B43 Driver - filejames48’s diary

WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx - Community Help Wiki

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en/users/Drivers/b43

B43 and b43legacy

b43 and b43legacy are drivers for the 802.11b/g/n family of wireless chips that Broadcom produces.

Note: Broadcom USB devices are handled by the brcmfmac driver.

b43legacy: supports BCM4306 Rev 2 and cards that have only 802.11b capability

b43: supports all other models

Kernel automatically loads correct driver for the present hardware it checks for revision of the 802.11 core.

Please read this whole document and the FAQ before asking questions to the developers. Caveats

The b43/b43legacy drivers require proprietary firmware to be loaded onto the wireless chip before it can operate, see below.

If you have a Broadcom USB device, it s most likely a FullMAC device. See rndis_wlan for 14e20 and brcmfmac for others. The b43/b43legacy driver is not meant to support such a device.

It is possible to use only one driver at a moment, they are conflicting each other. See Switching between drivers for howto on choosing driver. Known issues

LP-PHY devices: DMA errors on some machines with kernel 2.6. Problem was fixed in 3.0. Using PIO module param can be used as workaround for 2.6.

BCM4318 chipset: AP mode does not work because of packet loss in high transmission rates. Hard to debug fix. BCM4321: some cards do not work in DMA mode with kernel 3.1 and older. Problem was fixed in 3.2. A workaround for older kernel is to use PIO mode b43.pio 1 module param.

G-PHY devices: not working with kernels 3.15 and 3.16-rc1 a regression. This was fixed in 3.15.5 6f3f164 and 3.16-rc3 2fc68eb. Supported devices

To find out whether a PCI device is supported by the b43 or b43legacy drivers, issue this lspci command: lspci -vnn -d 14e4:

The command will output a string similar to this example: 00:01.0 Network controller 0280 : Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 AirForce One 54g 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller 14e18 rev 02

Ignore everything, except the last part inside of the . Find that phrase in the below table to determine support.

PCI-ID

Supported.

Chip ID

Modes

PHY version

Alternative

14e76

not tested

BCM43224

a/b/g/n

wl/brcm80211

14e01

yes b43legacy

BCM4301

14e06

BCM4306/2

b/g

14e07

yes

BCM4306/3

14e11

BCM4311

14e12

a/b/g

G r8

14e13

BCM4313

b/g/n

LCN r1

14e15

BCM4312

LP r1

14e18

BCM4318

G r7

14e19

14e20

G r1

G r2

14e21

partially

BCM4321

N r2

14e22

BCM4322

N r4

14e24

BCM4306

G r5

14e25

14e28

14e29

N r1

14e2a

a/n

14e2b

14e2c

14e2d

14e31

yes 3.2-rc3

BCM4331

HT r1

14e50

yes 3.8

BCM43222

N r6

14e53

yes 3.1

14e57

BCM43225

14e58

yes 3.17

BCM43227

N r16

14e59

BCM43228

14e60

BCM4360

AC r1

14e65

BCM43142

LCN40 r3

14ea0

a/b/g/n/ac

AC.

BCM4352

14ea9

BCM43217

N r17

14eaa

BCM43131

14eb1

14e27

14e4:a8d6

N 6

14e4:a8d8

yes 3.6

brcm80211

14e4:a8db

14e4:a99d

BCM43421.

Note that the PCI-ID is not in direct correlation with the Chip ID. Often the PCI-ID equals the Chip ID, but that is not always the case and it is a constant source of confusion.

For a list of available devices, please see the device list. Support

Please note that we do not support wl or brcm80211 drivers. Features

Working

Station mode Mesh networking mode b43 only Access Point mode Ad-Hoc IBSS mode b43 only Monitor and Promisc mode. Monitor while operating and multiple monitor interfaces. In-Hardware traffic de/encryption relieves your CPU. LEDs to signal card state and traffic. In-Hardware MAC address filter b43 only; impossible on b43legacy hardware Packet injection with radiotap; no FCS injection currently though hardware supports it - a radiotap flag is being discussed for this Bluetooth coexistence protection, if the bluetooth card is physically connected to the wireless chip. Does not protect against external BT dongles Probably something we forgot to add here. Not working yet

Interference mitigation. 802.11n: HT 802.11n: aggregation 802.11n: 40MHz channels 5 GHz band Device firmware installation

The Broadcom wireless chip needs proprietary software called firmware that runs on the wireless chip itself to work properly. This firmware is copyrighted by Broadcom and must be extracted from Broadcom s proprietary drivers. To get such firmware on your system, you must download the driver from a legal distribution point, extract it, and install it. This is accomplished different ways by different Linux distributions, so please read the section for yours for the best results. You will need an alternate working internet connection by Ethernet cable, for example since the firmware cannot be included with the distro itself.

