wireless bcm43142

pedestrianic · Posted: Tue Jan 21, 2014 11:16 pm Post subject: wireless bcm43142

i have a dell inpirion i would like to install gentoo on, but the liveCD had no driver for my broadcom wireless.
systemRescueCD didn't have it either but ubuntu 13 did. so i am running ubuntu on it now with the wireless connected.

can i just untar a stage3 tarball over the top of my ubuntu and start syncing portage?

42nd-chris · n00b Joined: 13 Jan 2014 Posts: 5

Rather than untarring over top of Ubuntu, I think you're supposed to untar it into the partition that will be / in your Gentoo install.

I was in a similar boat when I installed, the live CD didn't have what I needed to connect with a Ralink card. I did my install from within Chakra installed on an external drive. Everything worked just fine after I finished the install.

The Wifi page has the kernel options you'll need to configure and info on the needed firmware.

pedestrianic · Posted: Wed Jan 22, 2014 12:08 am Post subject:

yes i'll want to repartition before i untar.

first i'll be needing to copy the driver and firmware from ubuntu. right?

42nd-chris · n00b Joined: 13 Jan 2014 Posts: 5

No, you won't need the driver/firmware from Ubuntu; you'll be installing the Gentoo versions.

You'll chroot from Ubuntu into your Gentoo environment shortly after you untar the stage 3. At that point you'll be able to use Portage to get the sources you need to continue. You should remain connected after chrooting. I think you have to wait until after you've compiled your kernel to install the firmware.

At that point you just install it with

desultory · Bodhisattva Joined: 04 Nov 2005 Posts: 9410

If you need to build firmware into the kernel, you need to have it available in order to build it in; so install the firmware, then build the kernel.

While there should be no need to actually copy the firmware from the Ubuntu system, be sure to make use of it as a reference for what firmware and modules you should build as a baseline.

You would probably do well to read over the handbook, and certain addenda before proceeding.

lazykoala · n00b Joined: 08 Jan 2014 Posts: 22

I got the issue with broadcom too:

NetGear, Inc. WNA3100(v1) Wireless-N 300 [Broadcom BCM43231]

DONAHUE · Posted: Fri Jan 24, 2014 6:58 pm Post subject:

@lazykoala:
bad news, linuxwireless.org reports your 43231 chip is unsupported at
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/brcm80211?highlight=%28BCM43231%29
My NetGear, Inc. WNA3100(v1) Wireless-N 300 [Broadcom BCM43231] did not even work well with windows 7 so it is completely retired now.
_________________
Defund the FCC.

pedestrianic · Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 5:03 pm Post subject:

in ubuntu, in their system settings dialog --> software & updates --> additional drivers it says
"Using Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA wireless driver source from bcmwl-kernel-source (proprietary)"

now in lsmod i am finding a module named "wl" connected to cfg80211

further, dmesg reports "eth1: Broadcom BCM4365 ... "
while lspci has "Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43142 ... "

now, i have gentoo on my harddisk running fine. i emerged linux-firmware and saw that the
/lib/firmware/brcm files are the same as ubuntu's, so that seems fine.

but for drivers in gentoo i seem to have tried both the b43 and the fullMac driver with no catch. i also
turned on the bcma switch from the broadcom specific switches with no catch.

thanks for your help

pedestrianic · Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 5:17 pm Post subject:

ooo check this out: in ubuntu, ls -o /usr/src

pedestrianic · Posted: Sun Jan 26, 2014 10:39 pm Post subject:

well searching helps. i had to emerge broadcom-sta making the wl driver.

thanks all. solved!

sparx · n00b Joined: 10 Apr 2014 Posts: 3

Hi,

I have Dell Vostro with BCM43142 and faced the same problem with wireless working.

lspci -k shows