Hi, I installed ubuntu server on a mac mini late 2012, and I have now (as expected) a problem with the firmware for the Broadcom network adapter / wifi card.
I could install those firmware quite easily with the package firmware-b43-installer
but I obviously cannot use apt
to download and install this package.
Then I thought to manually download the package from another computer and install it manually in Ubuntu. I saved the .deb
into a USB stick and tried to install it, but this package depends on other packages that are not installed on the machine.
Then I thought “ok, I’ll do the same for the dependencies and I will install the manually before install the firmware-b43-installer
”.
The problem is, of course, that also those packages depends on something else.
I don’t think is a good idea to go down into the dependency hole and look manually for all the depndendencies of the dependencies… there is a more efficient way to do this? There is a way to download a package with its recursive dependencies?
Or somebody installed already Ubuntu (or a debian based distro) on a mac mini with Broadcom chip that can put me on the right direction?
Thanks a lot.
A quick search tells me that mac mini’s have ethernet. Are you able temporarily connect that way to fetch the wifi drivers?
Copying this package over USB will not work anyway, even if you get all the dependencies, since firmware-b43-installer
is just a script that downloads the firmware (probably because it is illegal for Debian/Ubuntu to redistribute this firmware because of the license).
You need internet. You’ll need to use a different network device for this, or use a phone as the other person said.
Or you can copy the firmware files over by hand, from a different Ubuntu/Linux computer. They should be under /usr/lib/firmware/b43
.
The Linux mint live installer comes with the bcmwl-kernel-source package which will allow you to install it. It worked on my 2013 MacBook Pro which uses a Broadcom chip