and there is no directory interfaces in the /etc/network directory.
I assume that we need to add part of the next line to interface.orig in the network directory. What needs to go there?
echo -e ‘auto lo\niface lo inet loopback\n’ | sudo tee
Thanks.
Awesome, all working. An excellent tutorial and thanks for the sh files, they really made my life easier.
I have been on this case for two days now and I’ve not been able to get this card working with this how-to on a clean, up-to-date 8.10 system.
Well, it is somewhat working and then also not working. The card seems to be up and registering with the system (as wlan0) but I’m not able to scan (see) or create wifi networks. I’m now blank as to what to try next, any ideas would be greatly appreciated…
Cheers mate, this has been doing my head in for two days. I just assumed that the b43 driver would work… Good old ndis.
Thanks. I tried a lot of things, and this finally worked. Thanks for your time.
Was directed here from ubuntu help. I've removed windows by installing ubuntu and wireless was not enabled. Tried your steps. 1 – 4 seemed OK, but at step 5
a) had to replace sudo cd ~/Desktop with sudu cd Desktop (got a command not found message)
after the the second line I get an "Invalid Driver" message.
If I rerun this, it says the driver is already installed then it say invalid driver.
also, when I try to move the wifi.sh file to /etc/init.d folder I get an error message Error moving file: Permission denied
(you can probably tell I am really new at all this.)
Also, in case it is relevant, when I go to System>Administration>Hardware Drivers there are no wireless drivers listed.
On the other hand, when I boot with linux Puppy from a CD my wireless is working fine, so all the necessary stuff must be there.
Any suggestions? Need any other info? Thanks, in advance
Thank you sooooo much. That was 8 hours of my life wasted, but solved by your post
ATTENTION: Anybody still waiting for help, i’m very sorry that I haven’t got around to contacting you but if you leave another comment we can form a queue which I can work my way down.
Please ensure you have installed Gitso so that I can help you remotely!
Example of comment for help:
Name:
Email:
Problem:
Urgency:
Samuel
Samuel -
If you could help me that would be amazing. I have the same internal card you mention on an Dell Latitude d410. I just loaded Ubuntu 8.10 on it, and no shock the wireless didn’t kick in. In doing lspci in the terminal it seems to have detected it properly – listed as Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02) – however it never actually shows any wireless connections in network manager. I have a PCI card old school belkin card, plugged it in and was able to get online and find your article at a snails pace due to how slow the card is.
Anyways here’s the weird thing: after following your article’s instructions if I plug in the PCI belkin card, and click on network manager it shows a listing for both wireless cards – HOWEVER only shows wireless networks available under the belkin card. if I unplug the belkin card – my built in listing is not on network manager any more.
HELP would be HUGELY appreeciated. Thanks in advance!
I’d be happy to help but have no way of contacting you as you didn’t leave your name or email address!
You also need to install Gitso so I can help you remotely and also please ensure you are plugged in via ethernet to rule out any problems from interference from the other wifi card.
If you get back to me with your email address I can drop you a line!
Samuel
Samuel, this is AWESOME! Thank you soo much.. though I did have some issues with step5.sh. It could not find the .sys file.. I ran the commands manually and it worked. Everything else worked on this Gateway w730.
for all who wants to test ubuntu9.04….it works on jaunty too !!!
Thanks so much! Your solution is working perfectly on 8.10 Ubuntu Studio running on a Dell Inspiron 1300.
Hi everybody,
I am a Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo a1655g laptop with this wireless card. Thanks a lot for your help, however in this computer another module is needed to physically turn on the wifi card (it’s software-enabled). It is here: http://www.marvec.org/amilo/ I just compiled it and added to the end of your wifi.sh script.
I finally made this work after 3 years!!!!.
Thanks a lot, but PLEASE could you warn other Amilo users at the beginning of the post?. Anyway I’m gonna make a new post in my blog about this.
Thanks a lot!
Hi again Samuel,
I’ve posted specific instructions for the Amilo A1655g computer and the BCM4318 card in this post: http://betawriting.blogspot.com/2009/01/fujitsu-siemens-amilo-a1655g-broadcom.html in case they can help users of this laptop.
