Thinkpad E430 Broadcom wireless Device Driver

1 Story

OK, here's my story.I have a laptop Thinkpad E430, and there's a wireless device on it, but it does not work very well on ubuntu 12.04, though I can discover "Broadcom STA wireless driver" on System Settings > Additional Drivers. Yes, I installed it, I mean the additional driver, but, nothing changes, it can't find any Access Point, yet. so I uninstalled the driver and use command:

$ sudo lshw -class network

it shows me some info like the below:

description: Network controller
product: Broadcom Corporation
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
version: 01
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
configuration: latency=0
resources: memory:cdd00000-cdd07fff

here, I got its vendor "Broadcom Corporation" and I realize this is one product of Broadcom Corporation, maybe I can use:

$ sudo lspci -vvnn | grep -i broadcom

to show me some interested info:

03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation Device [14e4:4365] (rev 01)

from outputs, I got two important number:

1) PCI Vendor ID 14e4
2) PCI Device ID 4365

OK, here we go, then I google "linux broadcom", it take me to

http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php, on

http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/README.txt

file, I finally discovered 0x4365 number, and see what's happening:

 BRCM               PCI           PCI             Dell
Product Name      Vendor ID     Device ID       Product ID
...
43142 2.4 Ghz     0x14e4        0x4365
...

Because there's another lines below:

WHAT'S NEW IN RELEASE 6.30.223.126
----------------------------------
+ Upgraded to Support 3.8.x
+ Added 43142 support

so, that's why the Additional Drivers can't drive the wireless device, it's too old.

2 Build Instructions

1. Setup the directory by untarring the proper talball:
   # mkdir hybrid_wl
   # cd hybrid_wl
   # tar -xzvf ../hybrid-v35-nodebug-pcoem-6_30_223_141.tar.gz
   # make
   

3 Install Instructions

1. Insert the modules into kernel:
   # rmmod wl (optional)
   # mv /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/net/wireless/wl.ko \
   /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/net/wireless/wl.ko.orig (optional)
   # cp wl.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/net/wireless/wl.ko
   # depmod
   # modprobe wl
   

4 Common Issues:

After modprobe, I trid to start up using ifconfig eth1 up, it comes Operation not possible due to RF-kill, just google, some goolers' solution:

# rfkill unblock all
# rfkill list

But something seen a little different from the sulution:

  1: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: yes

OMG, why the Hard blocked always "yes", somebody tips me, switch to Windows and turn it off, can I say s-h-i-t? I reboot and go into BIOS, switch the"wireless LAN radio" to "on", after that, the newwl driver was operational.

5 Setup To Always Load At Boot Time

# echo wl >> /etc/modules
# reboot

Author: Shusheng Shaw<[email protected]>

Date: 2014-01-27 11:32:47 HKT

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