How to install Broadcom wireless drivers offline?

Solution 1:

You need to install wireless driver.

Insert your Ubuntu installation disk or a flash drive and copy these files from the installation disk to your Home directory:

pool/main/d/dkms/dkms_XXXXX.deb
pool/restricted/b/bcmwl/bcmwl-kernel-source_XXXXX.deb

Then run the following in terminal:

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

If you have UEFI BIOS, you need to disable Secure Boot to load the driver.

18.04 update:

The solution won't work on 18.04, because build-essential and its dependencies are not installed by default. The dpkg command will complain that dependencies are not installed.

You can manually find the required packages on the installation media ("pool" directory sorted by alphabet) and install them the same way as the dkms package. I hope nothing is missing there.

Solution 2:

I recently needed to install the Wifi firmware for an older repurposed iMac 9,1. It had Broadcom 4322 Wifi, and Nvidia Ethernet, neither worked with 20.04. It found the card and tried the correct module (b43) but complained via dmesg "firmware not found."

The following steps I found online worked:

• Find the broadcom firmware on another machine:

  • From: http://www.lwfinger.com/b43-firmware/
  • Download: broadcom-wl-6.30.163.46.tar.bz2 (or later)
  • Extract, then sneakernet back to the original box.

• Install ./pool/main/b43-fwcutter*.deb manually from Ubuntu Disc/Flash drive.

• Run the following:

  • sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware broadcom-wl-*.o # write to /lib
  • sync
  • sudo modprobe -r b43 # remove
  • sudo modprobe b43 # reload

With that Network manager noticed and started up Wifi. :-D

To automate the firmware update, this can be done now that the network is up:

• Enable multiverse in software-properties-gtk or apt/sources
• sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer