Dell Inspiron E1505, BCM4311 Problems. No Wireless... [SOLVED]

[b4d_bl0ck]

Hi 1badude,

justin@BackBox-1:~$ modprobe b43
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper, it will be ignored in a future release.
FATAL: Error inserting b43 (/lib/modules/3.2.0-45-generic/updates/cw-3.8/b43.ko): Operation not permitted

Never heard about sudo? ;D
If you get help from users remember that they may be very busy while answering, so they can forget something (and sudo is the best candidate lol). But please, they show you the way, the rest is up to you.

Anyways did you ever try to compile your drivers from the vendor official website?
I did like that when my card was still not well supported. In this case purge first all packages installed for the b43.
Just a tought.

Good luck! ;)

[1badude]

FINALLY!!!  After a couple weeks of fighting with this BackBox install, trying everything in the book to get my Broadcom wireless up and running with no luck at all, I finally got it!

Much thanks to reaperz73 who gave me the suggestion of updating my kernel.

BackBox 3.05 includes Kernel v.3.2 by default, but upgrading my install to Kernel v.3.8 solved my problem. Upon reboot, everything was recognized correctly, and I'm sending this update via my wireless connection.

For those of you having similar trouble with your Broadcom wireless hardware, you might give updating your kernel a try... It worked for me.
To update your system to Kernel v3.8, run the following command in terminal...

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sudo apt-get install linux-generic-lts-raring

I hope this helps save others the all the time and effort I spent looking for a solution...

Thanks again to reaperz73 for the idea. I owe you one...

[1badude]

Hi 1badude,

justin@BackBox-1:~$ modprobe b43
WARNING: All config files need .conf: /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper, it will be ignored in a future release.
FATAL: Error inserting b43 (/lib/modules/3.2.0-45-generic/updates/cw-3.8/b43.ko): Operation not permitted

Never heard about sudo? ;D
If you get help from users remember that they may be very busy while answering, so they can forget something (and sudo is the best candidate lol). But please, they show you the way, the rest is up to you.

Anyways did you ever try to compile your drivers from the vendor official website?
I did like that when my card was still not well supported. In this case purge first all packages installed for the b43.
Just a tought.

Good luck! ;)

Hello, b4d_bl0ck

Just saw your message. Thank you also for your advice, but I was able to get it figured out with a helpful suggestion from one of your members. Just for the record, the error shown there was the same regardless of whether "sudo" was entered or not. I had two entries in terminal, one with sudo, one without. In my haste, it looks like I copied the one without. Eh, the end result was the same, regardless. It's quite strange, as the errors I received throughout this ordeal were not errors I am familiar with. Perhaps yourself, and many others here may have been able to track the problem better than I, but for me it was a massive headache. It was if the system was somehow incomplete, and even simple commands wouldn't take and would return strange errors.

Since updating my kernel to v3.8, everything is fine again. I'm no longer receiving strange error messages from simple commands, and updating various items goes off without a hitch. It was even more of a headache to me that I couldn't find any information from others experiencing exactly the same issues as myself, so there was really nowhere to turn...

I'm very grateful for the advice and help I've received here on the forum, and hope that I may pass on the favor and help another in need someday...

Thank you all, again. Your knowledge and advice is appreciated! 

[b4d_bl0ck]

You are welcome 1badude  ;)
As you said, you showed in the post the command without sudo, so that was the first thing i noticed... sorry for misunderstanding  ;D
Anyways, when you get problems with drivers or softwares, a genearal solution could be trying to install them by hand downloading the source, at least you could get some useful messages. I remember when we had BBox 2, i had problems with my realtek rtl8192se so i had to build the driver from scratch downloading the vendor sources. Nothing hard, as easy as doing a make install.
I think this way is safer than downloading a new kernel. You know, this may not be your case, but when you install a not well tested kernel you can adjust an issue, but you can get dozens more of them  ;)
But yes, sometimes this is the only way, so i'm happy you solved.
Now it's time to have fun with BackBox  ;)

Bye and enjoy!

[synaesthee]

O...M...G...

Thank you guys for figuring this out. I'm new to Backbox, and really really like it, but I was about to give up on getting my Broadcom 4311 to work with it. I had tried every possible driver configuration, but had just never thought to upgrade my kernel.

Dell Inspiron E1705

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lspci -vvnn | grep 14e4

03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX [14e4:170c] (rev 02)
0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN [14e4:4311] (rev 01)

[1badude]

In my excitement of finally having a working adapter, I reported upgrading the kernel to 3.8 fixed it. Which it did, but this showed all networks as "hidden".

I went back and performed a fresh reinstall, then upgraded the kernel to 3.5 rather than 3.8, and this fixed everything. All networking performed as it should upon a reboot.

I know I was exhausted from all the fruitless searching and reloads, and on the verge of giving up myself until I found help here. Now I'm glad I stuck it out... Happy to hear this helped you!

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