Post details for missing distributions at b43-dev lists.infradead.org. Note: the firmware from the binary drivers is copyrighted by Broadcom Corporation and cannot be redistributed. Fedora

With Fedora 10 and above, you should install wget and the b43-fwcutter tool which will extract firmware from the Windows driver :

1 su -

2 yum install b43-fwcutter wget

Next use the instructions here, skipping b43-fwcutter installation part. openSUSE

openSUSE 11.3 and above includes a utility that will automatically download the firmware and install it into its proper location. With working Internet access, run the following commands:

1 sudo zypper install b43-fwcutter

2 sudo /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware

Ubuntu/Debian

In recent versions of Ubuntu and Debian, installing the firmware-b43-installer package will handle everything for you:

1 sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

You will be asked to automatically fetch and install the firmware into the right location. Again, you will need an internet connection. Ubuntu Community Documentation

Ubuntu also has a page detailing the process of installing Broadcom wireless drivers on their community documentation. If you have internet access on the device that you want to install the b43 driver onto, follow this link: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx b43 20- 20Internet 20access. If you do not have internet access on the device that has a b43 supported broadcom wireless chipset and would like to use b43, follow this link instead: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx b43 20- 20No 20Internet 20access.

Note that you can only follow one of the two guides, not both. Gentoo

Gentoo systems supply a pre-compiled binary for b43-fwcutter. You need to:

and then follow the instructions below to download the Broadcom driver. The line that invokes b43-fwcutter will need to be changed to execute the program emerged above. Mandriva

See the instructions at Other distributions not mentioned above

Note: You need to have a compiler and headers for libc installed, since you will have to build fwcutter from source Install b43-fwcutter

Use version 018 of b43-fwcutter.

Download, extract the b43-fwcutter tarball and build it:

1 wget

2 gpg --verify b43-fwcutter-018.tar.bz2.asc

3 tar xjf b43-fwcutter-018.tar.bz2

4 cd b43-fwcutter-018

5 make

6 sudo make install

7 cd. .

If verification of the GPG signature fails due to an unknown key, you need to import the following key: Key ID 4203454C

Key fingerprint 757F AB7C ED18 14AE 15B4 836E 5FB0 2747 4203 454CIf you are using the b43 driver from 3.2 kernel or newer:

After installing b43-fwcutter, download version 5.100.138 of Broadcom s proprietary driver and extract the firmware from it:

1 export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR /lib/firmware

2 wget

3 tar xjf broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2

4 sudo b43-fwcutter -w FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR broadcom-wl-5.100.138/linux/wl_apsta.o

If you are using the b43 driver from older kernel:

After installing b43-fwcutter, download version 5.10.56.27.3 of Broadcom s proprietary driver and extract the firmware from it:

3 tar xjf broadcom-wl-5.10.56.27.3_mipsel.tar.bz2

4 sudo b43-fwcutter -w FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR broadcom-wl-5.10.56.27.3/driver/wl_apsta/wl_prebuilt.o

Note that you must adjust the FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR path to your distribution. The standard place where firmware is installed to is /lib/firmware. However some distributions put firmware in a different place. If you are using the b43legacy driver:

After installing b43-fwcutter, download version 3.130.20.0 of Broadcom s proprietary driver and extract the firmware from it:

3 sudo b43-fwcutter -w FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o

Many different drivers are or have been in use to support Broadcom chipsets, so the terminology is very confusing. The sections below aim to help you understand what is what.

Basic info

b43

STA wl

brcmsmac

Open source

In kernel

Supported buses

ssb

bcma

usb

Supported PHYs

LCN

Supported modes

Managed

Ad-Hoc

unknown

Monitor

There is also b43legacy driver for some old cards: B-PHY and early G-PHY ones. These cards can t run new firmware, so hardware encryption is unsupported on them.

Please note b43 developers don t offer support for the STA wl driver due to the fact that it s mainly proprietary. Contact Broadcom s support. Switching between drivers

If you have few drivers installed, system may auto-load different driver than the one you wanted to use. Manual un loading drivers can be done with modprobe tool.

