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I am trying to use a live ISO of Ubuntu 23.04 on a laptop that requires proprietary WiFi drivers. My networking card is detected correctly in Software Center and I am able to enable the proprietary drivers, but I still don't have any WiFi networks showing up in my network settings. Normally, you have to reboot after installing the proprietary drivers in order for the desktop environment to detect them, but I cannot do this because I am in a live environment.

Is it possible to use nonfree WiFi drivers in a live environment? E.g. is there a systemd command I can use to prompt the system to rescan for WiFi hardware?

Max
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  • If you can load them (insmod or insert module into kernel) you may find a simple GUI logout & login may recognize them; have you tried? – guiverc May 06 '23 at 13:13
  • Logging out and back in doesn't make a difference, unfortunately. – Max May 06 '23 at 13:15
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    How about unloading and reloading the driver: sudo modprobe -r <driver> && sudo modprobe <driver> or restarting Network Manager: sudo service NetworkManager restart or this: nmcli device wifi rescan – chili555 May 06 '23 at 13:52
  • @chili555 None of these suggestions worked, unfortunately. The first two execute but don't produce any output or change; the third gives an error saying no WiFi device is present. (I know that the proprietary broadcom drivers work, in general, on this hardware because I have used them in other Linux distros.) – Max May 06 '23 at 13:57
  • Let's have a look at: lspci -nnk | grep 0280 -A3 Which driver did you install? – chili555 May 06 '23 at 15:40
  • Driver installed is broadcom-sta-dkms. Output of your command lists the Broadcom network controller and says Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge – Max May 06 '23 at 16:06
  • In order to learn if broadcom-sta-dkms is correct for your device, we need to know the exact details of your card. "Broadcom network controller" could be any of dozens of devices. Not all use the driver you installed. Please see: https://askubuntu.com/questions/55868/installing-broadcom-wireless-drivers/60395#60395 – chili555 May 06 '23 at 16:11
  • The PCI ID is 14e4:4331 and the firmware listed in the thread you linked is firmware-b43-installer. I really doubt that Ubuntu is installing the wrong firmware because this is a very common chip and laptop (a Macbook Pro 9,2 which has worked fine with previous versions of Ubuntu when installing on bare metal). I just need a way to tell Gnome to refresh its menus now that the firmware has been enabled, which one would normally accomplish by rebooting. – Max May 06 '23 at 16:19
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – chili555 May 06 '23 at 18:57

1 Answers1

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Yes, you can install software, drivers, firmware, etc. in a live environment.

First, install the probable correct driver and remove the incorrect driver:

sudo apt purge bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo apt update
sudo apt install firmware-b43-installer

Unload and reload the driver to get the driver b43 to recognize and use the newly installed firmware:

sudo modprobe -r b43
sudo modprobe b43

You should be all set.

chili555
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