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Getting HP Mini 1000 Wireless to Work Under Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala‎ Netbook Remix

I installed Ubuntu 9.10 Netbook Remix in my (actually my wife's) HP mini 1000 this afternoon. To my surprise the wireless card did not work. Also, when I looked at System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers, the list was blank.

After few hours of googling and reading through several not too helpful forum posts, I learned that this was caused by Ubuntu 9.10 shipping "b43" driver out of box, which does not work for HP mini 1000. The proprietary driver "wl" should be used instead. However, no one said exactly what I needed to do to fix this problem.

Eventually, I decided to just launch Synaptic and search for "broadcom". The first result in the filtered list was bcmwl-kernel-source, which looked promising so I just went ahead and installed it.

I had a look at the /etc/modprobe.d folder after the installation finished, I noticed that the package actually created a blacklist file for "b43" related modules for me already. After reboot, my wireless card just worked.

Comments

  1. thanks for the help!!!!!!!!! dude you really saved my life!!!

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  2. Oscar, thanks for this - it resolved my issue immediately! I've made a note of your solution on "https://wiki.ubuntu.com/HardwareSupport/Machines/Netbooks".

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  3. Hi oscar, I have the compaq mini 700el the european version of hp mini 1000 and I have a problem.. the bluetooth doesn't work!! I've tried lots of things in way to repair this issue with karmik but nothing works.. if you have solution for my problem i'll very happy! Thanks!

    p.s in all versions of windows and in other distros bt worked good..

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  4. Hi akl!, sorry I haven't got any bluetooth device so I didn't even realise it's a problem under karmik. I'll poke around tonight and see if I can figure out why it won't work.

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  5. alk!, turns out my HP mini 1000 does not have bluetooth but you can probably try this: "sudo /etc/init.d/bluetooth start" and then "lsusb" to see your device is listed.

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  6. thank's for your answer, but i've already tried this solution and doesn't worked.

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  7. hello to all.. i've just formatted my mini and.. what a surprise! Everthing works!!! I've installed the 9.10 with the usb key created with unetbootin and the iso of karmic... the pc was offline, with the ethernet cable unplugged and with the battery power.. During the first boot i've saw the bluetooth icon, and when I plugged the dsl cable it works.. then i've opened the terminal and i have wrote sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade.
    After a reboot i've abilitated the restricted driver (broadcom sta).. and now all features of my mini are working!

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  8. What do I do if I don't have internet wired access on my Mini1000. Can I dwld from another machine and install manually? If so, how?

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  9. Hi Jeffrey,

    Sorry I meant to get back to you eariler but I was quite busy last week. Yes you can download it in another machine and once you've downloaded it, it will end up in your /var/cache/apt folder.

    All you have to do then is to copy it to your usb drive and install it on your HP mini 1000.

    Cheers,
    Oscar

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  10. please help i am abe to run the sat driver for broadcom on live mode but when switching to normal mode i am unable to run the driver you mention , i have tried fro the terminal , using sinaptic package manager and by chosing the b43 driver none of the methods sem to work fo me , also i tried ir several times (reinstall and tried again) , the error show in the terminal is that the update is already install, but in normal mode it doesn't work

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  11. I think i might just found a way out i plug my old bluettoth mini doogle(out of the box compatibility) and set it up with my cellphone so it would download the packages (20mb) from the cellphone , i am currently reeboting to see if it works , by the way does anybody know how to share a wired conection with windwos 7. I can confirm it works it eems that if you connect to internet and then install ubuntu the package list for broadcom from synaptic is updated adding more controllers like one called bcm70xxx or something like that so by installing ubuntu and later on downloading this new packages ecerything seems to work okay. Thanks for the help.

