How can I install wifi firmware? Linux partition has no internet connection

I think I have the right drivers.

I don’t know how to install them, see discussion here: Copy Wifi Firmware Script is Incompatible with older Versions of MacOS · Issue #435 · t2linux/wiki · GitHub

If I try to drag them and drop them into usr/lib/firmware/brcm, I don’t have the right permissions. And the existing files there all end .xz.

I think a lot of the instructions involving apt-get, git files, etc. will require an internet connection.

The solution here is to use a smartphone, but I can’t use the things… How do I download then install WiFi card drivers in Fedora 38 without an internet connection?

It seems you may be working with a mac system, though you did not say what the hardware is, nor why you have a problem other than wifi is not working.

No, one does not drag and drop files with fedora when installing drivers. Almost everything is installed using the package manager and installing the appropriate rpm package.

If you are on the mac as indicated then the wifi is probably a broadcom chipset and that (for most users) is easily handled by installing the broadcom-wl, akmod-wl and related packages from the rpmfusion-nonfree repo using dnf.

Do you have another system that could be used to download the packages? If so then they could be placed on a usb device and copied over to the problem system and installed using dnf.

Firmware and drivers are 2 different animals, though it requires both to function properly.

I’ve got a mac system. I don’t think it can run dnf.

Here I’m concerned that:

  1. I don’t have working wifi in Linux, and I’m not sure how to set it up.

  2. Most instructions rely on working internet connections to set up wifi, but since I don’t have working wifi in Linux, I don’t have an internet connection in Linux, so I can’t use it to set up wifi.

And of course that applies to package managers.

Owing to disabilities, I cannot use smartpains, so I cannot use one to tether a connection.

Couple approaches that come to my mind:

  • use an Ethernet connection if possible (maybe with usb-ethernet adapter if your machine doesn’t have a LAN port)

  • use a USB-Wi-Fi adapter that is supported by the kernel (intel chipsets)

  • download the packages (and dependencies) that Jeff mentioned from rpmfusion on another computer, then copy them on usb drive to the Mac, then dnf install them.

explaining a bit further to what Jeff said above…

for legal reasons, Fedora Linux is not allowed to ship drivers/firmware for Broadcom devices. To make them work you need to install the driver provided by rpmfusion. Before you install the drivers, double-check if your machine has a Broadcom wifi chipset by executing lspci from command line.

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At my work SGI IRIX64 was replaced by Apple macOS for Adobe Photoshop, but some IRIX64 software was ported to linux. We had wired network at our lab, but wifi was usually needed when out of the lab. Linux support for Apple wifi hardware has been problematic for many users, so the easy fix was to find a USB wifi adapter that works with the drivers supplied by linux.org which will be present in the Fedora installer. My current USB wifi model is no longer sold (and doesn’t do 5Ghz), so you will need to do some research to find a suitable WiFI dongle. They are not expensive.

If you are running fedora on that mac it does have dnf as long as one is not running one of the immutable versions (silverblue, kinoite, IoT, etc.). Dnf is fedora’s package manager.

I finally got it working, based on tips in the other thread.

As for dnf, I meant that

  1. the Fedora side, which has dnf, did not have working wifi.

  2. the Mac side, which has wifi, probably does not have dnf.