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Broadcom 4313, 43224, 43225 devices (brcm80211)

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

brcm80211 is a free and open source mac80211 driver currently in development, supporting specific Broadcom 802.11n/g PCIe wireless LAN chipsets:

It is included in Debian Linux kernel images since linux-2.6 2.6.32-22. Non-free firmware is required and must be installed prior to device operation.

<!> This staging driver is only available for the x86 and x86-64 architectures (Debian i386 and AMD64 ports respectively) at this time.

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

Installation

Lenny

  1. Install the subversion and wireless-tools packages:

    # aptitude install subversion wireless-tools
    # exit
  2. Acquire and install device firmware:

    $ svn export svn://svn.debian.org/svn/kernel/dists/trunk/firmware-nonfree/brcm80211/brcm
    $ su
    # mkdir /usr/local/lib/firmware
    # cp -r brcm /usr/local/lib/firmware
    # cd /usr/local/lib/firmware/brcm
    # ln -s bcm43xx-0-610-809-0.fw bcm43xx-0.fw
    # ln -s bcm43xx_hdr-0-610-809-0.fw bcm43xx_hdr-0.fw
  3. Add the Debian Backports repository to /etc/apt/sources.list, for example:

    # Backported packages for Debian Lenny
    deb http://backports.debian.org/debian-backports lenny-backports main
  4. Update the list of available packages and install a Linux 2.6.32 kernel image appropriate for your system. For example:

    # aptitude update
    # aptitude -t lenny-backports install linux-image-2.6-$(uname -r | sed 's,.*-,,')
  5. Restart your system and boot with the newly installed kernel.
  6. The necessary kernel module should be automatically loaded. If necessary, it can be manually loaded via:

    $ su
    # modprobe brcm80211
  7. Verify your device has an available interface:

    # iwconfig
  8. Configure your wireless interface as appropriate.

Squeeze

  1. Install the subversion and wireless-tools packages:

    # aptitude update && aptitude install subversion wireless-tools
    # exit
  2. Acquire and install device firmware:

    $ svn export svn://svn.debian.org/svn/kernel/dists/trunk/firmware-nonfree/brcm80211/brcm
    $ su
    # mkdir /usr/local/lib/firmware
    # cp -r brcm /usr/local/lib/firmware
    # cd /usr/local/lib/firmware/brcm
    # ln -s bcm43xx-0-610-809-0.fw bcm43xx-0.fw
    # ln -s bcm43xx_hdr-0-610-809-0.fw bcm43xx_hdr-0.fw
  3. As the driver may already be loaded, reinsert the module to access installed firmware:

    # modprobe -r brcm80211 ; modprobe brcm80211
  4. Verify your device has an available interface:

    # iwconfig
  5. Configure your wireless interface as appropriate.

Supported Devices

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 (2.6.32-23) kernel images.

See Also


CategoryHardware | CategoryWireless