No Network Adapters after install

Installing Zorin OS
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1

Ok... so... I have a friend who has an ancient Windows 8.1 "HP Stream" computer. It has no resources to speak of... it barely has 30GB of usable space on it's hard drive. They only use the computer to watch Youtube, do online classes, E-mail, and type this or that.

I was able to get Core installed, no problem... however, then I tried to get it onto my wifi I noted there was no adapter available. This is a problem because there is no ethernet on this system. I tried a USB hub with a network adapter in it (even re-installed the OS with it plugged in the whole time) and it didn't even recognize it. PLEASE NOTE: the USB drives I plugged into the hub were read just fine and I use this hub in my job to hook my laptop to many networks for troubleshooting (I do IT... though mostly Windows/Mac systems... so ZorinOS is kinda new)

I have run the sudo lsha -c network command and got the following:

*-network UNCLAIMED
description: Network controller product: BCM43142 802.11b/g/n
vendor: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
version: 1
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHZ
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress cap_list
configuration: latency=0
resources: memorv:90500000-90507fff

So I know it sees it, but without a connection to the internet, I need either to enable the USB network adapter (but it doesn't even seem to see it) or an alternative way to load these drivers. Either that, or I might have to try another distro... and I'd really rather not, as the person I am doing this for is even more new than I am with ZorinOS and they have never even touched Linux (save when I showed her it earlier on my system).

I would appreciate some help in this matter. Please note... this isn't a simple "Update the libraries and install" as I can't even connect to the internet AT ALL. So any help that you would offer would be appreciated.

Mahalo nui loa,

ThreeTima

2

Disable secure boot and fast boot in your BIOS and if it is a Dual boot with Windows also fast-startup there.

Can you connect the pc via your phone and usb tethering with the internet and then enter in terminal

"sudo apt update"

"sudo apt install firmware-b43-installer
bcmwl-kernel-source"

Then reboot.

EDIT: I would like to apologize. The command was wrong. b43 and wl are different drivers. For this card only the wl driver is the right one, so just install

"sudo apt install bcmwl-kernel-source"

2 Likes
3

As an alternative to @Forpli's Suggestion with connecting the Phone, you could use a working PC/Laptop and download the Package from here:

4

Thank you both for your replies, I am trying the solution @Forpli suggested now.

Mahalo nui loa,

ThreeTima

1 Like
5

So, unfortunately.. this system is so ancient that "Secure Boot" is on by default.. and there isn't even an option to turn it off. I did set the Bios password... but before and/or after, the option didn't even show up... it's not that it was "Greyed out", it wasn't there at all.

So... Honestly.. other than Watching YouTube, Doing online College work, and using LibreOffice... there is little this computer will do... So given that frame of reference... will Secure Boot cause a problem?

6

Secure boot can interfere with certain features, mainly those related to power management, including suspend. Unfortunately, this you will have to see for yourself as it's different from one device to the next.

Did installing the packages suggested above help with enabling the wireless network card?

7

It errored out on the install of the firmware

Preparing to unpack firmware-b43-installer_1%3a019-7build2_all.deb ...
Unpacking firmware-b43-installer (1:019-7build2) over (1:019-7build2) ...
Setting up firmware-b43-installer (1:019-7build2) ...
No chroot environment found. Starting normal installation
No supported device found.
But firmware is installed unconditionally
Unsupported device(s) found: PCI id  * 14e4:4365 
Trying to install latest firmware 6.30.163.46 .
--2025-09-02 08:33:40--  https://www.lwfinger.com/b43-firmware/broadcom-wl-6.30.163.46.tar.bz2
Resolving www.lwfinger.com (www.lwfinger.com)... 172.67.168.164, 104.21.94.197, 2606:4700:3037::6815:5ec5, ...
Connecting to www.lwfinger.com (www.lwfinger.com)|172.67.168.164|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://lwfinger.com/b43-firmware/broadcom-wl-6.30.163.46.tar.bz2 [following]
--2025-09-02 08:33:42--  https://lwfinger.com/b43-firmware/broadcom-wl-6.30.163.46.tar.bz2
Resolving lwfinger.com (lwfinger.com)... 104.21.94.197, 172.67.168.164, 2606:4700:3037::6815:5ec5, ...
Connecting to lwfinger.com (lwfinger.com)|104.21.94.197|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2025-09-02 08:33:44 ERROR 404: Not Found.


