Comment 38 for bug 184600

I have found only two things that work correctly for my BCM4311/12 (rev 02). One is ndiswrapper 0.52/0.53 (newer than the 0.50 available in Ubuntu packages) with the drivers found from HP/Compaq as SP36684A. The second is the wireless-compat-2.6.26 patch.

I am interested in learning how to take the work done in the wireless-compat-2.6.26 (replacement modules for all the wireless drivers they support), and create dpkgs available to the Ubuntu universe (community) repositories. Effectively, there could be a wireless-compat-2.6.26-modules_<arch>_2.6.24-<abi#>-ubuntu<rev#> package for each architecture, kernel, and abi containing the compiled replacement driver modules, as well as a meta-package with a simple name like wireless-compat, that always keeps the correct replacement/compatibility modules installed in case of a kernel upgrade or an abi bump. Since the compatibility patch works for kernels as old as 2.6.20, older versions of Ubuntu could even be supported (at least Gutsy, maybe Fiesty, Edgy, or Dapper).

I'm more interested in learning how to create the packages, dependencies, documentation, etc., and learning how to upload them to the repositories and become a package maintainer, then I am somebody else doing it. Especially since the modules would have built in obsolescence (they would no longer be needed for any version of Ubuntu with the 2.6.26 kernel or higher).

If I am able to pull that off, it might even make sense to make packages with the required (extracted) firmwares for Broadcom cards, and get it available in the Medibuntu repositories, but that is a lot less important, since it is not that painful to do.

But back to the point. This is a confirmation that the new wireless-compat patch that came out on 06-25 works well on Hardy Heron (no problems so far anyway).

I removed my ndiswrapper drivers (moved /etc/ndiswrapper and /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper to folder in my home directory so they could ndiswrapper would not be able to load, but I preserving my settings because I can always move them back). I unblacklisted ssb and b43, and ran all of the following from the extracted archive:
sudo make # builds the compatibility modules
sudo make install
sudo make load
sudo update-initramfs -u -k all -v

Of course, the extracted firmwares available by running b43-fwcutter are still required to be installed, build-essentials are needed, as well as the linux-headers package, but all that is par for the course by now.

Can somebody point me in the right direction as far as learning the required steps to create these repository based packages? This way, anyone using a broadcom and the compat-wireless pack, can be assured that they will have the new modules with each kernel and abi bump. :)