Friday, March 22, 2013

Broadcom wireless drivers for openSUSE 12.2

First off, this link was very helpful:

http://forums.opensuse.org/english/get-technical-help-here/wireless/479578-acer-laptop-bcm43227-wireless-problem.html

Not initially, that is. I have a Travelmate 7750G laptop with Broadcom 43227 (BCM 43227, PCI ID 0x4358) wireless adaptor. I tried many things and I think that this is finally the setup that worked.

What doesn't work:

#hwinfo --wlan --short (shows nothing until driver is working)

In a terminal, and as root user, do the following (you need to be connected to the internet):

~#install_bcm43xx_firmware

This will install b43 and b43l3gacy drivers.

Reboot the machine.

Go to the following link:
http://packman.inode.at/suse/openSUSE_12.2/Essentials/x86_64/broadcom-wl-kmp-default-5.100.82.112_k3.4.47_2.38-11.6.x86_64.rpm

Open with YaST installer and it will automatically retrieve dependencies.

After installing run the command in terminal and as root:

#/usr/sbin/rfkill list

Bluetooth will probably show blocked. So,...

#/usr/sbin/rfkill unblock 1

Restart your machine and hopefully it will work as mine did. If you do have success please leave a comment so I know I got all the steps. If it did not help, let me know and I will try to see what I missed.

Other helpful commands:

#/sbin/lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net
#uname -a 
#hwinfo --netcard

For XEN
Once you have the above working with the standard kernel, install for the XEN kernel as well:
http://packman.inode.at/suse/openSUSE_12.2/Essentials/x86_64/broadcom-wl-kmp-xen-5.100.82.112_k3.4.47_2.38-11.6.x86_64.rpm
Note that you can install it whilst in normal/default kernel. Reboot and test with the XEN kernel running.

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