[SOLVED] catch 22 install wireless drivers without a wired connection

Nizzok · 12-26-2010, 07:50 PM

Hi all,

After some problems with grub2, I took the nuclear option and reinstalled my ubuntu OS. The issue now is this. I don't have access to a wired connection, and I can't seem to access the proprietary drivers without one. So...I can't turn on my wifi card to download the drivers that I need to turn the stupid card on in the first place. Counter-intuitive, no?

So, my question is this: how do you get the drivers (which are there for the live cd) to activate/download, without a wired connection? Can they be installed from the live CD to the working OS?

Peacedog · 12-26-2010, 07:59 PM

Hi Nizzok, Welcome to LQ. Could you download the package you need to a flash drive from your current connection then install from there?

Good luck. ;-)

Nizzok · 12-26-2010, 11:34 PM

Hi Peacedog,

Yes, that's certainly an option. I'm more wondering about the other users that might find themselves in a no-wire situation. I'm not sure how ubuntu decides where the drivers are, or where to look for them. That being said, I don't know why the drivers are available to the Live CD boot and not to the natively installed OS. Can you point me to the direction to downloading these magical drivers?

Peacedog · 12-27-2010, 09:05 AM

We should start at the versions. Which version is the live disc and what version of Ubuntu is installed?

Good luck. ;-)

baronobeefdip · 12-27-2010, 12:14 PM

as cliché as this sounds whenever i come across devices that don't really work on in some distros either hunt them down on the Internet or when worse comes to worse install a new kernel. this process is slightly different in most distros but it has alot of similarities between each other

Nizzok · 12-27-2010, 02:17 PM

Hi...I've been messing with this for a while and I'm increasingly frustrated. I've been very happy with Linux in the past, but this is three for three. Sometimes the set up will mount usb devices, sometimes you have to force it. I tried downloading the drivers from another tutorial, http://askubuntu.com/questions/8546/...nternet-access, but it tells me that dependencies aren't met.

What on earth is the point of shipping software that doesn't work 'out of the box'.

I even tried a pendrive installation of 10.10 (my first OS), and it told me it couldn't load the kernel image. WTF?

Nizzok · 12-27-2010, 02:25 PM

Hi peacedog,

sorry, I had 10.10 installed, I only have access to a 10.04 disk. I tried to do a 10.10 pendrive install, but I get 'could not load kernel image errors' so, I guess the windows pendrive creation doesn't work so well...yeesh

Peacedog · 12-27-2010, 02:59 PM

My suggestion is to go ahead with the install, get everything else up and running. Then from your live disc or even your Windows install grab the packages you need including any dependencies. You'll need to install the dependencies first to last in order then the driver package. Do you know what hardware you have? Are you looking for the correct driver package?

Please post the output from the following once you have your install complete.

Code:

$ sudo lspci -v | grep Ethernet
$ sudo lspci -v | grep Network
$ sudo lsmod

Good luck. ;-)

Nizzok · 12-28-2010, 06:46 AM

hello again...I finally got the drivers and dependencies to load without problems, but it doesn't seem to have worked as the wireless still isn't working...

here are the results
~$ lspci -v | grep Ethernet

Code:

07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5906M Fast Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)

lspci -v | grep Network

Code:

04:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)

lsmod

Code:

Module                  Size  Used by
nls_utf8                1069  1 
isofs                  29250  1 
binfmt_misc             6587  1 
ppdev                   5259  0 
joydev                  8708  0 
snd_hda_codec_conexant    22577  1 
fbcon                  35102  71 
tileblit                2031  1 fbcon
font                    7557  1 fbcon
bitblit                 4707  1 fbcon
softcursor              1189  1 bitblit
vga16fb                11385  0 
vgastate                8961  1 vga16fb
snd_hda_intel          21877  2 
snd_hda_codec          74201  2 snd_hda_codec_conexant,snd_hda_intel
snd_hwdep               5412  1 snd_hda_codec
snd_pcm_oss            35308  0 
snd_mixer_oss          13746  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm                70662  3 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq_dummy           1338  0 
arc4                    1153  2 
snd_seq_oss            26726  0 
snd_seq_midi            4557  0 
snd_rawmidi            19056  1 snd_seq_midi
snd_seq_midi_event      6003  2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq                47263  6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_timer              19098  2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
snd_seq_device          5700  5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
b43                   157218  0 
i915                  282354  3 
drm_kms_helper         29297  1 i915
mac80211              204922  1 b43
drm                   162471  4 i915,drm_kms_helper
snd                    54148  16 snd_hda_codec_conexant,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
uvcvideo               56990  0 
videodev               34361  1 uvcvideo
v4l1_compat            13251  2 uvcvideo,videodev
cfg80211              126485  2 b43,mac80211
led_class               2864  1 b43
psmouse                63245  0 
serio_raw               3978  0 
intel_agp              24177  2 i915
i2c_algo_bit            5028  1 i915
agpgart                31724  2 drm,intel_agp
soundcore               6620  1 snd
snd_page_alloc          7076  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
video                  17375  1 i915
output                  1871  1 video
lp                      7028  0 
parport                32635  2 ppdev,lp
ahci                   32008  3 
ssb                    37336  1 b43
tg3                   109292  0

again, thanks in advance for your help

jkirchner · 12-28-2010, 10:00 AM

What driver did you load? I have the Broadcom 4312 and it uses the boradcom_sta driver and will not work with B43 (I see tha module is loading in your lsmod output).

Noway2 · 12-28-2010, 10:11 AM

It has been along time since I have had to get wireless to work without an ethernet connection. When I did, it was an iterative process between Linux and Windows, downloading the packages and dependencies to a USB stick and then installing them in Linux, optionally building from source where necessary.

From looking at your output of lspci, it looks like you have a Broadcom BCM4312. Investigating into this shows that this devices uses the 802.11 Linux STA driver. Here is a link to the driver. The readme file seems to have decent instructions on how to install. For the most part it is distribution agnostic, but there are some additional instructions based upon distribution regarding extra dependencies. Note, you may also want to look into the b43 driver, which may also be applicable for your device.

Also, sometimes the network manager causes problems with wireless. WiCD seems to be a good choice that generally works with most distributions and drivers. Again, you will need to go to your package repository, download the application and its dependencies, and install them, starting with the dependencies in reverse order.

Lastly, if drivers continue to be an issue, the madwifi drivers have been known to work when others haven't.

Looking at the output of 'ifconfig' and iwlist --scanning and seeing some form of response is usually an indication that you are getting close to having it working. If you can get a list of scanning access points, but can't connect, this usually means that the network manager is at issue.

reed9 · 12-28-2010, 10:59 AM

The broadcom sta driver is available on the Ubuntu installation image, so you do not need internet access to install.

Instructions for installing offline are here.

The card does also work with the b43 driver with kernel 2.6.33 and later but you need to pass a couple of options to the driver, ie, in /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf add a line

Code:

options b43 pio=1 qos=0

Nizzok · 12-28-2010, 01:43 PM

Hello,

and thank you all for your replies. For someone who thought he was a semi-aware ubuntu user, this has been a thoroughly enlightening if frustrating experience. I now have another problem all together. It would seem that having installed the non-proprietary driver on ubuntu, the windows wireless card has ceased to function (I thankfully have access to another internet enabled device. For the time that I've spent researching this, while intellectually fruitful, I could have theoretically just gone nuclear and just done a completely reinstall both OSs onto a clean disk. I'm going to try to fix the ubuntu problems and then try to figure out WTF happened to the DOZE partition...FML.

Nizzok · 12-28-2010, 02:53 PM

Inexplicably...it all works now...inshallah it will continue to do so