Device:
BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)
This is the built-in wifi on the Lenovo B570 (and many other laptops).
[UPDATE: As of updates applied on 15.04.12, wifi is again broken (curse you Fedora and your inadequate testing suites!) – I’m currently working on finding a fix ]
[UPDATE: The fix is to connect temporarily using another method (ethernet cable, 3G, or wifi dongle), update your system using yum update, and then reboot. This should hopefully fix the issue. Apparently after using yum update to install the broken updates you can often run yum update immediately after to fix it. See here for a thread with more info ]
[UPDATE 19.03.13: If you have problems with dependencies during updates, follow the advice stated here. It relates to a nVidia kmod package, but the instructions apply for kmod-wl also. Just replace “kmod-nvidia” with “kmod-wl”]
The following procedure gets this chip working for me with Fedora 16 / 17 / 18 (run the commands in a terminal – accessible via alt+F2, enter: gnome-terminal [press enter]
Enable rmpfusion repos:
Follow this guide: http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration
Login as root:
su
Update to latest packages and kernel:
yum update
Install kmod-wl and wl-broadcom:
yum install broadcom-wl kmod-wl
Blacklist acer_wmi, dell_wmi and bcma:
nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
[add the following lines to the end of this file:]
# blacklisted to get broadcom 4313 wireless to work
blacklist acer_wmi
blacklist dell_wmi
blacklist bcma
Restart network manager:
service NetworkManager restart
Try and connect as usual using the Gnome 3 network manager applet
Lenovo “helpfully” change the hardware on their systems while keeping the same model names. As part of my survey of hardware vendors, I’ve seen more than one edition of B570 and also a technical/service manual that mentions both Broadcom and Atheros chipsets. Do you know if there’s any reasonable way of figuring out from the general specifications which “iteration” of the hardware is being sold? Like, for example, from the CPU information? Retailers/vendors/manufacturers rarely label products in a way that helps the buyer identify the exact product being sold, but it would be very useful to know from a Free Software compatibility perspective.
No, I wish I did. I have wasted much time and money with devices that change chipsets without changing packaging or web store product ID. Even the product reviews can’t help you here – what was sold last week is not necessarily what you’ll receive this week.
This is why I tend to use GNU/Linux oriented retailers for tricky devices like wireless dongles. I find that laptops tend to change chips less frequently and more detectably than wireless USB dongles, for instance. I even started my own ecommerce site testing and selling GNU/Linux compatible hardware once upon a time, but unfortunately I had to halt that project around 2009.
Great blog … very interesting
Ah! At last I have wireless on my laptop, after about six months, thanks to this tutorial. Thanks!
what a legend – thanks so much for this post – totally fixed the problem!