Thanks and regards!
its not working on my 64bit pc…
help !!!
Shouting help at me and not leaving an email address isn’t really the best way to get my help!
Now if you could provide some more details on what exactly isn’t working, and provide me with some contact details I may be able to help!
i did all steps succesfull, wlan0 shows up when i do iwconfig. but when i start wpa_supplicant, it tells me there is no such device as wlan0
I have no idea why you are trying to start wpa_supplicant. Assuming you have used the .sh files you should just have to reboot, enter your network details in the network manager and then it should configure and start ndiswrapper/wpa_supplicant automatically.
If you need more help I currently have a waiting list of about 3 people for remote help.
Also please leave your name and email address otherwise I have no way of contacting you!
Samuel
Awesome!
This works perfectly on my dell 600m.
Hi there,
Followed all the steps – getting exact same problems as Matthew got, who posted a few weeks back.
Any ideas?
This Ubuntu is really frsutrating me! Spent a week so far trying to connect to the internet. No, I dont have a wired connection so the direct connect option isnt going to work, sadly.
Hoping for a miracle!
thanks
Alan
email:stack888@hotmail.com
The tutorial is great. Very easy to follow, and I appreciate it because I have been all over the web looking for tutorials. I am using Mint 6 (based on intrepid) and I am getting nothing after following the instructions precisely. Unfortunately I am unable to swap out the broadcom card with another because HP has “locked in” this chipset via BIOS. It will return an error at boot if replaced with a card with another chipset.
Anyways…….I was hoping for some remote help if possible. Gitso will be my next install.
Thank you.
This works for me. I have a Dell Inspiron 2200.
Thanks,
Jason
Hello Sam, I’ve tried to get this to work but I’m a complete beginner and getting a permission denied message when I try to move the wifi.sh file into the /etc/init.d/ folder I get a permissiosn denied error.
Your help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Alex
email:admin@alexterris.com
thanx samuel!
worked fine for me on a 64bit sytem. you need a 64bit driver for your card! search for bcmwl5, bcmwl6 didn’t work (driver used by my vista installation)
best regards
uwe
Hello. Thanks for this. It was very helpful, except still no love. I can see a wlan0 now when run iwconfig, but it’s not “up” I am not sure what else to say in the comments to help you help me. But if you have some free time, that would be great.
Oh! Running 8.10, forgot to mention.
For some reason I’m not able to put the wifi.sh file in the init.d folder. I’ve done everything beforehand already and it still doesn’t work. I tried the BCM43xx driver and it worked only a period of the time. For some reason I could never stay connected to wireless networks and the signal strength was very poor. My roommate has a different card and had 100% signal strength when he connects and has no problems at all. Please help, I’m very tired of not having a properly working wireless card.
Hi! I have completed steps 1-5 and am trying to put the wifi.sh folder in init.d – but I keep getting an error saying I don’t have permission – PLEASE help!!
Thanks,
Laurie
SUCCESS! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!
I moved the wifi.sh file with this command: sudo mv ~/Documents/wifi.sh /etc/init.d
Step 5 – eror using ” sudo cd” get “command not found”
ubuntu@ubuntu-NASCAR:~$ sudo cd ~/Desktop
[sudo] password for ubuntu:
sudo: cd: command not found
Ran step5.sh in both modes – got error msg: (sorry, did not capture)
After ruunning step5.sh, typed in the following code (per blog instructions)
ubuntu@ubuntu-NASCAR:~$ sudo cp /etc/network/interfaces /etc/interfaces.orig
[sudo] password for ubuntu:
ubuntu@ubuntu-NASCAR:~$ sudo cp /etc/network/interfaces /etc/interfaces.orig
ubuntu@ubuntu-NASCAR:~$ echo -e ‘auto lionface lo inet loopbackn’| sudo tee /etc/network/interfacesauto lionface lo inet loopbackn
ubuntu@ubuntu-NASCAR:~$ sudo ndiswrapper -m
WARNING: /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist line 46: ignoring bad line starting with ‘-e’
module configuration already contains alias directive
ubuntu@ubuntu-NASCAR:~$ echo ‘ndiswrapper’| sudo tee -a /etc/modules
ndiswrapper
ubuntu@ubuntu-NASCAR:~$ echo ‘ENABLE=0′| sudo tee -a /etc/default/wpasupplicant
ENABLE=0
I suggest adding the following phrase to your instructions: “terminal entries in ITALICS”
In step 5 – insert a line after ndiswrapper and add “now use the terminal to enter:”
A hint to others: be sure the power light on the wireless card is “ON”.
