Is the bcm4331 wireless card suppported?

mutaphore · 2014-12-20 16:26:10

I'm attempting to install arch on my Mid-2012 Macbook pro retina without a hardwired connection. I know this is not recommended in the docs, but I'm trying to do so anyway since I don't have a thunderbolt ethernet connector right now

After booting into the ISO on USB, when I do

lspci | grep Network

it shows that I have the Broadcom BCM4331 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 02) card, and doing

iwconfig

shows just 1 line "lo no wireless extensions". Doing wifi-menu just gives "Invalid interface specification" error. I tried installing b43-firmware and broadcom-wl without success. Any ideas what's going on here?

Last edited by mutaphore (2014-12-20 16:31:39)

ugjka · 2014-12-20 16:38:53

Did you actually load b43 or wl with modprobe after installing the firmware?

mutaphore · 2014-12-20 16:59:41

ugjka wrote:

Did you actually load b43 or wl with modprobe after installing the firmware?

I know I'm doing something very wrong here, so correct my mistake. I don't have wifi on this laptop, so I went to another arch machine and downloaded the broadcom-wl AUR on to a USB stick. Then I ran makepkg on that machine to get the .pkg.tar.xz file (because it requires some dependencies that my other machine dont have). Finally I transferred the pre-built broadcom-wl over to the installing laptop and did a pacman -U on the folder containing the .pkg.tar.xz file.

It showed that everything was properly installed, but I feel like something is missing here..

ugjka · 2014-12-20 17:18:37

For broadcom wl you need to run exactly the same kernel versions on both machines for it to work.

b43-firmware should should work regardless of kernel

In both cases you need to load the appropriate modules with modprobe (b43 or wl) before running wifi-menu

Last edited by ugjka (2014-12-20 17:22:18)

Trilby · 2014-12-20 17:23:19

Please see the broadcom page of the wiki. You should not need to use wl; that card is covered by b43. But you need to load b43, potentially get the firmware, and most likely blacklist/rmmod bcma: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Br … Fb43legacy

mutaphore · 2014-12-20 18:15:33

Trilby wrote:

Please see the broadcom page of the wiki. You should not need to use wl; that card is covered by b43. But you need to load b43, potentially get the firmware, and most likely blacklist/rmmod bcma: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Br … Fb43legacy

Is it possible to do this if I just download from AUR b43-firmware tar onto a USB stick and install it on the laptop without Wifi? I don't think I need the firmware since I checked lspci and it doesn't have the low powered version.

ewaller · 2014-12-20 18:24:22

You need the firmware. The AUR does not work that way. What you download from the AUR is a script that tells the build system where to get the source (and binaries), how to build them, and where to install them.

The easiest way to do this is to build the firmware on an Arch system somewhere (VMs work great for this). Once you have the package file, transfer it to the Macbook -- perhaps on a USB drive. Then install the package with pacman -U

mutaphore · 2014-12-22 19:54:55

Thanks for the replies, I grabbed a ethernet connector for the mac and downloaded wifi drivers to solve the problem.

Arch Linux

#1 2014-12-20 16:26:10

Is the bcm4331 wireless card suppported?

#2 2014-12-20 16:38:53

Re: Is the bcm4331 wireless card suppported?

#3 2014-12-20 16:59:41

Re: Is the bcm4331 wireless card suppported?

#4 2014-12-20 17:18:37

Re: Is the bcm4331 wireless card suppported?

#5 2014-12-20 17:23:19

Re: Is the bcm4331 wireless card suppported?

#6 2014-12-20 18:15:33

Re: Is the bcm4331 wireless card suppported?

#7 2014-12-20 18:24:22

Re: Is the bcm4331 wireless card suppported?

#8 2014-12-22 19:54:55

Re: Is the bcm4331 wireless card suppported?

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