Compaq 311c - Wireless Driver Install and General Problems Booting

[boomhaueruk]

Hi,

Ok - I've decided to try Linux again after a 5 year gap - in around 2005 I installed Suse (I think and I'm not sure of the version) to an Hp laptop and, back then I got hugely frustrated that I had no sound, couldn't for the life of me figure out how to install the driver and gave up after around a week.

Well - new company, new laptop, thought I'd try again in 2010 - I'm trying to use the laptop as a work machine mainly, but for dj-ing in an emergency, so I need a 2nd Os and Linux fit the bill. I've got 10 years of It experience, though these days am a Project Manager by day. I've technical enough, but don't have much time.

Naturally I assumed that, by now, everything would be nice and smooth.
And, at first, it was - I chose Debian Studio edition (low latency) found a usb linux creator (this is a netbook so no cd drive), Linuxlive usb creator, made up a usb key of Debian 10.04 (desktop edition, as I was informed this was the standard and that I could upgrade to studio after), partitioned my drive, installed and....

Black screen, flashing cursor.

Ok - found some instructions that told me how to work round that...did...but then couldn't get wireless (I've only got wireless internet).
ended up, after a day of fiddling with 'blacklisting' drivers, deciding their must be something wrong with my install, so started again with the 'netbook' edition of debian 10.04. This time it boots.

Still no wireless.

Now I find people saying things like "blacklist this driver" (b43 and b44) and "connect to the internet and install this driver". Only one problem - only wireless internet - if I go to install more drivers it tells me there aren't any.

So I think "I'll install a driver from usb". Naively assuming that by now it'll be a self contained installable package like windows and osx.

I find that I need an 'STA' driver (and frankly by now I've spent a long time on forums - this was meant to be easy). Ok - I find the 802.11 Linux STA driver on the broadcom site (can't post links here yet).

Download the 32 bit version, stick it on a key...read the readme and....

Frankly, I'm one step away from trying to roll this all back.
I cannot believe I need to be in a 'terminal' typing;
# lsmod | grep "b43\|ssb\|wl"

# rmmod b43
# rmmod ssb
# rmmod wl

and so on.

either way, I plough on and get to

# insmod wl.ko

but it says it can't find it.

Can someone please explain how to install this driver?
Is it even the right one?

PS I'm staggered Linux is still so non techie friendly. Seriously - I've spent so much time just trying to get going. I've not even installed studio yet!

[reed9]

Well, with a wired connection, it's exceedingly simple. But things can get more complicated if you only have a wireless connection and the wireless is what you need fixing.

It's still not too difficult, though.

From a computer with an internet connection, download the package fakeroot, patch, dkms, bcmwl-kernel-source, and bcmwl-modaliases to a USB stick.

Plug that into your Ubuntu machine, double click on the packages to install. You should install dkms, patch, and fakeroot before the bcmwl packages.

Links to package mirrors follow:
Ubuntu -- Package Download Selection -- fakeroot_1.14.4-1ubuntu1_i386.deb
Ubuntu -- Package Download Selection -- patch_2.6-2ubuntu1_i386.deb
Ubuntu -- Package Download Selection -- dkms_2.1.1.2-2fakesync1_all.deb
Ubuntu -- Package Download Selection -- bcmwl-modaliases_5.60.48.36+bdcom-0ubuntu3_i386.deb
Ubuntu -- Package Download Selection -- bcmwl-kernel-source_5.60.48.36+bdcom-0ubuntu3_i386.deb

[reed9]

Oh, you should not need to manually blacklist the b43 driver doing this. The package scripts should handle that. Just reboot and you should be good to go.

If it still isn't working, post the output of

lspci -vnn
lsmod
iwconfig

[boomhaueruk]

Hi, Reed9

Thanks for the help.

Not difficult? I can assure you this isn't easy for me!

Anyway, ok, downloaded the things as you say, ran them - but 2 of them don't run.

dkms_2.1.1.2... comes up with "Error: Dependency is not satisfiable: gcc".

I tried to run your type in scripts - but not sure how to get the output into here without typing it all out again?

If you want to know the bit about Broadcoms from the result of lspci -vnn it starts "03:00:0 Network Controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation 802.11b/g [14e4:4315] (rev 01) Subsystem" and goes on from there. Which bit do you need?

Out of interest, what are those commands meant to do?

(As an side - we're back to the 311 booting into a flashing cursor. Having to go back to the 'use recovery mode and select, then type startx' thing. Grrr. Hopefully your scripts removing the bad drivers should sort this)

[reed9]

Hrm. Well, in 9.10 that was all you needed. Sorry about that, I haven't used Ubuntu for a while.

Well, there's a couple of options to figure out what all you need to install packages offline.

The main package is bcmwl-kernel-source. The rest are dependencies.

If you are at all able to get a wired connection somewhere for a couple minutes, then you can just do

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get --reinstall install bcmwl-kernel-source

[boomhaueruk]

Really? That's all I can do - either have a lan connection or I'm stuffed?

This is unbelievable!

I would go back to just having windows - but how on earth am I going to roll back the multiloader grub thing?

All I wanted to do was have a bootable linux with wireless!

[reed9]

Unfortunately, broadcom has their driver licensed in such a way that linux distros cannot distribute it with the system. There's little linux developers can do about it.

[boomhaueruk]

Perhaps focus on a packaging system that installs a driver without need for command line usage?

Sorry, Reed9, you've been very helpful - but this feels ludicrous.

[boomhaueruk]

Was rather annoyed when I posted that - apologies.

Ok - decided to keep on plowing away and have looked through the helpful suggestions.

I had a look at the first suggestion on that page for offline driver files you so helpfully sent, Reed9 and am working with 'Keryx'.

Not a terribly self explanatory app; thuogh it does seem to do what I need - but keep getting 'Failed to update the APT cache'.

Sigh. Going through the support process now.

[boomhaueruk]

Ok, sorted out Keryx (the folder name I was using had a space in it) - I'm now getting a driver listed in the 'Hardware Drivers' list for Broadcom! Woo-hoo.

Less woo-hoo, it says "Failed to fetch //archive.ubuntu.com/ubtuntu/pool/main/m/manpages/manpages-dev_3.23-1_all.deb" could not resolve 'archive.ubuntu.com'.

Why is it looking on the internet?