FIXED thanks all, installed Ubuntu which fixed it. Much obliged to all comments :-)

——————————————————

I may give it up, but just playing with an old laptop and looking at linux for the first real time and of course, the old laptop happens to have this network adapter… 🤦🏻

(BCM4313 802.11bgn). From the rabbit hole it’s a typical case, laptop tethers to phone fine. Ethernet during Debian 12 install (kde plasma). Detects my wifi but won’t connect (deactivated message).

In theory it should have been as easy as:

HTTPS://wiki.debian.org/wl or https://wiki.debian.org/brcm80211

Has to be the stupidest thing…

configuration: broadcast = yes driver = brcmsmac driverversion = 6.1.0-13-amd64 firmware = 610.812 ip = 172.20.10.5 latency = 0 link = yes multicast = yes wireless = IEEE 802.11

  • Miku Luna \ she/it@lemmy.blahaj.zone
    3·
    1 year ago

    But at step 4, wl.ko does indeed exist lol

    1. (Optional) Check all the built DKMS kernel modules. There should be “wl.ko” in the list.

    Pretty sure that’s how it’s supposed to be, especially since you just installed it in step 2. I don’t see your problem here.

    • Ringmasterincestuous@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
      2·
      1 year ago

      Thanks for your reply :-) – I just assumed that would be an issue as I go on to complete step 5 and 6 and still the same thing. I can see the wifi network and attempt to join and it never configures. Fun times

        • rufus@discuss.tchncs.de
          1·
          1 year ago

          We should tell people to post the relevant lines from the dmesg command, too. It usually tells if a killswitch is set or the module didn’t get loaded (properly).

          Good luck with your old laptop 😄

  • bus_factor@lemmy.world
    2·
    1 year ago

    So, you’re talking about ensuring the wl driver is loaded, but the dump at the end of your post says it’s using brcmsmac, a different driver for the same card. Looks like you have a mix of both now? It looks like https://wiki.debian.org/wl has a little script you can use to switch between the two, maybe try that.

  • bus_factor@lemmy.world
    1·
    1 year ago

    Isn’t there a separate package with firmware? Maybe install firmware-brcm80211, firmware-misc-nonfree or something like that?

    • Ringmasterincestuous@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      firmware-misc-nonfree

      I got - firmware-misc-nonfree is already the newest version (20230210-5).

      & for firmware-brcm80211 I got - firmware-brcm80211 is already the newest version (20230210-5).