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 * On BCM4313 you will probably get errors displayed while kernel booting. You can ignore them and hide by adding "{{{dmesg -n 3}}}" line to your ''/etc/rc.local file.''  * On BCM4313 you will probably get brcmsmac driver informations displayed even after kernel boot. You can ignore and/or hide them by adding "{{{dmesg -n 3}}}" line to your ''/etc/rc.local'' file.

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Broadcom BCM4313, BCM43224, BCM43225 devices (brcmsmac, brcm80211)

This page describes how to enable support for WiFi devices based on Broadcom BCM4313, BCM43224, BCM43225 chipsets on Debian systems.

brcmsmac (brcm80211 prior to Linux 2.6.39) is a free and open source mac80211 driver, introduced in Linux 2.6.37.1

It supports wireless LAN devices based on specific Broadcom 802.11n PCIe wireless LAN chips:

  • BCM4313
  • BCM43224
  • BCM43225

Supported devices are listed at the end of this page.

The driver is included in Debian Linux kernel images since linux-2.6 2.6.32-22, but is not available during installation of Debian Squeeze/6.0 (628975). Non-free firmware is required for device operation.

{i} For support of other Broadcom PCI wireless LAN chipsets, see bcm43xx.

Installation

Squeeze

<!> In this release, the driver is only available for the x86 and x86-64 architectures (Debian i386 and AMD64 ports respectively).

  1. Add a "non-free" component to /etc/apt/sources.list, for example:

    # Debian Squeeze/6.0
    deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free
  2. Update the list of available packages and install the firmware-brcm80211 and wireless-tools packages:

    # aptitude update
    # aptitude install firmware-brcm80211 wireless-tools
  3. As the driver may already be loaded, reinsert the module to access installed firmware:

    # modprobe -r brcm80211 ; modprobe brcm80211
  4. Configure your wireless interface as appropriate.

Wheezy

  1. Add a "non-free" component to /etc/apt/sources.list, for example:

    # Debian Wheezy (testing)
    deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian wheezy main contrib non-free
  2. Update the list of available packages and install the firmware-brcm80211 and wireless-tools packages:

    # aptitude update
    # aptitude install firmware-brcm80211 wireless-tools
  3. As the driver may already be loaded, reinsert the module to access installed firmware:

    # modprobe -r brcmsmac ; modprobe brcmsmac
  4. Configure your wireless interface as appropriate.

Supported Devices

Squeeze

The page HowToIdentifyADevice/PCI explains how to identify a PCI device.

The following list is based on the alias fields of modinfo brcm80211 in Debian 2.6.32 (2.6.32-41) kernel images.

  • PCI: 14E4:4353 Broadcom Corporation BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n
    PCI: 14E4:4357 Broadcom Corporation BCM43225 802.11b/g/n
    PCI: 14E4:4727 Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller

Wheezy

The following list is based on the alias fields of modinfo brcmsmac in Debian 3.2.0 (3.2.4-1) kernel images.

  • PCI: 14E4:0576 Broadcom Corporation BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n
    PCI: 14E4:4353 Broadcom Corporation BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n
    PCI: 14E4:4357 Broadcom Corporation BCM43225 802.11b/g/n
    PCI: 14E4:4727 Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller

Troubleshooting

  • On BCM4313 you will probably get brcmsmac driver informations displayed even after kernel boot. You can ignore and/or hide them by adding "dmesg -n 3" line to your /etc/rc.local file.

See Also


CategoryHardware | CategoryWireless