Saturday, December 26, 2015

How to Install Broadcom drivers in Fedora 22/23



You may face issues while accessing internet via Wifi after installing fedora 22 or 23. Basically issue could be the Linux default chip-set drivers not support Broadcom chip-set. So we have to install correct drivers from the vendor to fix this issue.





Symptoms
  • Wifi was working fine. But after updating fedora, Wifi does not work
  • Wifi not works at all. But wired connection works fine.
  • Wifi works, but after sometime, data rate starts to decrease and finally connection terminates.
  • Wifi suddenly disconnects, But If I manually connect again, everything works fine for a short time.
 If you facing any of these issue, this article is for you. Here is the steps how to install Broad-com chip-set drivers.

1. First you have to verify your wireless card is Broadcom. So run this command as super user.
lspci | grep -i broadcom
Expected outcome something like
12:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

If you are not getting any result that means your wireless card is not Broadcome and you have to stop reading this article.

2.You have to use 3G dongle or Wired connections to connect to the internet.

3. Install RPMFusions free and non free versions using these two commands. Change version number (22) according to your version. My installed fedora version is 22.

rpmkeys --import "http://rpmfusion.org/keys?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmfusion-free-fedora-22" "http://rpmfusion.org/keys?action=AttachFile&do=get&target=RPM-GPG-KEY-rpmfusion-nonfree-fedora-22"

Then
dnf install http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-22.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-22.noarch.rpm


4. Now your *.rpms are ready. Lets continue to install the drivers. Run below command to install the necessary packages.
 dnf install kmod-wl akmod.wl kernel-devel
You may get some error message like
No package akmod.wl available.
No package kernel-devel available.
If so, Search the akmod.wl packages available using this this command
dnf list "*-wl"
Then find the exact name from the search result. In my case exact name is akmod-wl.x86_64. So install the package using exact name
dnf install akmod-wl.x86_64
For kernal_devel search using this command
dnf lnstall "*kernel*"
Then find the exact name from the search result list. In my case exact name is  kernel-devel.x86_64. Install the package using this command.
dnf install kernel-devel.x86_64

5. Now restart the computer using reboot command.
6. Enjoy the wireless internet.

15 comments:

  1. Thank you very much, I have followed your tutorial and now my wifi on Fedora 23 works perfectly! Thank you very much again.
    Filippo from Italy

    ReplyDelete
  2. Worked if done before dnf update... doesn't work if fedora is updated straight out of box. :/

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. *update* make sure you have both kmod and akmod installed - run dnf list "-*wl" to see which you have installed/yet to install.

      Delete
  3. Many thanks for the detailed step by step instruction. All works well on my HP6470b. I will translate to russian and repost your instruction for others (with link).

    ReplyDelete
  4. Excellent post.Worked on Fedora 23.

    Amit Nadiger from India.

    ReplyDelete
  5. this is for wireless internet
    but about wired?!
    i'm new in linux (fedora 23 -64) and wireless works but wired not!!!
    what can i do, please

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks.. this really worked.. I'd searched a lot and finally got solution here... :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. When I write dnf list "*-wl"
    Appears
    Last metadata expiration check: 0:40:09 ago on Sat Sep 10 13:37:41 2016.
    Error: No matching Packages to list

    ReplyDelete
  8. Many many thanks!!!
    Sanjib from India

    ReplyDelete
  9. Thanks Nayana, for publishing the much needed instructions to make our broadcom wifi work in fedora 23, when upgrading to fedora 24, they might come in handy (Cheers from Henrik, Sweden)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Thank You ..
    شكرا يا كبير

    ReplyDelete
  11. Salut a tous Voici un site de code free wifi gratuit je partage des codes chaque semaine mais vous pouvez aussi acheter des code wifi privée website ===========> code free wifi

    ReplyDelete
  12. Thanks, you sovled a lot problems.
    Saludos desde Mexico

    ReplyDelete
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