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[Solved]
I know that I am supposed to post the mintWifi results, but I am using wifi now, so it wouldn't actually yield any useful information. I have the dell inspiron 1318 with the broadcom 1395 wlan card. The problem is that after every power off I have to "remove", and then "activate" the wifi drivers (info below) from in the additional drivers window. Before I do that, the network settings button in the info bar doesn't even have the wireless option. After I do, it works perfectly fine. Does anyone have any suggestions about how to fix this. I have considered just making a script that runs on startup to remove and activate it automatically, so if that is the only solution, could someone explain how to do so. I can add it to startup myself, but working with the additional drivers thing from terminal is something I would need to be helped with.
The "additional driver" is the "Broadcom STA wireless driver" with the information " This package contains Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA wireless driver for use with Broadcom's BCM4311-, BCM4312-, BCM4313-, BCM4321-, BCM4322-, BCM43224-, and BCM43225-, BCM43227- and BCM43228-based hardware."
thanks for any help. If I left anything out (which I'm sure that I did) just leave a comment telling me.

What version of mint, how and where are you running it from?

remoulder wrote:What version of mint, how and where are you running it from?

wow, I can not believe that I left that out. Sorry about that. Linux mint 13 Cinnamon 64 bit. It is dual booted with vista which I never use, but I still have files on it and am too lazy to copy them to an external hard drive.

Also If it is decided that I will have to go about re-installing them every time, then would it be ok to just do a temp install on startup so that I don't have to waste tome uninstalling.

Thanks, can you compare the outputs before and after you remove/activate the STA driver ofand post any lines that have changed/been added or removed.

remoulder wrote:Thanks, can you compare the outputs before and after you remove/activate the STA driver of

Code: Select all

lsmod

and post any lines that have changed/been added or removed.

Thank you for helping, and for being so patient.
According to "diff" and a text file containing $ lsmod at all three stages (after boot, after "remove", and after "activate") there is no difference between boot and "remove" just as one would expect, but after "activate" diff shows returns
1a2,4
> lib80211_crypt_tkip 17390 0
> wl 2568210 0
> lib80211 14381 2 lib80211_crypt_tkip,wl

The lines above are in the "activate" file (obviously, but it makes me feel more useful if I tell you that)

If there's no difference after remove this would indicate the driver isn't loaded or maybe installed. Can you try after booting not activating the driver but opening a terminal and entering Does the wifi become enabled or do you get an error? If it works then try making it permanent with If you get a not found error when trying to load the wl module, tryand if no errors try the steps again.

That worked, thanks a ton. I cant believe that it was so easy. Also whats the for? just out of curiosity. Is that just so that you can tell when it has finished? Or does echo have some top secret thing that it does other than the usual? Thanks again

coltstrgj wrote:whats the echo "wl" for?

You have to read the entire line as one command, the echo just sends the bit in quotes to the standard output which is then piped by the | to the standard input where it serves as the input to the tee command. Or in laymans terms the line just adds the bit in quotes to the end of the file in the tee command.

ok thanks

Please post the output of inxi -N.

If you have a BCM4311 or 4312, you do not need to use the STA driver. The driver often does not work on these cards. You can remove STA and install firmware-b43-installer (4311) or firmware-b43-lpphy-installer (4312) from the repository.