Arch Linux

to7m

Member

From: Norwich, UK

Registered: 2013-09-16

Posts: 15

BCM 4313 wireless can't connect, ethernet works only in live CD

Hi! I'm finding it impossible to get Arch working due to internet problems, and I've spent a while trying to figure out how to solve them and got nowhere.

My laptop has Broadcom 4313 wireless. Using wifi-menu, I can see a bunch of wireless networks, but whenever I try to connect to mine, the connection fails. When I first tried to install Arch over a year ago, this was the case, but at some point a few months on it randomly worked, then didn't, and more recently worked when I tried connecting to another network. On Mint 14 I use the broadcom-wl module and it works great. On Arch, I installed broadcom-wl when chrooted and it seemed to install fine, and when I rebooted lsmod showed that it loaded wl, but it still wouldn't connect to the router
The default wireless driver seems to be brcmsmac, and wireless in most distros in weak, probably because they can't include broadcom-wl.

dmesg | grep wl:

[    0.000000] DMI: Hewlett-Packard HP G62 Notebook PC              /143B, BIOS F.2B 12/05/2011
[    5.115660] wl: module license 'Mixed/Proprietary' taints kernel.
[    5.163593] INFO @wl_cfg80211_attach : Registered CFG80211 phy
[    5.441026] systemd-udevd[136]: renamed network interface eth0 to wlp3s0

The RTL8101E/RTL8102E ethernet works fine on live USB, but it doesn't work at all after that. I have no idea what causes this.

dmesg | grep r8169

[    4.550602] r8169 Gigabit Ethernet driver 2.3LK-NAPI loaded
[    4.550866] r8169 0000:02:00.0: irq 43 for MSI/MSI-X
[    4.551060] r8169 0000:02:00.0 eth0: RTL8102e at 0xffffc90002114000, 90:fb:a6:c0:5f:2b, XID 04e00000 IRQ 43

I'm also probably going to install linux-rt at some point. Any ideas?

Lone_Wolf

Forum Moderator

From: Netherlands, Europe

Registered: 2005-10-04

Posts: 12,007

Re: BCM 4313 wireless can't connect, ethernet works only in live CD

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=168177

TL;DR :
Broadcom wireless has problems in kernel 3.10.6 and higher .
kernle 3.11.x (in [testing] repo ) , and 3.10.11+ (not in repos yet) have fixed this.

---

Disliking systemd intensely, but not satisfied with alternatives so focusing on taming systemd.

(A works at time B)  && (time C > time B ) ≠  (A works at time C)

to7m

Member

From: Norwich, UK

Registered: 2013-09-16

Posts: 15

Re: BCM 4313 wireless can't connect, ethernet works only in live CD

Thanks! I'll test this when I can, but I have no access to wireless anymore. I'll try the October image when I do

to7m

Member

From: Norwich, UK

Registered: 2013-09-16

Posts: 15

Re: BCM 4313 wireless can't connect, ethernet works only in live CD

Victory (haven't tried linux-rt yet). In case this helps anyone, here's what worked for me:

I installed Lynx by downloading the package and the *.db files, allowing me to offline install it and therefore log into Studentcom's portal. This bit was made trickier by a load of pointless troubleshooting because I thought I wasn't connected. Turns out Studentcom blocks ping.

Next up, I installed the broadcom-wl package, which worked fine after rebooting into the system.

Finally, I just didn't activate ethernet properly. To get both linked up and automatically starting on boot, I did this:

systemctl enable netctl-auto@wlp3s0.service
wifi-menu wlp3s0
systemctl enable dhcpcd@enp2s0.service
dhcpcd enp2s0

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