What's Ubuntu's magic bcm43xx secret?

CocoAUS · 2007-09-09 01:23:00

Ever since the first update after the initial Feisty release, Ubuntu has had impeccable broadcom support. The card loads at startup, stays connected, and doesn't choke on traffic.

EVERY other distro I've tried (all three Debian versions, Archlinux, FaunOS, Fedora 6 and 7, Gobolinux) has issues with the wireless working properly--random disconnects, choking on traffic, tens of tries before it connects to begin with (if at all).... Does anyone know what Ubuntu's magic secret is?

PS: FaunOS rocks my grey-toed socks.

Slychilde · 2007-09-10 05:27:08

I had better luck with Arch getting my wireless to work. It used to work using the fwcutter method, but the latest kernel has broke it due to a regression or something. I found a launchpad bug report for Gutsy(I think?) that has the same issue, and it's using about the same kernel as Arch is in current. Now, I'm back to using ndiswrapper like I was while using Ubuntu at the time. I don't think it is any particular distro's affinity to get the bcm43xx chip to work per se, but more the kernel it's using.

I hope that makes sense.

CocoAUS · 2007-09-10 06:24:49

I thought it might be the kernel, too, but trying Debian and Ubuntu both with the same kernels (as well as Debian with an older kernel, and a newer kernel than Ubuntu's) yielded the same results--Ubuntu worked flawlessly, Debian failed as usual. And actually, as I hinted above, Feisty's initial release had the same problem every other distro does. Their first post-release update (kernel version remained the same) fixed the wireless, and it's worked ever since.

I do have a much better time with ndiswrapper, however ndiswrapper doesn't play as nicely with network-manager, and I'd rather not have to do any work every time I boot my PC just to get wireless to work.

Of all the good and bad there is to say about Ubuntu, this one issue makes me envy Ubuntuers. Ubuntuians.

...

Ubuntu-arians?

Agh, whatever.

raymano · 2007-09-10 12:57:45

Install bcm43xx-fwcutter from extra in faunOS-fortytwo-0.3.2 and it should work. It uses the 2.6.21 kernel.

CocoAUS · 2007-09-10 18:47:42

Apparently FaunOS isn't even saving configurations anymore. The session saver worked the first time, gave me an error the second time, then neither saved nor gave me an error the third time. At any rate, if it won't save downloaded programs, or ever configuration files, I'd have to be wired in every time I boot into FaunOS, anyway.

raymano · 2007-09-10 19:08:58

Nothing wrong with session saving until you run out of space.
You are running out of space on your FaunOS USB partition. You have to resize your partition to allow for more session saving. For distribution purposes I have to keep the size of the key under 1GB.
You can boot into ram and resize your partition. Use gparted to do this. Here are the instructions

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php? … 53#p256853

I will include these instructions in the wiki.

Here it is on the wiki:

http://wiki.faunos.com/index.php/Resize … partitions

Last edited by raymano (2007-09-10 19:26:13)

CocoAUS · 2007-09-10 20:14:27

Increasing the size of the partition to 2 gigs didn't work. I'm gonna try a fresh install to the USB drive if I have time and see if it works better then.

UPDATE:

Increasing the partition size worked if I did so with a fresh FaunOS image. However, FaunOS has the same problem that Archlinux and all non-Ubuntu distros have: bcm43xx is glitchy at best. But thanks for the help with the resizing--I'd say it should be included in the installation notes that you should resize immediately after the initial install if the user plans on altering his install whatsoever.

Last edited by CocoAUS (2007-09-10 20:43:35)

raymano · 2007-09-10 22:01:12

I will put that in the wiki. Thanks for the suggestion.

Last edited by raymano (2007-09-10 22:01:35)

Arch Linux

#1 2007-09-09 01:23:00

What's Ubuntu's magic bcm43xx secret?

#2 2007-09-10 05:27:08

Re: What's Ubuntu's magic bcm43xx secret?

#3 2007-09-10 06:24:49

Re: What's Ubuntu's magic bcm43xx secret?

#4 2007-09-10 12:57:45

Re: What's Ubuntu's magic bcm43xx secret?

#5 2007-09-10 18:47:42

Re: What's Ubuntu's magic bcm43xx secret?

#6 2007-09-10 19:08:58

Re: What's Ubuntu's magic bcm43xx secret?

#7 2007-09-10 20:14:27

Re: What's Ubuntu's magic bcm43xx secret?

#8 2007-09-10 22:01:12

Re: What's Ubuntu's magic bcm43xx secret?

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