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  12. Hi Oscar

    I tried the steps you detailed above & found bcmwl-modaliases (already installed) in Synaptic - it does look like my situation is different from the rest of the people's experience in this thread? Wifi is still orange :-(

    Appreciate comments tks

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  13. Hi Colin,

    You need "bcmwl-kernel-source" not "bcmwl-modaliases". If you can't see the "bcmwl-kernel-source" package in Synaptic, try to connect your HP Mini 1000 to Internet via the ethernet port and reload the Synaptic package list.

    Also, from my experence the Synaptic package indexing is very slow on my HP Mini 1000, probably because of the slow SSD drive. Just wait for few minutes and try again if the "bcmwl-kernel-source" package still doesn't appear in your package list after reloading.

    Finally, you can try to install it from command prompt by:

    apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source


    Cheers,
    Oscar

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  14. Thanks Oscar. Managed to install bcmwl-kernel-source. However, I could not seem to activate the driver under Administration-Hardware Drivers. Must I load up any other packages to install the driver? Tks again.

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  15. Hi Colin,

    No that should be it, did you reboot your laptop after installed the driver?

    Cheers,
    Oscar

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  16. Hi Oscar,

    Yea, I've tried both warm & cold reboot - didnt work.

    Before this, I could toggle the wi-fi switch on / off

    Could well be a hardware fault?

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  17. Hi Colin,

    Hmm, not sure you probably have to look at the kernel log. Try this:

    > dmesg | grep -i broadcom

    and also run:

    > sudo lsmod

    to see if the module is loaded successfully

    Oscar

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  18. Hi Oscar,

    Here's the sudo after I did the grep..can't really make out anything here - but really appreciate your help

    With thanks,
    Colin

    coliaw33@coliaw33-laptop:~$ sudo lsmod
    Module Size Used by
    nls_iso8859_1 3740 1
    nls_cp437 5372 1
    vfat 10716 1
    fat 51452 1 vfat
    usb_storage 52544 1
    binfmt_misc 8356 1
    ppdev 6688 0
    snd_hda_codec_idt 59844 1
    joydev 10272 0
    snd_hda_intel 26920 2
    snd_hda_codec 75708 2 snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel
    snd_hwdep 7200 1 snd_hda_codec
    snd_pcm_oss 37920 0
    snd_mixer_oss 16028 1 snd_pcm_oss
    snd_pcm 75296 3 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_pcm_oss
    snd_seq_dummy 2656 0
    snd_seq_oss 28576 0
    snd_seq_midi 6432 0
    snd_rawmidi 22208 1 snd_seq_midi
    iptable_filter 3100 0
    snd_seq_midi_event 6940 2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
    ip_tables 11692 1 iptable_filter
    x_tables 16544 1 ip_tables
    snd_seq 50224 6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event
    snd_timer 22276 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq
    uvcvideo 59080 0
    videodev 36736 1 uvcvideo
    v4l1_compat 14496 2 uvcvideo,videodev
    psmouse 56180 0
    snd_seq_device 6920 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq
    snd 59204 16 snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec,snd_hwdep,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device
    serio_raw 5280 0
    soundcore 7264 1 snd
    snd_page_alloc 9156 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
    lp 8964 0
    parport 35340 2 ppdev,lp
    fbcon 36640 72
    tileblit 2460 1 fbcon
    font 8124 1 fbcon
    bitblit 5372 1 fbcon
    softcursor 1756 1 bitblit
    i915 221064 3
    drm 159584 3 i915
    i2c_algo_bit 5760 1 i915
    intel_agp 27484 2 i915
    agpgart 34988 2 drm,intel_agp
    video 19380 1 i915
    output 2780 1 video

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  19. Hi Colin,

    If this is your whole lsmod output then for some reason your "wl" module is not loaded. Try do a:

    > sudo modprobe wl

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  20. Hmm yea it says module wl not found. I mentioned earlier about sighting under Hardware Drivers the Broadcom STA wireless driver not being activated..and I just couldn't activate it on screen..

    But you didn't seem to have taken that step either. So am abit lost as to why it is like this..