>/var/lib/dpkg/info/firmware-b43-installer.postinst: Some problem occurred during the firmware download. Please check your internet connection.
 error processing package firmware-b43-installer (--configure):
 installed firmware-b43-installer package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 firmware-b43-installer

I have tried both automatic sudo apt install and sudo apt-get install as well as sudo apt-get --download-only and manually installing via sudo dpkg -i and all have mostly if not all the same output as above.

9

Try wrapping everything within triple backticks (`) Like so:

something

image

Or upload it to a pastebin and share the link here.

11

Thanks.... Done...

I'm IT... so I'm used to doing things myself.... I'm not normally asking for help... and I haven't done forum surfing in quite a while... so thanks for helping.

1 Like
12

No problem, I replied quickly to try to spare you the back and forth copy/paste

Try again with only this one bcmwl-kernel-source. I don't think you actually need the other one, or at least there's a chance this will be enough. If it doesn't work, then we can take a look at the logs and see why the firmware for this chipset failed.

You'll probably need to restart the computer. You know, have you tried to turn it off and on and all that :smiley:

13

So... same same

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree... Done
Reading state information... Done
bcmwl-kernel-source is already the newest version (6.30.223.271+bdcom-0ubuntu10~22.04.1).
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
1 not fully installed or removed.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
Setting up firmware-b43-installer (1:019-7build2) ...
No chroot environment found. Starting normal installation
No supported device found.
But firmware is installed unconditionally
Unsupported device(s) found: PCI id  * 14e4:4365 
Trying to install latest firmware 6.30.163.46 .
--2025-09-02 09:01:32--  https://www.lwfinger.com/b43-firmware/broadcom-wl-6.30.163.46.tar.bz2
Resolving www.lwfinger.com (www.lwfinger.com)... 172.67.168.164, 104.21.94.197, 2606:4700:3030::ac43:a8a4, ...
Connecting to www.lwfinger.com (www.lwfinger.com)|172.67.168.164|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 301 Moved Permanently
Location: https://lwfinger.com/b43-firmware/broadcom-wl-6.30.163.46.tar.bz2 [following]
--2025-09-02 09:01:33--  https://lwfinger.com/b43-firmware/broadcom-wl-6.30.163.46.tar.bz2
Resolving lwfinger.com (lwfinger.com)... 104.21.94.197, 172.67.168.164, 2606:4700:3037::6815:5ec5, ...
Connecting to lwfinger.com (lwfinger.com)|104.21.94.197|:443... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
2025-09-02 09:01:35 ERROR 404: Not Found.

/var/lib/dpkg/info/firmware-b43-installer.postinst: Some problem occurred during the firmware download. Please check your internet connection.
dpkg: error processing package firmware-b43-installer (--configure):
 installed firmware-b43-installer package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 firmware-b43-installer
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
14

Oh.. and yes, I've rebooted several times

1 Like
15

What is the output of:

sudo lspci -knn | grep -i Network -A3
16 
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4365] (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [103c:2230]
	Kernel modules: wl
03:00.0 Unassigned class [ff00]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTS5229 PCI Express Card Reader [10ec:5229] (rev 01)
17

I take a closer Look to the Driver and it seems that Your Controller:

isn't compatible with the Driver:

Supported chipsets:

  • BCM4306/3 (chip revision 3 only);
  • BCM4311 (NOT PCI Id 14e4:4313);
  • BCM4312;
  • BCM43131;
  • BCM4318;
  • BCM4321 (only partial support, not all versions tested);
  • BCM43217;
  • BCM4322 (only partial support for some versions, not all versions tested);
  • BCM43222 (not all versions tested);
  • BCM43224 (not all versions tested);
  • BCM43225;
  • BCM43227;
  • BCM43228;
  • BCM4331;
  • BCM47xx (detection not reliable, may not support all versions).
18

So does that mean there isn't a driver available? or just that this one won't work?

19

That's the problem, the current driver does not support the chipset from that computer. The solution should be to install the appropriate driver, which I understand should be through the package bcmwl-kernel-source but it's failing for some reason.

@ThreeTima Can you try again with:

sudo apt install --reinstall bcmwl-kernel-source
20

But it seems that this doesn't support it, too. I found this:

This package contains Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA wireless driver
for use with Broadcom's BCM4311-, BCM4312-, BCM4313-, BCM4321-,
BCM4322-, BCM43224-, and BCM43225-, BCM43227- and BCM43228-based
hardware.

21

I took a Look at Broadcom's Website but didn't found something to Your specific Model. Maybe You could contact them and ask directly. I mean, they should know what Driver You need.

22

Wait a minute, the wl driver should be enough for all BCM43XX devices.

Can you share the output of:

sudo modprobe wl