I have not been able to get this to work. I have a compaq with a BCM4318 Rev 02. When I enter the instructions above to I enter ‘bcm43xx’ or do I enter ‘bcm4318′
Tried this and the card lights up then light goes off.
thanks, i will try it…..
Problem: identical to Matthew’s problem in comment 17… same command not found issue at step 5 and then given a “permission denied” message when I try to move the wifi.sh file into the etc/init.d folder.
My knowledge of this is below novice. I have some experience troubleshooting windows pcs but my knowledge of command line doesn’t go beyond renewing IP addresses. I was hoping to learn more about linux as I went… seems to have been a poor decision so far : )
Superb job, it’ finnaly working after 2 days of saerching on internet for solutions. You are the best, i have tried many suggestions but onl y this one helped me….ofcourse i am new to ubuntu, so it’s difficult for me to come from windows.
once agains thanks u very much
You are a life saver m8 – thanks so much for putting this how-to together. I was ready to bin my laptop after spending all evening trying to figure the problem out.
And it was so easy to do using your scripts!
Thanks again,
Ged.
Awesome!
Dell Dimension 9200 with Belkin Wireless G Desktop Card (PCI).
Broadcom Corporatation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g].
Newbie on Ubuntu…once I discovered the “sudo” command, everything went w/out a hitch.
http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/ubuntu-linux-root-password-default-password/
Only correction to the instructions is in regards to step 6. I think it should be,
cd /etc/init.d
instead of
sudo cd /etc/init.d
Regards,
Cass
Thanks. Your step by step howto was the happy ending for almost a week fighting the Broadcom BCM4318 on this old HP laptop.
thanks, your instructions ended a week of frustration. i owe you a beer. i have a 4 year-old compaq presario r4000 and had downloaded the windows driver from hp. only change i had to make to your instructions was changing the name of the *.inf file. thanks again.
Thanks! Got the wireless up and running on an HP Pavilion dv5120us. Ran into a couple of glitches that were solved by reading through the comments and entering commands in the terminal instead of using the .sh files. I’m sure your blog saved me hours of frustration, since I am a Linux newbie. Glad I found it early in the process.
I got all kinds of errors from this tutorial. I did use the .sh files. I used to use Linux exclusively, but it’s been a while and I’m rusty. If you’re still offering to help people, I’m interested.
Jake
yacoubean@gmail.com
Thank you very much. I’have a compaq presario V5000 with the wireless BCM4318 and always I’ve problems with the wireless connection. Now I can work with it. Best regards from Spain.
Hi,
I have a Dell Inspiron 2200 and it has a BCM4318 wireless card.
I tried following your instructions and it was fine up to 5, and then it says:
sudo cd: command not found
driver bcwmla is already installed
WARNING: /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist line 46 ignoring bad line starting with -e
and it continues for many such lines until it automatically closes.
Please help.
worked on x86 architecture but not on x64
Best description ever. Structured, focused, correct. Works for 8.10 (intrepid) and the following PCI card:
product: BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 3
bus info: pci@0000:01:03.0
logical name: wlan0
version: 02
I only had to change the driver name at step5 and I quote
“sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5a.inf”
to
“sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf”
Take care!
Greetings
Tino
This worked for me. I now have the wpc54g working on an HP Omnibook 4150 running ubuntu. Thanks.
I’m new to Ubuntu but I was able to follow your instructions and now I’m able to connect! Thank you so much!
Samuel, I’d love to try this method as the ubuntu forums verify it works but I’m unable to download your zip. Could you please ensure it’s still up or might you be able to direct me to the proper inf file somewhere else?
The file link doesn’t work. Can you please fix this?