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#1 2016-01-02 08:27:56

marmoser
Member
From: Vienna, Austria
Registered: 2015-12-02
Posts: 13
Website

Broadcom BCM43228 [14e4:4359] + b43 = freeze?

Dear Community,

My acer netbook (6 months old) has the following wifi device from broadcom:
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43228 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:4359]
    Subsystem: Foxconn International, Inc. Device [105b:e04b]
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
    Memory at 90600000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
    Capabilities: [58] Vendor Specific Information: Len=78 <?>
    Capabilities: [48] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
    Capabilities: [d0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
    Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
    Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel
    Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 00-00-41-ff-ff-f9-b0-10
    Capabilities: [16c] Power Budgeting <?>
    Kernel driver in use: wl
    Kernel modules: bcma, wl


The device is detected by the b43 driver and - provided the firmware is in place - works. The problem that occurs is a sudden complete freeze of the system, it won't respond to any type of input and becomes completely unusable. Strange enough, there is nothing unusual in journalctl logs or in any other logs, no trace of warnings, errors or panics.

After a few such freezes I figured out it must be related to the wifi connection - if I disable the wifi device with rfkill, the freezes are gone.

I tried different firmware packages: b43-fireware and b43-fireware-classic from arch's aur, with no difference.
What apparently solved the problem completely, was switching to the proprietary broadcom-wl driver and blacklisting b43. No freezes for more than two weeks so far.

I can't provide any hard evidence for this, but my suspicion is that the b43 driver is responsible. The netbook was checked for hardware defects recently (I sent it in for repair because of touchpad issues).

Last edited by marmoser (2016-01-02 10:01:59)

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#2 2016-01-11 21:03:14

marmoser
Member
From: Vienna, Austria
Registered: 2015-12-02
Posts: 13
Website

Re: Broadcom BCM43228 [14e4:4359] + b43 = freeze?

Another lead in this freeze issue is this kernel bug:  https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=109051

There is also a similar thread here on the arch forum about something that looks very similar to my problem: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=204223

In my case the probability of freezes increases with gpu stress. I had 3 freezes again last day, two during increased gpu activity. I'm now trying the intel_idle.max_cstate=1 kernel parameter, with no freezes so far.

Even if it is purely a power management related kernel issue, it doesn't explain at all why the freezes become more frequent with the b43 driver compared to the broadcom-wl driver.

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