cant see wifi on centos7 acer laptop

sigint-ninja · 02-05-2018, 03:27 AM

hi guys

cant see any wifi networks,network settings dont let me add a wifi connection
i did get it working the one time after installing NetworkManager-wifi
or did something and it worked but after restarting nothing

when i do:
lspci

at the bottom i can see

Network controller: Broadcom limited BCM43142 802.11/b/g/n (rev01)
so it looks like the computer is seeing the card

i tried updating the whole system and reinstalling NetworkManager

any ideas on why its not working and what i can try

thanks

wpeckham · 02-05-2018, 07:54 AM

Broadcom is not very "linux friendly", and you often have to manually install the drivers.
I have never had to manually COMPILE the drivers, but I see several pages exist for how to do that on distributions that require it. In your case you should be ale to install using yum, once you discover the correct driver package name. (Possibly after enabling the EPEL repos, I have not checked.)

You will need a wired connection or other path to the internet to download the packages.

sigint-ninja · 02-05-2018, 03:42 PM

hi wpeckham

thanks for your reply

i actually swapped out my wifi card as i thought it might be the easiest solution (i have tons from old laptops)
i tried

realtek
atheros
and many others but the problem is the same

i dont know seems like a missing link with my network manager and wireless

should i do the same as you said with a chosen card?

strange how i got it working the other day...weird

sigint-ninja · 02-05-2018, 04:01 PM

ok so i went

yum install NetworkManager-wifi

systemctl restart NetworkManager

this has my wifi working again...for how long i dont know,did a restart and it still worked
i wonder if changing the card helped...probably

thanks for the help...will let you know how i get on