Live CD/DVD with Wireless firmware?
 

I am running SID AMD64 on my Notebook. The user-data are backed up on an
external USB drive.
For the OPERATING SYSTEM do I want to have a (installable) live CD/DVD
as a backup.
But the live CD/DVD must include the firmware for my broadcom b43 chip.

Is the firmware included in the fwcutter package?
Which Live CD/DVD includes such fwcutter package with firmware included?

Thanks in advance

Hugo Wau











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Live CD/DVD with Wireless firmware?
 

On Wed, 29 Oct 2008 06:34:05 -0700 (PDT)
Hugo Wau <wauhugo@yahoo.com> wrote:

> I am running SID AMD64 on my Notebook. The user-data are backed up on an
> external USB drive.
> For the OPERATING SYSTEM do I want to have a (installable) live CD/DVD
> as a backup.
> But the live CD/DVD must include the firmware for my broadcom b43 chip.
>
> Is the firmware included in the fwcutter package?

No. fwcutter merely cuts the firmware from a binary blob, which must
be obtained separately. The Debian package contains a simple install
script (/usr/share/b43-fwcutter/install_bcm43xx_firmware.sh) that
automatically downloads one and points fwcutter at it:

-----

#!/bin/sh

set -e

dir=$(mktemp -d)
cd "$dir"
wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o
wget http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta-3.130.20.0.o
tar xfvj broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
b43-fwcutter --unsupported -w /lib/firmware broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver/wl_apsta_mimo.o
rm -rf "$dir"
chmod o +rx /lib/firmware/b43 /lib/firmware/b43legacy

-----

> Which Live CD/DVD includes such fwcutter package with firmware included?

They generally don't, since the binary blobs are not freely
distributable. I made my own with the Debian Live tools, following the
instructions for adding custom files from Section 2 on this page:

http://wiki.debian.org/DebianLive/Examples

It's a fairly straightforward process.

> Hugo Wau

Celejar
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Live CD/DVD with Wireless firmware?
 

On Wed, 29 Oct 2008 09:35:14 -0700 (PDT)
Hugo Wau <wauhugo@yahoo.com> wrote:

...

> Thanks for the useful information.
>
> Would it be enough, to backup and restore the contents of /lib/firmware
> instead of using fwcutter?

Yes. fwcutter merely populates the firmware directories with the
firmware files that b43 needs. It makes no difference how those files
get there.

> Hugo Wau

Celejar
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