Broadcom 43xx (4318) Wireless on 64 Bit Ubuntu

There are some great posts in forums and other blogs about getting the Broadcom 43xx Wireless card working in Ubuntu, which really helped me get on the right road to setting mine up (see the end of this post). However, I’m running 64 Bit Ubuntu on my Acer Aspire 5052, so I had a little trouble finding the correct Windozzze drivers to use with ndiswrapper. The drivers can be downloaded from this post, if anyone needs them – Broadcom 43xx Windows 64 Bit drivers.

This is the method I used to get my Wireless up and running, which is a combination of a few different posts:

First, open a terminal window (Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal), then run:
lspci | grep Broadcom
You should see something along the lines of:
08:04.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
If you don’t, stop reading now! If you do, then continue…

Download the drivers and extract them to your Desktop, or wherever you want:
tar -zxvf broadcom-64bit-win-drivers.tar.gz
You should now have two files extracted – bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl564.sys. If your Wireless was recognised by Ubuntu when it was first installed, but is simply not working, then it needs to be blacklisted, so that ndiswrapper can take over. Open the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file:
gksu gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
I added “blacklist bcm43xx” to the end of the file:
# blacklist bcm43xx wifi driver, and use ndiswrapper instead
blacklist bcm43xx
Now save the file, and reboot. Open a terminal window again, and cd to the directory where the extracted driver files are – e.g.:
cd ~/Desktop/wireless
If ndiswrapper isn’t installed, run the Synaptic Package Manager (Stsyem -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager) and search for “ndiswrapper”. Install ndiswrapper-common and ndiswrapper-utils-x.x (where x is the version number). Go back to the terminal window to install the new driver, and type:
sudo ndiswrapper –i bcmwl5.inf
sudo ndiswrapper –m
Then, edit the /etc/modules file:
gksu gedit /etc/modules
Add:
ndiswrapper
to the bottom, and press “Enter” to add a new line. Save the file, and reboot! The Wireless card should be working, and should be able to connect to a wireless network.

If removal of the driver is required, you can run:
sudo ndiswrapper –e bcmwl5
Then, delete the entry from /etc/modules:
gksu gedit /etc/modules
Delete “ndiswrapper” and save… and un-blacklist the bcm43xx driver in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist:
gksu gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
Delete “blacklist bcm43xx”, save and reboot.

Hope that helps somebody!

References:

Broadcom 4318 Using NdisWrapper, posted by brainwrecked-tech @ ubuntuforums
HOWTO: Broadcom 4318 Wireless Cards, posted by compwiz18 @ ubuntuforums

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