CentOS - Jul 2009 - Problems with Broadcom 4312 wireless

Hello David,

In brief, I've solved this problem on my Dell Inspiron 1525 (with 
Broadcom 4312 wireless card), so I figured letting You know would be 
nice, 'cause it didn't seem like the issue is resolved.

Visit this link:
http://jomcode.com/fadhil/?p=59

and in addition check out the comment on the same page by Andre Kiepe to 
have the modules load on boot.



Best Regards,
Milos.

Milos Blazevic wrote:
> Hello David,
> 
> In brief, I've solved this problem on my Dell Inspiron 1525 (with 
> Broadcom 4312 wireless card), so I figured letting You know would be 
> nice, 'cause it didn't seem like the issue is resolved.
> 
> Visit this link:
> http://jomcode.com/fadhil/?p=59
> 
> and in addition check out the comment on the same page by Andre Kiepe to 
> have the modules load on boot.
> 
> 
> 
> Best Regards,
> Milos.
> 
I'm not overly familiar with broadcom wireless (always tried to avoid 
it), but we can probably package wl.ko as a kABI-tracking kmod for el5 
over at ELRepo.org if you're interested? This would remove the need to 
recompile the driver from source for every kernel update, not to mention 
provide a user friendly RPM package for yum.

Also, does this driver require firmware, and if so where does one obtain 
that?

> Message: 27
> Date: Tue, 28 Jul 2009 00:31:53 +0100
> From: Ned Slider <ned at unixmail.co.uk>
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] Problems with Broadcom 4312 wireless
> To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
> Message-ID: <4A6E38E9.1010709 at unixmail.co.uk>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> Milos Blazevic wrote:
>> > Hello David,
>> > 
>> > In brief, I've solved this problem on my Dell Inspiron 1525
(with
>> > Broadcom 4312 wireless card), so I figured letting You know would
be
>> > nice, 'cause it didn't seem like the issue is resolved.
>> > 
>> > Visit this link:
>> > http://jomcode.com/fadhil/?p=59
>> > 
>> > and in addition check out the comment on the same page by Andre
Kiepe to
>> > have the modules load on boot.
>> > 
>> > 
>> > 
>> > Best Regards,
>> > Milos.
>> > 
> 
> I'm not overly familiar with broadcom wireless (always tried to avoid 
> it), but we can probably package wl.ko as a kABI-tracking kmod for el5 
> over at ELRepo.org if you're interested? This would remove the need to 
> recompile the driver from source for every kernel update, not to mention 
> provide a user friendly RPM package for yum.
> 
> Also, does this driver require firmware, and if so where does one obtain 
> that?
> 
> 
Sure I'm insterested in compiling the driver to RPM and making it 
available to others.
I've tested the driver today (by connecting to the available access 
point) briefly and it didn't display any problems in functioning.
Now, according to the news clipping from computerworld.com, by 
installing this, one would still use the proprietary Broadcom firmware, 
which, I suppose, comes along with the driver released by Broadcom at:

http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php

Also, according to the Broadcom's README, all other "firmware kernel 
modules" have to be removed (or blacklisted) from kernel before 
installing this.

I'm also willing of doing this, though, I am going to need some guidance 
in order for this not to take too long, since I've never done driver 
packaging before.

A few questions for start:

Ok, to build an rpm I need a spec file - this comes as a condition for 
packaging anything as RPM, right? Now, the only way to do everything 
else (i.e. blacklisting unwanted firmware files, importing kernel 
module, assigning modules to the devices ...) that I can think of, is 
via Bash script, or not?