Again: Broadcom Wireless BCM43224, Ubuntu

Update 2013-02-27: This solution on Ask Ubuntu is much better, because it includes properly packaged things that should update when you upgrade Ubuntu.

Update 2012-10-24: The patch is no longer available on Broadcom’s website, but it can be found here. Also, you may also need this patch now too.

Once again, I find that my Broadcom wireless card is not working. I don’t know how long this has been going on—I’m normally wired.

Mode of Failure

I have no wireless. Wireless is not displayed under Network Manager. My wireless card does not have an associated interface. iwconfig shows this:

$ iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. 

Also, lshw shows *-network UNCLAIMED for the wireless card.

Solution

I tried rebuilding the driver provided by Broadcom. The build succeeded, but modprobe wl still failed like so:

$ sudo modprobe wl FATAL: Module wl not found. FATAL: Error running install command for wl 

But the .ko file existed at the correct place:

$ locate wl.ko /lib/modules/3.0.0-12-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/wl.ko . . 

Finally, I found a solution here. By running sudo depmod -a, I could then sudo modprobe wl and my wireless started working again.

I don’t know if it was necessary for me to get the latest drivers from Broadcom or if the version Ubuntu packaged would have worked. But my wireless is working again now.