Installing wireless Broadcom drivers on Arch Linux

Question

So how do I accomplish this last step to this journey? I already installed Xfce even, thanks to Ethernet I was able to.

However I still need to figure out the wireless drivers. I've already tried reading the following guides:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Broadcom_wireless
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_Setup

However they make no sense to me, at no point do I see instructions on how to install the drivers.

I already checked and the drivers are available from what I can figure. Running lspci -vnn | grep 14e4; returns the following:

03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX [14e4:170c] (rev 02)
0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4315] (rev 01)

How would I go about installing the driver for the network controller? I have Ethernet access so if it's gotta be downloaded then it's no problem.

Appreciate the help! :)

Solution

In the end the problem was that I was basically looking in the wrong place, basically.

To clarify, the big problem that I figured out that I was having was that I didn't have access to the wlan0 interface right? I checked if I had access running iwconfig constantly BTW.

---

In the Broadcom wireless installation I was looking at installing the brcmsmac/brcmfmac set of drivers, included with Arch Linux. I neglected the B43 drivers, which should have been obvious since my card model was a BCM4312. lol

So basically, what I had to do was look for my wireless card's model in this link, which contains a list of supported B43* cards. Once I found it there I just had to install it.

For installing it I just ran the command packer -S b43-firmware, packer is my preferred AUR package manager, since it has an identical syntax to pacman's.

Hope this helps people that have the same problem as me! BTW, this laptop's model is a Dell Vostro 1500, for those interested.

Comments

[nerdwaller]

"The brcm80211 drivers are included in the kernel. ", does modprobe brcmsmac product output? After you do that, you may need to restart the network manager systemctl restart NetworkManager.service.

[greduan]

@nerdwaller while modproble brcmsmac does not produce output. the second command you gave me outputs: [...] Unit NetworkManager.service failed to load: No such file or directory. [...]

[nerdwaller]

It may be a different network manager (assuming you installed one during setup), examples include Netctl, Netcfg, Wicd, Networkmanager, WiFi Radar, wlassistant. One you have modprobed, what is the output of iwconfig? Should show a module now at least - from there you can turn it on with ip link set wlan0 up (iwconfig should show the interface name)

[greduan]

@nerdwaller iwconfig outputs: eth0 no wireless extensions. in one line and in another it outputs lo no wireless extensions.. Should I proceed to installing a network manager? I haven't set one up yet.

[greduan]

@nerdwaller Perhaps it would be better to take this into a chat? Seeing how we're going back and forth. And it doesn't seem to be working for me. lol

[greduan]

@nerdwaller I've been trying lots of other stuff. And it seems the problem is that I can't enable wlan0 for some reason. Could this be because of drivers? It's not the hardware because it worked fine before I installed Arch...

[greduan]

@nerdwaller I figured it out. After much reading and studying, I just had to install the B43 legacy kernel modules.

[nerdwaller]

Way to go! Sorry for not checking back. Glad you learned at figured it out. Enjoy.