Installing broadcom bcm43142 Wireless driver for linux

Most of the Linux distros do not have drivers for wireless bcm43142 wireless adapter. If your system has amd64 architecture then the driver can be for debian based systems can be installed using the command

sudo apt-get install wireless-bcm43142-dkms

or can be downloaded from

http://jas.gemnetworks.com/debian/pool/main/w/wireless-bcm43142/

Download the package wireless-bcm43142-dkms_6.20.55.19-1_amd64.deb

Open a terminal and go to the directory where the above package is placed and run the command

sudo dpkg -i wireless-bcm43142-dkms_6.20.55.19-1_amd64.deb

To build the deb package yourself, download the package wireless-bcm43142_6.20.55.19.orig.tar.bz2 and run the following commands

$ tar -xjvf wireless-bcm43142_6.20.55.19.orig.tar.bz2 $ cd wireless-bcm43142 $ debuild -us -uc

The package wireless-bcm43142-dkms_6.20.55.19-1_amd64.deb will be available in the folder where the .tar.bz2 file was placed which can be installed as the previous .deb package.

The files on the above link work only for amd architecture, but for i386 the driver fails to build. For i386 architecture and non debian based systems download the source files from choose the files depending on 32bit or 64 bit architecture and run the following commands

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

$ tar -xjvf hybrid-v35-nodebug-pcoem-6_30_223_141.tar.gz $ make $ ls built-in.o hybrid-v35-nodebug-pcoem-6_30_223_141.tar.gz lib Makefile modules.order Module.symvers src wl.ko wl.mod.c wl.mod.o wl.o

If the module is compiled successfully try inserting it into the kernel

$ insmod wl.ko

If the module inserts without error then the wireless should start working. It might throw an error Unknown symbol

To get around the problem, we need to inert modules on which the wl module depends on which are cfg80211 lib80211. Thus insert these modules first

$ modprobe lib80211 $ modprobe cfg80211

Now insert the module

$ insmod wl.ko

The wireless should start working now.

To make sure that we need not do the above steps every time we boot the system we can automate it using the following steps.

Copy the wl.ko to the folder /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/net/wireless

$ cp wl.ko /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/net/wireless $ depmod -a

Now to see if the wl.ko module has been recognized along with its dependencies look into the file

$ cat /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/modules.dep | tail -2 kernel/lib/cordic.ko: kernel/net/wireless/wl.ko: kernel/net/wireless/lib80211.ko kernel/net/wireless/cfg80211.ko kernel/net/rfkill/rfkill.ko

Thus we can see that the wl.ko has been listed along with its dependent modules.

Now remove the module wl.ko that was inserted before

$ rmmod wl.ko

Insert it again using

$ modprobe wl

If the module gets inserted with out any errors than put the above command into the file /etc/rc.local to make sure that the module gets inserted every time system boots.

$sudo gedit /etc/rc.local

Put the command before exit 0

$ modprobe wl

Save the file and close it. Now reboot the system and the wireless should automatically start working on reboot.
If you can not find the files in the above links, you can get them from

BCM_Driver

Useful links

https://wiki.debian.org/IntroDebianPackaging
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2123154