BCM4311 is a descent wireless adapter used in many laptop computers. The thing is that many times it just does not work right after an installation and I am tired of trying to figure it out ( searching for that one debian packet I need to apt-get install ) every time, hence this post.
First of all this is the adapter I am talking about:
# lspci | tail -1 0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN (rev 01)
You should see at least that much with an lshw:
# lshw -C network *-network description: Network controller product: BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:0c:00.0 version: 01 width: 32 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
To fix it for good do:
$ sudo -s # apt-get update # apt-get install firmware-b43-installer # apt-get remove bcmwl-kernel-source # shutdown -r now
Once your computer comes up you should be able to use your wireless interface.
# iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. eth1 no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=20 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Power Management:off
# ifconfig wlan0 wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:19:7d:61:8e:ab UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Note: the one above is not my Mom's neither Nick's MAC. It is made up.
I am sorry if it's yours.
BCM4311 Network controller on debian like systems