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#1 2008-11-17 06:27:17

miguimon
Member
From: Sydney
Registered: 2008-02-28
Posts: 37
Website

[HOWTO] Wireless card BCM4328 without ndiswrapper

Hey,

Not an issue at all this time. I want to make my little contribution about how to install the BCM4328 card without using ndiswrapper. Probably, the majority of you know that Broadcom released drivers for 32-bit and 64-bit for the following cards: BCM4311, BCM4312, BCM4321 and BCM4322. Check this out for more info: http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php

The thing is that about 3 weeks ago I re-installed everything and now I'm happily using Arch64 on my MacBook 3.1 Santa Rosa but unfortunately I had some issues with ndiswrapper and I couldn't configure the wireless card (BCM4328). So, I gave a chance and I tried the Broadcom drivers even if my card wasn't on the list. And my surprise was that works perfectly!! cool

Some outputs:

lspci

02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 03)

lsmod | grep wl

wl                     1079104  0
ieee80211_crypt         7300        2 wl,ieee80211_crypt_tkip

iwconfig

eth1    IEEE 802.11abgn  ESSID:"Cadaques"  Nickname:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.457 GHz  Access Point: 00:14:A5:CD:75:6F
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:32 dBm
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Managementmode:All packets received
          Link Quality=5/5  Signal level=-25 dBm  Noise level=-91 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:1  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

There is also a package at http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=19514 on AUR for Broadcom 802.11abg Networking Drivers it's called "broadcom-wl" and it really works very nice and smooth with the latest version of the kernel (2.6.27.5-1)

You can easily install it by doing:

yaourt -S broadcom-wl

After installing the package just make sure that you unload (or blacklist) the following modules:

rmmod ssb
rmmod b43
rmmod bcm43xx

Load the good one:

modprobe wl
ifconfig eth1 up

Now you should be able to see the interface and connect to your preferred network using for example wicd or any other tool.

If you find this useful and you think should go to the wiki, let me know. I found the MacBook wiki a bit outdated but I wasn't sure at all so suggestions are welcome!

Last edited by miguimon (2008-11-17 06:31:32)

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#2 2010-06-10 17:33:08

Ben9250
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From: Bath - England
Registered: 2010-06-10
Posts: 208
Website

Re: [HOWTO] Wireless card BCM4328 without ndiswrapper

Does this allow you set set the card up as the only network connection? I am a noob to Arch and am trying to go through the beginners guide to installing but none of the network config makes sense as I dont have any physical wired connections and the only network I have is a wireless one. I have the same card as you but in a Dell XPS M1530.


"In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it."
  - H. G. Wells

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#3 2010-06-11 00:50:59

miguimon
Member
From: Sydney
Registered: 2008-02-28
Posts: 37
Website

Re: [HOWTO] Wireless card BCM4328 without ndiswrapper

This allows you to configure the wireless card. Try to connect from a wired connection and simple yaourt -S broadcom-wl otherwise you could manually download the package from AUR:

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=19514

Download tarball, install, pkgbuild in a directory then run the following commands:

makepkg
pacman -U pkg.tar.gz

Hope this helps smile

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#4 2010-06-11 13:02:07

Ben9250
Member
From: Bath - England
Registered: 2010-06-10
Posts: 208
Website

Re: [HOWTO] Wireless card BCM4328 without ndiswrapper

Ok thanks I'll give it a go, I really am new to this networking stuff as I've only really used ubuntu before. In the setup for Arch I did have it include wireless-tools and the bcw43-fwcutter packages because it's that packages that got my wireless working in ubuntu. But my cards the same model as yours so I'll try it this way. Is there anything else I need to do to like my module or Wireless option in rc.conf or any of the network files, because I read that the drivers are modules and they sometimes need to be specified if not automatically detected.

Ok I'm going to combie the beginers guide with your HOWTO. iwconfig returns:

lo         no wireless extensions.

eth0     no wireless extensions.

This is odd because lspci | grep network returns
0b:00.0 Network controller: Boradcom Corporation BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 03)

and its logical name is eth1.

Last edited by Ben9250 (2010-06-11 15:18:54)


"In England we have come to rely upon a comfortable time-lag of fifty years or a century intervening between the perception that something ought to be done and a serious attempt to do it."
  - H. G. Wells

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#5 2010-06-11 15:19:18

tomk
Forum Fellow
From: Ireland
Registered: 2004-07-21
Posts: 9,839

Re: [HOWTO] Wireless card BCM4328 without ndiswrapper

You're trying to build a package from the AUR - yaourt is a tool that automates that process. If you don't have yaourt, you can do it manually - details in the wiki.

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#6 2010-06-14 01:07:01

shemz
Member
Registered: 2010-04-23
Posts: 135

Re: [HOWTO] Wireless card BCM4328 without ndiswrapper

Although this wiki page is for BCM4312, I think the broadcom-wl package supports many other chips.

http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Broadcom_BCM4312

If Broadcom modules are not loaded at boot time with rc.conf as it is mentioned in this article (it happens on my netbook with broadcom 4312 chip), load the modules with ramdisk (/etc/mkinitcpio.conf).

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