Wifi Driver for the Broadcom BCM4313

Archived topics about LMDE 1 and LMDE 2
Locked
tungsten74

Wifi Driver for the Broadcom BCM4313

Post by tungsten74 »

Hi all,

I've installed LMDE last week and everything works fine except for the Wireless LAN. I have a Broadcom BCM4313 card in my laptop. I tried several drivers but the only one which seems to work so far is brcmsmac as it's the only one which makes the wlan0 device appear in iwconfig's output. NDISwrapper would probably work, but I wasn't able to find a suitable WinXP 64bit driver yet. wl and b43 don't work at all.

iwconfig:

Code: Select all

eth0      no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=off   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:on
However, I am still unable to connect to my wifi. I guess I have to configure that device, but I don't know how. I added these lines to the file /etc/network/interfaces (after having installed wpasupplicant):

Code: Select all

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
	wpa-ssid <my-ssid>
	wpa-psk <my-key>
but nothing changed, my devices remains unconfigured.
Another problem is, that rfkill says that wireless LAN is hard blocked. I have a key with a red light on my keyboard, but pressing it does not unblock WLAN and as far as I know, there are no other hardware switches. Is that a driver problem or another configuration issue?

I hope you can help me.

Here are more details:
lspci -vvnn | grep Network

Code: Select all

0d:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01)
rfkill list all

Code: Select all

0: phy0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: yes
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 1 time in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
User avatar
karlchen
Level 23
Level 23
Posts: 18173
Joined: Sat Dec 31, 2011 7:21 am
Location: Germany

Re: Wifi Driver for the Broadcom BCM4313

Post by karlchen »

Hello, tungsten74.

Look at the output of "rfkill list" at the end of your own post. It says "hard blocked: yes". This means that your wifi adapter has been switched off
+ either by a hardware switch
+ or by a keyboard shortcut
+ or inside the Bios even
So this is not a driver software problem. ndiswrapper will not be able to move a switch or a slider. Find the switch and switch on the wifi adapter. Or find the keyboard shortcut to do so. (Consult your hardware manual if necessary.)
By the way, installing ndiswrapper and a Windows driver should be the absolutely last resort in case everything else has failed. Today there should hardly be any need to use ndiswrapper plus Windows driver any longer, because LMDE should bring along the right Linux driver or it should be available from the repositories. So far my BCM4313 has always worked out of the box on Linux Mint. (Yet, I admit, I use the Ubuntu based editions, not LMDE).

Kind regards,
Karl
Image
The people of Alderaan have been bravely fighting back the clone warriors sent out by the unscrupulous Sith Lord Palpatine for 762 days now.
Lifeline
tungsten74

Re: Wifi Driver for the Broadcom BCM4313

Post by tungsten74 »

Hello karlchen, thank you for your response.

I have an action key (FN + F12) on my keyboard which should switch on wireless. It's currently switched off (red light), and pressing that button has no effect. Inside the BIOS there are no network-related options at all, and if there is another wifi switch, it's somewhere inside my notebook.

Moreover, when I start the system and enter rfkill list all, the output is:

Code: Select all

0: phy0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: yes
	Hard blocked: no
When I remove the soft-blocking via rfkill unblock all, the output is

Code: Select all

0: phy0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: yes
I will try to find out whether there are other hardware switches.
User avatar
all41
Level 19
Level 19
Posts: 9498
Joined: Tue Dec 31, 2013 9:12 am
Location: Computer, Car, Cage

Re: Wifi Driver for the Broadcom BCM4313

Post by all41 »

fwiw- I have a Compaq CQ-58 which also has a wifi light & wifi logo on the F12 key.
Red when off and blu/wht when on.
It is dual boot Mint16/Win 8.1 I have never found a way to control this via the keyboard..
Pressing fn+F12 does nothing when booted to either os. But I can turn it on or off
using the networking icon from the panel in both cases.

Maybe there is a magic trick for this that I have not found--maybe in om

added: The operation of my F12 button is contrary to the instruction manual regarding what should happen.
Last edited by all41 on Fri Aug 22, 2014 11:01 am, edited 1 time in total.
Everything in life was difficult before it became easy.
User avatar
karlchen
Level 23
Level 23
Posts: 18173
Joined: Sat Dec 31, 2011 7:21 am
Location: Germany

Re: Wifi Driver for the Broadcom BCM4313

Post by karlchen »

Hello, tungsten74.

It is imaginable that for whichever reason on Linux Mint your <fn> keyboard shortcuts do not work. Usually this means that the keyboard has not been fully auto-detected. - Do not ask me how to troubleshoot this, please. - Maybe I am merely lucky that my office notebook has got a dedicate wifi switch on the right hand side (but no BCM4313) and that on my Acer Aspire One D260 netbook the <Fn> keyborad shortcuts simply work, also on Linux Mint, not just on Windows (BCM4313 inside).
It is interesting that rfkill says your broadcom is soft-blocked until you remove the soft-block just to find out it is hard-blocked.

Which notebook exactly do you have? Maybe googling for the exact combination of your notebook plsu BCM4313 will return some hits.

Depending on how much time you are prepared to spend on the issue you might also try a Ubuntu based Linux Mint 17 live system. It had not no problem detecting and activating the BCM4313 inside my Acer netbook. - If LM17 were successful on your machine as well you would at least know that it is not your machine which is to blame and that Linux Mint does detect and use your BCM4313.

And a bit like a shot in the blue, because it is about LMDE, not Ubuntu. But maybe this thread will help you nonetheless: Broadcom BCM4313.
(Broadcom is really widespread I guess, sadly problems with Broadcoms may be spread even more widely.)

Kind regards,
Karl
Image
The people of Alderaan have been bravely fighting back the clone warriors sent out by the unscrupulous Sith Lord Palpatine for 762 days now.
Lifeline
JeremyB
Level 21
Level 21
Posts: 13771
Joined: Fri Feb 21, 2014 8:17 am

Re: Wifi Driver for the Broadcom BCM4313

Post by JeremyB »

I might be able to help but I would like you to install pastebin and run a wireless script

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get install pastebinit

Code: Select all

wget -N -t 5 -T 10 http://dl.dropbox.com/u/57264241/wireless_script && chmod +x wireless_script && ./wireless_script
Choose Y when asked if you want to upload to pastebin and then copy the URL that will appear in terminal

This chipset should use bcma and brcmsmac with kernels newer than 3.8, however if wl was installed it needs to be purged to get rid of the blacklist file that bcmwl-kernel-source uses when installed. If the kernel is older than 3.8 then bcmwl-kernel-source usually works
Locked

Return to “LMDE Archive”