Help with wireless [SOLVED]

[wmdickson]

I've got AVLinux running on my old Mac mini.  Liking it.  I'd like it even more if I could get wireless working.  Apparently I have a Broadcom 4321.  I've tried a few recipes that I've found on various forums with no success.  If anybody can point me to a document along the lines of "here's how you make this thing work in AVLinux" I'd be very very grateful.  I'm new to AVLinux but not unfamiliar or uncomfortable with Linux per se---I used to run it back in the day, though it has been a while,

[GMaq]

Hi,

I don't have any Broadcom hardware but this may help, if you scroll down to the end this thread has some more current info:
http://www.remastersys.com/forums/index.php?topic=528.0

[wmdickson]

Thanks.  Looks like that will get me pointed in the right direction, at least.

[trulan]

That guide is directed toward Broadcom's proprietary STA driver (also known as the 'wl' driver because that's what the kernel module is called).  It looks like your chip is not supported by that driver, but instead needs the open source b43 driver.
Details are on this page:
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

All you should need to do is install firmware-b43-installer (you can install it using Synaptic).  Then, you can either reboot, or load the b43 module using modprobe.

One more thing, you'll either need to install one of the AV Linux testing kernels, or force the wireless card into PIO only mode.  This from the b43 driver page linked above:

BCM4321: some cards do not work in DMA mode with kernel 3.1 and older. Problem was fixed in 3.2. A workaround for older kernel is to use PIO mode (b43.pio=1 module param).

If you have any more questions, feel free to ask.  Good luck!

[wmdickson]

In case anybody else wanders through, I ended up following the instructions here

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

and everything is working just fine now.


ETA:  Just saw the post above.  FWIW, the wl driver is working fine for me (BCM4321 rev 05) -- I did have to compile it on my own machine but after doing that (and taking extensive measures to kill ssb) it works fine.