April 28th, 2008

How To Enable BCM43xx in Ubuntu 8.04

Adam Kane   
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Here is a question I’ve been seeing pop up over the past few days:

My Broadcom bcm4306 Wireless card wont work in Ubuntu 8.04.  How do I fix it?

The most common reason is simply because Ubuntu did not enable the restricted driver.  If your Ubuntu 8.04 installation did not enable your Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 Wireless LAN Controller, here is how to enable it.

First, you need to make sure the b43-fwcutter package is installed.

sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter

Next, navigate to System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers

bcm4306 wireless driver in ubuntu 8.04

You should see your Broadcom 4306 device listed.  Check the box to enable it.

Now your bcm43xx Broadcom Wireless card should be working in Ubuntu 8.04!

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12 Comments

ghostrunner Said,
April 29th, 2008 @8:50 am  

Wow – what a nice, concise tutorial. Thank you for posting this. I hope it saves lots of people lots of trouble!

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HappyDayScott Said,
May 10th, 2008 @2:51 pm  

Thanks for the post! My wireless is up and running.

A couple notes:
After a fresh CD install there were no entries in my ‘Hardware Drivers’ list. However, after downloading the latest updates (via ethernet), the Broadcom entry showed up. I enabled it, ran through the dialogs to download the firmware, and voila! I can see/connect to my networks. Excellent!

I have a BCM4306 rev 3 in a Compaq V2000 laptop.

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hannah Said,
June 26th, 2008 @2:16 am  

tried this, b43-fwcutter package is installed (shows in synaptic package manager) but doesn’t show up in hardware drivers. what can I do?
i have hp dv 6650eo

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Hasmarth Said,
August 10th, 2008 @9:28 am  

I have the same problem as hannah, i keep getting errors from Synaptic and when i try it in terminal. Is internet nessicary to do this? If so, how would one go about doing it if they’re trying to enable wifi to go on the internet?

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pragi Said,
November 1st, 2008 @6:17 pm  

this worked perfectly for my buffalo wli-cb-g54a pcmcia card
on ubuntu 8.10 all lights flashing as they should be thanks for this, saved me getting a new card

peace

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koshari Said,
December 17th, 2008 @7:30 pm  

“how would one go about doing it if they’re trying to enable wifi to go on the internet?”

you would have to downlaod the deb package on another machine and hope all the dependency are met

OR

use an ethernet conenction to get the package with apt/synaptic

OR

make a personal repository or mydebs disc to install the package, either way you need to install the abovementioned package.

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Liesbet Said,
April 22nd, 2009 @1:28 am  

thanks!! this got the wireless connection working for me! I use a smartcard Siemens Gigaset PC Card 54 (s30853-s1007-r107-2)

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weed monkey Said,
July 24th, 2009 @6:58 am  

Tries this in Jaunty & it worked

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Simon Francesco Said,
August 7th, 2009 @1:30 am  

You are a genius, I have spent months trying to get this to work with all manner of backports, different drivers, I even upgraded from Jaunty to Karmic, but your simple tip has my WiFi running! Thanks for publishing it.
So this also works for getting my BCM4306 running in 9.10 Karmic.
Cheers

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Matt Said,
February 13th, 2010 @10:35 pm  

Lifesaver.

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