Arch Linux

gtalum

Member

From: Bradenton, FL

Registered: 2008-07-07

Posts: 9

Broadcom 4318 (Acer Aspire 3003LCi) HOW-TO

I just wanted to add a post about my specific machine, so that if anyone else has trouble setting up wireless on it they may find this information a bit more easily than I did.

I run an Acer Aspire 3003LCi, which uses the Broadcom 4318 wireless NIC.  I did this immediately after running the Arch installer to install only the base system via FTP:

1)  After logging in as root I installed the "wireless_tools" package:

pacman -S wireless_tools

2)  I followed the instructions at linxwireless.org for the B43 driver (specifically in the section entitled "You are using the b43 driver from linux-2.6.25 or newer", slightly tweaked for Arch Linux (note the "pacman -S b43-fwcutter" in place of their instructions for installing fwcutter and the addition of "mkdir /lib/firmware"):

pacman -S b43-fwcutter
mkdir /lib/firmware
export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR="/lib/firmware"
wget http://mirror2.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
b43-fwcutter -w "$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR" wl_apsta_mimo.o

3)  I edited my /etc/rc.conf to prevent the loading of the bcm43xx driver and to instead load the b43 driver at boot:

MODULES= (... !bcm43xx b43 ...)

4)  I rebooted the computer.

5)  I started and tested my wifi connection (obviously replace essid and key with info from your own network):

iwconfig wlan0 up
ifconfig wlan0 essid MYESSID key 1234567890abcdef1234567890
dhcpcd wlan0
iwconfig
ping -c 3 http://www.yahoo.com

The wifi light should light up on the computer after typing "ifconfig wlan0 up".  If the final iwconfig shows your essid, key, and signal info and the ping command shows returned packets, it worked.  At this point you would have to manually start the network at every boot, but you can install and run various network managers to handle the job if you prefer.

I'm sure this is all painfully obvious to the more seasoned users, but I just wanted to post a simple step-by-step tutorial for this particular machine for other relative newbies.  FWIW, I had kubuntu Hardy Heron running on this machine for the past year and had used ndiswrapper to make the Broadcom 4318 work.  I wanted a lighter distro that would actually teach me more about the inner workings of Linux and I wanted a real driver for my wifi NIC instead of ndiswrapper.

Last edited by gtalum (2008-07-10 14:40:01)

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Acer Aspire 3003LCi - Arch Linux + Fluxbox
ASUS EEE PC 701 4G - Arch Linux + Fluxbox

wonder

Developer

From: Bucharest, Romania

Registered: 2006-07-05

Posts: 5,941

Website

Re: Broadcom 4318 (Acer Aspire 3003LCi) HOW-TO

@gtalum there is already an how to wiki.

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless#b43

if you can improve it please do it

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Give what you have. To someone, it may be better than you dare to think.