To unload all known drivers you can pick only one command, if you know which driver is in use perform:

1 modprobe -r b43 bcma

2 modprobe -r brcmsmac bcma

3 modprobe -r wl

To load specific driver use one of the following commands:

1 modprobe b43

2 modprobe brcmsmac

3 modprobe wl

It is possible to prevent system from auto-loading some drivers by blacklisting them. This can be done with the following command:

1 echo blacklist drivername /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

If you plan to use wl, you should blacklist b43 and brcmsmac as well as bcma. Unfortunately wl does not use bcma bus driver, so this additional step is required. Bug reporting

If you encounter a bug, you should send a message to the b43/b43legacy mailing list at b43-dev lists.infradead.org containing ALL of the following: A description of the problem at hand When it happens How to reproduce wlan configuration and authentication/encryption type The output of the following commands:

In addition the following may be of interest to developers: If you have built the kernel from git, tell which tree, the output of git describe If the driver worked with earlier kernels, but has since stopped working, a bisection is of great value. Developers

See developers page for some advanced info, tools. Donations

Many people have donated money, hardware or other services to make this driver possible. Thanks. Please see the donations page for details.

Broadcom Wireless-LAN section

Proprietary Broadcom wl driver.

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Introduction

This page provides support information on Broadcom BCM43xx wireless network cards. The aim of Ubuntu is to ensure all card models work automatically with no, or minimal configuration. For example, via System Administration Hardware/Additional Drivers. If you are having a WiFi issue, please see below on getting this addressed. Identifying Your Broadcom BCM43xx Chipset

With this information, you may assess what drivers are supported for your card, and how to switch to a different driver from the instructions below. Internal cards

To identify a card that was installed inside your computer prior to purchase, please open a Terminal and execute: lspci -vvnn grep -A 9 Network

This will display: .0 Network controller 0280 : Broadcom Corporation BCM4331 802.11a/b/g/n 14e31 rev 02

Subsystem: Apple Inc. AirPort Extreme 106b:00d6

Control: I/O- Mem BusMaster SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-

Status: Cap 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL fast TAbort- SERR- PERR- INTx-

Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 256 bytes

Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 17

Region 0: Memory at a0600000 64-bit, non-prefetchable size 16K

Capabilities:

Kernel driver in use: wl

You now know: The Chip ID: BCM4331 The PCI-ID: 14e2b Kernel driver in use: wl USB cards

One will want to execute at a terminal: usb-devices Drivers available in Ubuntu

The following is an overview of the different drivers that are available for Broadcom wireless devices. Broadcom STA Wireless driver Proprietary

For Chip ID BCM 4311, 4312, 4313, 4321, 4322, 4331, 4352, 4360, 43142, 43224, 43225, 43227, 43228, and others as suggested by Broadcom.

The propietary Broadcom STA Wireless driver is maintained upstream by Broadcom. As this driver is closed source, fixes in the driver itself may only be provided by Broadcom. As a convenience, Ubuntu offers two versions of this driver:

The bcmwl-kernel-source package aims to offer a later version for a given release. Instructions for installation may be found later in this article.

The broadcom-sta package aims to offer an earlier version for a given release. For further installation instructions, please see here. b43 driver Open-source

For Chip ID BCM 4306 rev 03, 4309, 4311, 4312, 4318, 4322, 4331, 43224 and 43225.

The open-source firmware-b43-installer package is maintained upstream by the linux kernel community. For more granular information on what is supported with your card, please see their wiki page here. Instructions to install the package may be found below. b43legacy driver Open-source

For Chip ID BCM 4301, 4306 rev 02, and 4309.

The open-source firmware-b43legacy-installer package is maintained upstream by the linux kernel community. For more granular information on what is supported with your card, please see their wiki page here. Instructions to install the package may be found below. brcmsmac driver Open-source

For Chip ID BCM 4313, 43224 and 43225.

The open-source brcmsmac driver for PCIe devices is available from the brcm80211 module of the linux kernel package, maintained upstream by the linux kernel community. For more granular support information, please see their wiki page here. brcmfmac driver Open-source

SDIO: For Chip ID BCM 4329, 4330, 4334, 4335, 4354, 43143, 43241, and 43362.

USB: For Chip ID BCM 43143, 43242, 43566, and 43569.

The open-source brcmfmac driver is available from the brcm80211 module of the linux kernel package, maintained upstream by the linux kernel community. For more granular support information, please see their wiki page here. rndis_wlan driver Open-source

For Chip ID BCM 4320.

The open-source rndis_wlan driver is available from the linux kernel package, maintained upstream by the linux kernel community. For more granular support information, please see their wiki page here. ndiswrapper Open-source

For all chip IDs.

