Debian 7.4 - Wifi configuration fails … Again [clo

Question

I've been installing multiple versions of ubunutu over years and now I better understand why I faced always problems with wifi configuration on these different baselines : Debian root of course.

 Issue

Now on Debian 7.4 : The Broadcom BCM4313 driver is not loaded by default (not free product) for my wifi card. This is stated thru the UNCLAIMED declaration when looking at the network hardware status excerpt :

sudo lshw -c network
 *-network UNCLAIMED
       description: Network controller
       product: BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller
       vendor: Broadcom Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
       version: 01
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress cap_list
       configuration: latency=0
       resources: memory:f1100000-f1103fff

Unclaimed means : no driver found (no kernel association)

So I installed the driver located in the non-free backports by adding this target into the local packages repository /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://http.debian.net/debian/ wheezy main contrib non-free

and install :

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install firmware-brcm80211
sudo modprobe brcm80211

and restart

sudo shutdown now -r

Check seems OK :

sudo lshw -c network

  *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       product: BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller
       vendor: Broadcom Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
       logical name: wlan0
       version: 01
       serial: 78:e4:00:4e:49:a3
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=brcmsmac driverversion=3.2.0-4-amd64 firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn
       resources: irq:19 memory:f1100000-f1103fff

 Network Configuration

minimal /etc/network/interfaces as required by NetworManager

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

.. and restart

Failure

No wifi network is detected and of course I can't connect using wlan0

it doesn't work.

I found informations here regarding WPA2/PSK wifi configuration on debian :

http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch05.en.html#_the_wireless_lan_interface_with_wpa_wpa2

so I added this setup to my interfaces file an got :

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
 wpa-ssid Hznteam-Datacenter
 # hexadecimal psk is encoded from a plaintext passphrase
 wpa-psk 12345678901234567890123456

Same as above no wifi network detected and ifconfig gives no allocated ip address :

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 78:e4:00:4e:49:a3  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wlan0:avahi Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 78:e4:00:4e:49:a3  
          inet addr:169.254.7.34  Bcast:169.254.255.255  Mask:255.255.0.0
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

Note that my required WPA2/PSK AES key length is 26 chars as requested on my other PC that connect successfully to my wifi router

Any idea ? it's boring wasting hours on the same problem again ..

Help welcome ...

Answer 1

Wrong wifi kernel module selected

I should have installed the brcmsmac module instead of the brcm80211 one. The latter is the Squeeze version kernel module. Wheezy needs the brcmsmac module as mentioned here

Althouhg the package is named brcm80211 the kernel module to load for Wheezy is brcmsmac instead of brcm80211 for the Squeeze version

more detail in this StackoverFlow post and a summary is also available here

Interfaces

I also set the /etc/network/interfaces conf file to only

$ sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

this seems to allow Network-Manager to take any discovered interfaces in account.

Everything's OK. Wifi up and running now. .. And so much wasted time for a stupid version error !