(Howto) Installing and running the broadcom BCM4312 wi-fi drivers on HP 2133 Mini-Note with an Arch Linux OS without NDIS wrapper


I was bored and decided to liven up my for along time dead wordpress blog, well…, and then decided to make this little howto.

This is for people who are looking to install Arch Linux in their HP 2133 Mini-Notes and get the wifi running if they happen to have the BCM4312 cards.
I just made this out of a whim but I tried to restructure it somewhat, anyways it ain’t done great so don’t complain eheheh. If this helps anyone though despite my poor authoring skills, then its all good!


Anyways on with the show…

Arch Linux on HP 2133 Mini-Note how to install broadcom-wl wifi drivers from AUR and get it working , without NDIS wrapper: 

Determine if you have BCM4312 cards – issue this command lspci | grep BCM43 , working cards for this are
14e4:432b “Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller”
14e4:4329 “Broadcom Corporation BCM43XG”
14e4:4328 “Broadcom Corporation BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n”
14e4:4315 “Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g”
14e4:4313 “Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 Ethernet Controller”
14e4:4312 “Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11a/b/g”
14e4:4311 “Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN”
14e4:432d
14e4:432c
14e4:432a

just FYI, I tested this with an HP2133 FH414PA Mini-Note model and yields this output = 02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01)

Search for the latest broadcom-wl PKGBUILD in the AUR (this example was done with broadcom-wl 5.10.79.10-1 version on 2.6.28 linux kernel)
Download the tarball.


Then extract the contents and navigate into the folder where the files just extracted into, you can extract via terminal(tar xzf foo , where foo is a placeholder for the filename to be untarred) or by extracting within the GUI.
At the terminal, you should be in the folder where files extracted too, and should see a PKGBUILD file, then type and enter this command in terminal – makepkg
After all the gibberish you will see done in the terminal and everything is ok without errors, Locate the new wl.ko file, (ex: this was located in ~/broadcom-wl/pkg/lib/modules/2.6.28-ARCH/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/wl.ko)

Navigate to folder where the wl.ko file is and in the terminal issue the command – insmod /this-is-the-PATH-to-file/wl.ko
Now load the module by issuing the command – modprobe wl command, or to load the broadcom-wl driver automatically during startup, copy or move  the module to your module directory then edit the /etc/rc.conf file with your preferred text editor (ex: # vim /etc/rc.conf , and then locate MODULES array and add wl to the list, save and exit, on next reboot the the driver would load automatically without the need to load manually)


* Note install the latest ieee80211 from http://ieee80211.sourceforge.net/

* Note the ieee80211_crypt_tkip should be loaded or added into the MODULES array as well.

* Put “ieee80211_crypt_tkip” and “wl” at the BEFORE b44 (if you have it) position in MODULES= in /etc/rc.conf

* Don’t forget to blacklist b43, by prefixing it with the ” ! ” symbol in the modules array.

* Your wireless card will be eth0 and your ethernet card will be eth1

* To check if the wl and ieee80211 modules are loaded issue the command via terminal – lsmod , and look for the modules that look like or seem similar to wl and ieee80211, if they are listed then they are loaded.
* To check if your wifi is detected and too see which accesspoints are detected issue the command via terminal – iwconfig

* Used wicd and wifi-radar, either or is fine to connect

* I’m sure there are other ways but this is one way to make the wifi work in this system on Arch Linux and HP 2133 Mini-Note 2.6.28 Kernel.
System Specs Tested on:
Arch GNU/Linux Operating System
2.6.28 Linux Kernel
GNOME
Resolution 1024×768 pixels
HP 2133 Mini-Note (model: FH414PA)
(1.2 GHz or 1200 MHz) VIA C7-M Processor CentaurHauls
2 GB RAM
120 GB Fujitsu SATA MHZ2120B HDD
BCM4312 802.11 b/g
# lspci
Host bridge    VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 Host Bridge
Host bridge    VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 Host Bridge
Host bridge    VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 Host Bridge
Host bridge    VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 Host Bridge
Host bridge    VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 Host Bridge
PIC    VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 I/O APIC Interrupt Controller
Host bridge    VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 Security Device
Host bridge    VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 Host Bridge
PCI bridge    VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237/VX700 PCI Bridge
PCI bridge    VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 PCI to PCI Bridge Controller
PCI bridge    VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 PCI to PCI Bridge Controller
IDE interface    VIA Technologies, Inc. Device 5372
USB Controller    VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
USB Controller    VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
USB Controller    VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
USB Controller    VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0
ISA bridge    VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237S PCI to ISA Bridge
Host bridge    VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8251 Ultra VLINK Controller
Host bridge    VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237A Host Bridge
PCI bridge    VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237A PCI to PCI Bridge
VGA compatible controller    VIA Technologies, Inc. CN896/VN896/P4M900 [Chrome 9 HC]
Network controller    Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g
Ethernet controller    Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5788 Gigabit Ethernet
Audio device    VIA Technologies, Inc. VT1708/A [Azalia HDAC]
* Reference links:
- http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Broadcom_BCM4312
- http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Makepkg
- http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR
* Driver links:
- http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php
- http://ieee80211.sourceforge.net/
- http://aur.archlinux.org/
- http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=19514 (drivers which i used in this explanation are downloaded from this link)
*A NOTE to the occassional clueless wandering person who by chance got here and doesnt know much about the GNU/Linux Operating System, this ain’t the place for you no offense intended there, If you don’t know Arch Linux or even Linux for that matter go google it, its too long to explain here,

Anyways for the sake of some brevity on Arch Linux -


Arch Linux (or Arch) is a Linux Distribution intended to be lightweight and simple. The design approach of the development team focuses on “simplicity”, elegance, code correctness and minimalism. “Simplicity”, according to Arch, is defined as “…without unnecessary additions, modifications, or complications..” and is defined from a developer standpoint, rather than a user standpoint. –from wikipedia.
When we talk about simplicity in Arch Linux its about DESIGN not in ease of use, if you somehow wandered on here and are quite lost in the terms of linux  choice of distributions topics about  LKM, compile, makefiles, kernel,  GNU, etc-etc and such, but want to learn and maybe try out Linux go check out Mandriva, PClinuxOS, Freespire, and the all to famous easy to use  Ubuntu for a good beginner beginner somewhat hand holding Linux Distros, (‘somewhat’ because it still ain’t like a windows system its still linux) when we say simple in these distros they mean ease of use, unlike the simple in Arch Linux.
Previous comments:
dtrane33 Says:

December 15, 2009 at 2:57 pm

Hello, I have downloaded the .tar.gz files, and have extracted them to the desktop, but I cannot find a PKGBUILD file anywhere. The only folders I see are “src”, “lib”, and a file “Makefile”. Any additional help would be great. Thank you.


zeroincrement Says:

December 16, 2009 at 5:23 am

Hey there dtrane33, if you look to the last 4 links I mentioned above, under “driver links”, pick out the last link, which is this link -> http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=19514 , you’ll be presented with the package details and you can either get the whole package or choose the file or just the PKGBUILD itself.

If that somehow confuses you, then just go directly to this link – http://aur.archlinux.org/packages/broadcom-wl/broadcom-wl.tar.gz, save the broadcom-wl.tar.gz file and extract it you’ll have 3 files 1 being the PKGBUILD file your looking for, in its directory as well.

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