The ndiswrapper package utilizes the Windows closed source drivers to activate your WiFi card. It is maintained upstream here. For installation instructions, please see here. Installing STA drivers

STA - Internet access

If you have some other kind of Internet access on your computer e.g. via an ethernet cable then use the instructions below. 10.04 Lucid Lynx

Install the STA hybrid drivers/firmware from the restricted repository using the Software Centre or the Synaptic Package Manager Under the desktop menu System Administration Synaptic Package Manager and search for the bcmwl-kernel-source package and install or in a terminal under the desktop menu Applications Accessories Terminal issue the following commands: sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source

Under the desktop menu System Administration Hardware/Additional Drivers, the STA drivers can be activated for use.

Note: A computer restart may be required before using the wifi card. For temporary use with the LiveCD and LiveUSB environments, instead of a computer restart, in a terminal issue the following commands: sudo modprobe -r b43 ssb wl

sudo modprobe wlAllow several seconds for the network manager to scan for available networks before attempting a connection.

Open a Terminal and install the bcmwl-kernel-source package:sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get --reinstall install bcmwl-kernel-source

Note: If you see the message Module build for the currently running kernel was skipped since the kernel source for this kernel does not seem to be installed then you are missing the appropriate generic linux-header package s.

To test the driver and remove the need for a computer restart use: sudo modprobe -r b43 ssb wl brcmfmac brcmsmac bcma

sudo modprobe wl

Allow several seconds for the network manager to scan for available networks before attempting a connection.

The bcmwl-kernel-source package should automatically blacklist the open source drivers so that the STA driver is the only one in use.

If you do not have any other means of Internet access on your computer, you can install the bcmwl-kernel-source package from the restricted folder under. ./pool/restricted/b/bcmwl on the Ubuntu install media.

Note: The bcmwl-kernel-source package depends on the linux-headers packages so you may need to first retrieve the appropriate package s from the online repositories. A running LiveCD/LiveUSB environment has these packages allowing the wireless to work, but an installed system may not. Make sure you have the linux-headers package that matches your current kernel version, plus the appropriate generic header packages so that they are automatically updated on a kernel upgrade. To find out your current kernel use the command: uname -r

To find what linux-headers packages you have installed use the command: dpkg --get-selections grep headers

Systems installed from CDROM can add the install CD as a package source and install bcmwl-kernel-source using apt-get as above. However, if you want to do it manually then the instructions are as follows:

Navigate the install media and install the packages listed below by double clicking OR install the packages consecutively from a Terminal in the commands below the install media is mounted at /cdrom, but yours maybe different :

../pool/main/d/dkms cd /cdrom/pool/main/d/dkms

sudo dpkg -i dkms

../pool/main/p/patch cd /cdrom/pool/main/p/patch

sudo dpkg -i patch

../pool/main/f/fakeroot cd /cdrom/pool/main/f/fakeroot

sudo dpkg -i fakeroot

../pool/restricted/b/bcmwl cd /cdrom/pool/restricted/b/bcmwl

sudo dpkg -i bcmwl-kernel-source

For download and install instructions, please see

The Ubuntu kernel now provides the b43 driver, however due to copyright restrictions not the proprietary firmware which is required to run your card. The following instructions explain how to extract the required firmware. b43 - Internet access

10.04 Lucid Lynx

If you have some other kind of Internet access on your computer e.g. via an ethernet cable, you can download the b43/b43legacy firmware by simply installing the b43-fwcutter package which does the download and setup for you automatically.

To install b43-fwcutter issue the following commands in a terminal under the desktop menu Applications Accessories Terminal and follow the prompts: sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter

Under the desktop menu System Administration Hardware/Additional Drivers, the b43 drivers can be activated for use.

A computer restart may be required before using the wifi card. For temporary use with the LiveCD and LiveUSB environments, instead of a computer restart, in a terminal issue the following commands replace b43 with b43legacy where appropriate : sudo modprobe -r b43 ssb

sudo modprobe b43Allow several seconds for the network manager to scan for available networks before attempting a connection.

Open a Terminal and if you haven t already done so, update your package list: sudo apt-get update

If you have a b43 card use the command sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

or, if you need the b43legacy driver, use: sudo apt-get install firmware-b43legacy-installer

or, 12.04 - 12.10 if you need a LP-PHY version e.g BCM4312, use: sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-lpphy-installer

Restart the computer or reload the b43/b43legacy module as outlined in the Switching between drivers section below replace b43 with b43legacy where appropriate.

If you do not have any other means of Internet access from Ubuntu, then you will have to download the firmware from another computer with Internet access, from an existing OS on another partition, or before you install Ubuntu. You will also need the b43-fwcutter package which is usually included on the install media or can be downloaded from the official online repositories.

