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Broadcom BCM4311, BCM4312, BCM4313, BCM4321, BCM4322, BCM43224, BCM43225, BCM43227, BCM43228 devices (wl)

This page describes how to enable support for WiFi devices based on Broadcom wireless LAN chips, using the vendor driver on Debian systems.

The proprietary Broadcom wireless LAN driver (wl, aka broadcom-sta) provides support for some Broadcom-based PCI/PCIe hardware. It includes a binary-only component targeted for the x86 or x86-64 architecture. Supported devices are listed at the end of this page.

<!> The driver depends on the x86 or x86-64 architecture (Debian i386 and AMD64 ports respectively).

{i} The BCM4313, BCM43224 and BCM43225 chips are alternatively supported by the brcmsmac driver. The BCM4311 and BCM4312 chips are alternatively supported by the b43 driver.

{i} As of Debian 7.0 "Wheezy", the BCM4321 and BCM4322 chips are alternatively supported by the b43 driver.

Installation

Debian 7.0 "Wheezy"

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

    # Debian 7.0 "Wheezy"
    deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free
  2. Update the list of available packages. Install the relevant linux-headers and broadcom-sta-dkms packages:

    # apt-get update
    # apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r|sed 's,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,') broadcom-sta-dkms

    This will also install the recommended wireless-tools package. DKMS will build the wl module for your system.

  3. Unload conflicting modules:

    # modprobe -r b44 b43 b43legacy ssb brcmsmac
  4. Load the wl module:

    # modprobe wl
  5. Configure your wireless interface as appropriate. See also known issues.

Debian 6.0 "Squeeze"

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

    # Debian 6.0 "Squeeze"
    deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ squeeze main contrib non-free
  2. Update the list of available packages. Install the module-assistant and wireless-tools packages:

    # apt-get update
    # apt-get install module-assistant wireless-tools
  3. Build and install a broadcom-sta-modules-* package for your system, using Module-Assistant:

    # m-a a-i broadcom-sta
  4. Blacklist the brcm80211 module, to prevent it conflicting for support of BCM4313, BCM43224 and BCM43225 devices:

    # echo blacklist brcm80211 >> /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf
  5. Rebuild your initial ramdisk, to blacklist modules defined at /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf within initramfs:

    # update-initramfs -u -k $(uname -r)
  6. Unload conflicting modules:

    # modprobe -r b44 b43 b43legacy ssb brcm80211
  7. Load the wl module:

    # modprobe wl
  8. Configure your wireless interface as appropriate. See also known issues.

Known Issues

See bugs reported on broadcom-sta.

Supported Devices

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

The following list is based on the alias fields of modinfo wl built from wheezy/broadcom-sta-dkms:

See Also


CategoryHardware | CategoryWireless