Getting wireless working on Ubuntu Macbook

I run Ubuntu 9.04 Januty on my Macbook. Previously installing Ubuntu 8.10, wireless worked automatically, for 9.04 it did not.

This is what I did to fix it.

  1. Verify your Macbook is seeing the Broadcom controller. See below for the lspci command, and expected output.
  2. Goto System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers. The Broadcom STA wireless driver is activated, deactivate it.
  3. Add to /etc/modules a line with wl
  4. Reboot
  5. Goto System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers. Activate the Broadcom STA wireless driver.
  6. Reboot
  7. Wireless now operational.
$ lspci
...
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4328 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 03)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Marvell Yukon 88E8058 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 13)
04:03.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Agere Systems FW323 (rev 61)

For reference, modprobe wl does not return any output in my environment, yet wireless works fine.

References:

Tagged with: Linux Open Source Ubuntu

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