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I'm trying to lspci > /sdc1 lspci.txt on recovery mode. What am I doing wrong? + help installing broadcom BCM4360 802.11ac network controller on debian (lemmy.ml)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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hardware is a nuked MacBook Pro, Intel Core i5-4278U @ 2.60GHz, model A1502 (EMC 2875), Retina Mid-2014 13"

I tried to install debian 12.5 from a live usb on this computer. On the network page of debian's installation GUI I get this message:

No Ethernet card was detected. If you know the name of the driver needed by your Ethernet card, you can select it from the list.

so I logged in to recovery mode and executed

sudo lspci -vnnk -s 03:00.0

that returns

network controller [0200]: broadcom inc. and subsidiaries BCM4360 802.11ac wireless network manager adapter [14e4:43a0] (rev 03)

there is more information that I wanted to save to a lspci.txt file on the live usb (sdc1) to share with you, but I failed the syntax.

Why I want to do this: installing debian, on the GUI's networking page there is a candidate with this exact specification (broadcom 802.11ac wireless network manager), but I cannot install it because I don't have wifi or an ethernet cable, so I'd have to download this package from this computer I'm using now and copy it to the live usb to install alongside debian 12.5. I just wanted to print the whole command just in case it's helpful.

ETA: how do I install rpm fusion repos on debian? I only found instructions for fedora and rhel https://rpmfusion.org/Configuration

thanks

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago

You're going to have a few issues with the above, whilst it is possible to install an rpm package to Debian, like so: https://linuxconfig.org/how-to-install-rpm-package-on-ubuntu-linux

It's a bit of a niche use case and may cause other issues, I've never done it.

The other issue is that the broadcom drivers for that wireless card are closed source, which is antithetical to debians mission to provide an entirely open system.

There are open source reverse engineered drivers (b43) and open official drivers, (brcmsmac/brcmfmac) for some older broadcom chips but only supporting up to wireless N functionality, if I remember correctly.

After a brief scout about I have located the following: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/175810/how-to-install-broadcom-bcm4360-on-debian-on-macbook-pro

it appears the closed source driver package, wl, is able to provide support for one of two chipsets on the 4360 wireless card, but there is no support for the other.

If you have a phone that can provide usb tethering, you are most likely able to provide internet to your laptop that way and continue from there to install the broadcom wl driver, if it supports your chipset. The above stack exchange link and this arch wiki link should help with that. https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Broadcom_wireless