    Separately, I'm trying to get download from HP the MIE Restore Image Creator..and see if that route helps..

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  21. Colin,

    I was hoping by runing modprobe from the cmd prompt you will be able to see why the driver failed to load.

    The only suggestion I can offer now is to try reinstall the bcmwl-kernel-source and then activate it from the Hardware Drivers UI again. Other than this suggestion I have no idea why these steps won't work for you either. Sorry.

    Also, you can give the full Ubuntu a try, I am using the full version rather than netbook remix now and it worked quite well too.

    Cheers,
    Oscar

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  22. Thanks Oscar..let me try these out.

    Cheers.

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  23. Thanks man.....You r a genious!!!!It really works!!!!!!

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  24. I, unfortunately, am having the same issue with my hp mini 1000 as Colin. Except, I don't have the luxury of hardwire ethernet. It's all wireless here, though I have my desktop set up as well (also wireless). The only thing i can think of, is to download the -kernel-source on my desktop, and transfer it to hp mini via usb drive. Any advice?

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  25. @slatz yes you should be able to do that. You might still able to find the package in your /var/cache/apt of your desktop. Just copy the .deb package to a USB, copy to your HP mini and do a "dpkg -i " to install it

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  26. After doing all that, the driver wouldn't activate.
    I ended up getting the sourcecode from broadcom's website, and built the driver from source. Afterward, I insmoded the driver, and added it to startup. It's all in the instructions in the source that broadcom provides, actually.
    Thanks for the tips to all though!

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  27. SUPER THANK YOU!!!!

    Finally Something that worked!!!!

    Now to get that Inspiron working...

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  28. Hi buddy, i've done what u said before...
    But, i got another problem..
    my wireless has activated, the lamp already turn on
    but, when i attemp to connect wireless networks (secured type) wpa/wpa2.. the connection established. the is a bar with black color. but somehow, i couldn't connect to "the network" there is no google or another www...

    do u know how to solve this problem..?
    thanks for ur tips...

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  29. Hi Oscar, at another topics..
    Beside wireless problem, i have another with orange lamp at fn11 button. have u got this one too? or this is normal. thanks

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  30. Hi airfanz, not sure what you mean by the bar with black colour can you email me a screenshot? my addr is oscar.y.kuo at gmail.com.

    As for the orange lamp, nope I don't have that under my fn11 button.

    Btw, Ubuntu 10.04 is coming out in few days time so if you can't figure out what's going on with the old one you can always just try the new one :)

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  31. Awesome stuff here. I had to use apt-get to install bcmwl-kernel-sources since for some reason they did not show up at synaptic. This was of course after being connected via a wire and reloading the synaptic package list.

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  32. i tried both the b43 and sta drivers and now this bcmwl driver and none of them work for 10.04. Is anyone else having a really hard time getting this to work?

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  33. @Anonymous (5/19) - I too am trying to get the wifi to work with 10.04. I have the wireless showing as active, and the networks now appear, but will not actually connect to the internet. I'm at a bit of a loss. Since all I want the thing to do is surf the web, I'm now trying the HP MIE interface version to see if that will work. If not, perhaps Oscar has some thoughts?...

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  34. this is definitely how to get the wireless to work thanks Mr. Kuo

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  35. I did a slightly different fix using the latest Ubuntu Desktop installation on my hp mini.

    Using a "wired" ethernet connection, I went to System > Administration > Hardware Drivers . I installed the latest Broadcom STA Wireless Driver. And bam wireless works now on my hp mini!

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  36. This was a lifesaver on a standard Lucid Lynx build, too. Thank you!

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  37. BAH! How did you get Synaptic to work offline? I have downloaded the wireless driver onto a usb key, can I just instal that or is that too simple?

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  38. KP Kev the Poet,

    I connected the Ethernet cable before I got the wireless to work. Alternatively you can download broadcom STA driver directly from their website to a USB drive and compile/install that from source.

    Oscar

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