Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) and Broadcom BCM4312

words by Brian Racer

Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) launched today and I figured it was time to do an install from scratch onto my Dell D830 Latitude laptop. Everything went quite smoothly but when it started up I noticed two issues:

Problem 1: No wireless

I know the Broadcom card inside the laptop isn’t the greatest, but the last two Ubuntu releases it has worked out of the box. The following command enabled the card after a reboot:

sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source

Problem 2: Really slow DNS lookups (because of IPV6)

As documented on Launchpad, there still doesn’t seem to be an official fix. Strangely disabling IPV6 in /etc/sysctl.conf didn’t solve anything, however disabling it in Firefox at least fixes the issue in the browser. Just type about:config in the address bar, and set network.dns.disableIPv6 to false.

Otherwise things seem to be working well, although I don’t understand why they stick with a color scheme that looks like mud.

12 Responses to “Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) and Broadcom BCM4312”

  1. Denis Lemire says:
    October 29th, 2009 at 9:38 pm

    Thanks for the heads-up on the Broadcom wireless. Ran into the same issue… The mentioned fix resolved it without any further trouble.

  2. Jonathan says:
    October 30th, 2009 at 12:44 pm

    Thanks a lot! The issue with wireless was the same with vostro 1320 and that solved my problem.

  3. Bob says:
    October 31st, 2009 at 12:07 pm

    Thanks for your suggestion – fixed my Acer Aspire 5720 too. Annoying that it worked before but not by default on 9.10!!

  4. Ideas a cuentagotas » Blog Archive » Broadcom BCM4312 en Karmit Koala says:
    November 3rd, 2009 at 12:18 am

    [...] que el “problema” no es tan comun, sin embargo despues de buen rato buscando encontre este blog en el que esta un sencillo paso de como solucionar el problema, simplemente con este sencillo [...]

  5. Pallav says:
    November 11th, 2009 at 4:04 pm

    Tried this several times on HP Pavilion dv4t. No luck :( . Has anyone had any luck with any Pavilions?

  6. axl says:
    December 23rd, 2009 at 3:47 pm

    This was only part a partial solution for me — I followed the directions at http://elame.com/damnthatsannoying/?p=35 and it provided the final steps I needed to get it working.

  7. Deverne says:
    January 4th, 2010 at 4:50 am

    Thank for let us know the Broadcom issue and its solution.

  8. Gideo says:
    January 4th, 2010 at 8:01 pm

    ¡¡¡Thanks a lot for this information!!!. It worked perfectly on my Vostro 1320. I have wireless now in my Ubuntu 9.10

  9. Juan says:
    January 6th, 2010 at 12:22 am

    Man, you saved me loads of trouble with this fix, Vostro 1400. THANKS!!!

  10. Dom75 says:
    March 20th, 2010 at 1:34 am

    Hi,
    thanks for the tips, it’s been saving my time.

  11. Mich says:
    April 19th, 2010 at 4:19 pm

    Thanks for WiFi hint! Works like a charm on Dell Inspiron with BCM4312 rev15. Cheers!

  12. Jetpack Flight Log » Ubuntu 10.4 (Lucid Lynx) and Broadcom BCM4312 says:
    April 30th, 2010 at 2:09 pm

    [...] This is basically just a repost of the same issue I had when Karmic Koala launched [...]

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