If you card is supported by more than one driver then use the modprobe command to test the drivers. First unload all conflicting drivers this includes removing the driver you re trying to install : sudo modprobe -r b43 bcma

sudo modprobe -r brcmsmac bcma

sudo modprobe -r wl

To load a specific driver use one of the following commands: sudo modprobe b43

sudo modprobe brcmsmac

After a reboot the system may auto-load a different driver to the one you wanted to use. Consequently, for permanent use, you may find it necessary to blacklist the driver/module you are not using. In the command below replace drivername with the driver you want to blacklist: echo blacklist drivername sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-broadcom-wireless.conf

Update the initramfs after any changes to the blacklist files: sudo update-initramfs -u

Note: The bcmwl-kernel-source package will automatically blacklist the open source drivers/modules in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-bcm43.conf.

If you wish to permanently use the open source drivers then remove the bcmwl-kernel-source package: sudo apt-get purge bcmwl-kernel-source

Ensure that the driver/modules you wish to use are not blacklisted in any of the other files in /etc/modprobe.d.

If your wifi card/chipset and/or various modes are not supported by the STA driver or the open source kernel drivers, then you will need to go for ndiswrapper - this will allow you to use the Windows closed source drivers to activate your wifi card.

LP 1010931 14e27 Dell Vostro 3555 Broadcom BCM4313 5GHz doesn t work but 2.4GHz does The root cause is the card only transmits/receives on the single-band 2.4GHz only, so it would never broadcast at 5GHz.

Broadcom STA Wireless driver

Before filing a bug report against either the bcmwl-kernel-source or broadcom-sta-source package, one from the Ubuntu repositories is installed not a recompiled/custom version and then execute one of the following via a terminal: ubuntu-bug bcmwl-kernel-source

ubuntu-bug broadcom-sta-source

If this doesn t work, or doesn t include all of the following information, please ensure all of the below is provided:

Please include only one not both of the following corresponding to which driver series you are filing a report against: apt-cache policy bcmwl-kernel-source

or: apt-cache policy broadcom-sta-source

Please execute the following via a terminal and post the results in your report: lspci -vvnn grep -A 9 Network

lsb_release -rd

uname -a

sudo dmidecode -s bios-version

sudo dmidecode -s bios-release-date The full manufacturer and model of your computer as noted on the sticker of the computer itself. Did this problem not occur in a previous release. If so, which one s specifically. Does this problem occur with the latest version of Ubuntu. If available, please comment to how testing the relevant open source driver for your card type provides a WORKAROUND. If your chipset is supported as per above, but doesn t work, please file a bug following the b43 driver procedure below. Please provide the router manufacturer, model, and firmware version.

Please comment to how testing ndiswrapper for your card type provides a WORKAROUND. If it doesn t work, please file a bug report as per the support article.

If the version of the driver you are using in the repository is the latest version available as per Broadcom, it is also advised to send them an e-mail via their contact page, and post their response to your report.

If the version of the driver you are using in the repository is an older version than that available from Broadcom, then contacting them would not apply. Instead, an investigation would need to occur to see if the version available for your release should be changed. b43 driver

Before filing a bug report against the firmware-b43-installer package, one will need to install the version from the Ubuntu repositories not a recompiled/custom version and then execute via a terminal: ubuntu-bug firmware-b43-installer

If this doesn t work, or doesn t include all of the following information, please include all of the following information:

apt-cache policy firmware-b43-installer

sudo dmidecode -s bios-release-date 1. The full manufacturer and model of your computer as noted on the sticker of the computer itself. Did this problem not occur in a previous release. If so, which one s specifically. Does this problem occur with the latest version of Ubuntu. If available, please comment to how testing test the relevant Broadcom STA Wireless driver for your card type provides a WORKAROUND. If it doesn t, please file a report as per the procedure above. Please provide the router manufacturer, model, and firmware version.

Once all of the required information is present, iff the version of the driver you are using is the latest version available from the Ubuntu repositories, then one would want to e-mail the appropriate upstream mailing list following this procedure.

CategoryHardware CategoryNetworking CategoryWireless.

If you have LAN / Broadband connection or some kind internet access, then it is easy to install the Broadcom b43 and b43-legacy wireless driver in your Ubuntu Machine.
Comments: 9 months ago: Jwtrahan: Good call sloshnmosh. I had no way to hard line to the Internet. You saved me. 9 months ago: SchafferBrad: I would like to prosiedem.
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