[HOWTO] Wireless card BCM4328 without ndiswrapper

Question

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!!
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 I found the MacBook wiki a bit outdated but I wasn't sure at all so suggestions are welcome!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)

Answer 1

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)