<Solved>Install wireless drivers without internet connection

[themraw435]

So, I have recently acquired an older laptop from a friend because I needed one and being a poor college student this was the way to go. I got everything installed im somewhat familiar with linux so no problems there but I didn't know the ethernet jack is broken on the machine. Now I can't get the wireless to work and I imagine it's a driver issue i know the driver i need is broadcom b43 but I need some help installing it normally I'd just update with the ethernet jack but im SOL on this one. Thanks!

[anandrkris]

Perhaps you can download the wireless driver from another system with internet connection and transfer the installation file using USB and install it then?

viewtopic.php?f=42&t=12635&hilit=wl_apsta.o.lzma.tar.gz - Came across this discussion. Hope this helps.

[themraw435]

Thanks! I'm going to try that and mix this with it. That one you posted that OP still had a wired connection I can't even get that but for any one with this same problem I found this

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiD ... net_access

In the contents on the right of the page Section 4 sub section 2 has all the info i think I need I'm going to try it when I get home I will post my results.

[hal9000000]

I'll be curious to see if this works. I'm going to try the same thing -- albeit on a newer Macbook Pro with a dual boot.

[AlbertP]

Which Broadcom chip do you have? You can run inxi -N in terminal to see it.

[hal9000000]

Which Broadcom chip do you have? You can run inxi -N in terminal to see it.

with ixni -N command I get:

Card-1: Broadcom BCM4331 802.11a/b/g/n driver: bcma-pci-bridge

[AlbertP]

Yes, that's the same b43 driver indeed - b43-fwcutter on the wl_apsta.o file would also work for you I think.

[themraw435]

Ok I got it! First off I have BCM4311 and this worked fine for me I imagine it will work with a wide range of Broadcom cards. So I ended up booting into my windows partition and going to this site: http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/b43-fwcutter, and downloaded b43-fwcutter to a flash drive. Then booted into my linux mint partition and installed b43-fwcutter ignoring any warnings about it being an older version. Then i downloaded the b43 tar file that is listed on this site https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx#b43_-_No_Internet_access (I downloaded the b43 10.04 to be exact) then as it states in the guide i just ran these two commands to unpack the tar file and install ther drivers:

Code: Select all

tar xfvj broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver/wl_apsta_mimo

.

rebooted the machine and poof! everything worked so again download and installed b43-fwcutter and then the tar file, ran the commands and good to go!