Arch Linux

ryang

Member

Registered: 2020-12-31

Posts: 3

[SOLVED] Broadcom driver detecting multiple wirless interfaces

Hello everyone,

This is my first time posting here! Thanks in advance for any help.

I've had some issues with the b43 driver for my wireless network adapter. I had intermittent connectivity, and sometimes the driver would crash completely resulting in the network interface disappearing entirely. Reading https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/broadcom_wireless] and https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/use … f_hardware I realised this was because my card is not supported by b43. As suggested by the b43 list of hardware I installed broadcom-wl (specifically broadcom-wl-dkms) instead.

This seems to be working, but for some reason there are now two wireless interfaces listed, one of which is unused.

The only loaded kernel module for the device is wl (from broadcom-wl):

$ lspci -vnn -d 14e4:
04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43a0] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries Device [14e4:0619]
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
	Memory at f7400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
	Memory at f7200000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2M]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: wl
	Kernel modules: bcma, wl

But there are two interfaces detected, wlan0 which is used, and wlan1 which isn't:

$ ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: enp3s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether d8:cb:8a:9e:28:1f brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet6 fe80::11a3:603e:d9d2:5bab/64 scope link noprefixroute 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
3: wlan0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 50:3e:aa:82:d5:9a brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.1.194/24 brd 192.168.1.255 scope global dynamic noprefixroute wlan0
       valid_lft 85344sec preferred_lft 85344sec
    inet6 2a00:23c6:aa07:fc00:617a:4dec:9b77:baaf/64 scope global dynamic noprefixroute 
       valid_lft 315359958sec preferred_lft 315359958sec
    inet6 fdaa:bbcc:ddee:0:3aa4:95c8:d18b:11a4/64 scope global noprefixroute 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 fe80::1ca8:59e:295d:d71c/64 scope link noprefixroute 
       valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
4: wlan1: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 1a:2f:3e:d5:ff:19 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff permaddr 62:45:b5:10:16:50

$ ip route 
default via 192.168.1.254 dev wlan0 proto dhcp metric 600 
192.168.1.0/24 dev wlan0 proto kernel scope link src 192.168.1.194 metric 600

Here are some pastebins with the list of loaded modules and diagnostic messages:

lsmod: https://pastebin.com/xCcGC4zf

dmesg: https://pastebin.com/1xX6bN80

As can be seen from the pastebins above the only relevant loaded kernel module is wl. The rest are blacklisted:

$ sudo cat /etc/modprobe.d/wireless.conf
blacklist b43
blacklist b43legacy
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist bcma
blacklist brcm80211
blacklist brcmfmac
blacklist brcmsmac
blacklist ssb
#blacklist wl # broadcom-wl

Any help or insight into why wlan1 exists would be much appreciated.

Cheers,
Ryan

Last edited by ryang (2020-12-31 13:47:06)

ryang

Member

Registered: 2020-12-31

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Broadcom driver detecting multiple wirless interfaces

It turns out wlan1 is nothing to do with the Broadcom card. It's a Microsoft Xbox Wireless Adapter which apparently uses IEEE802.11.

% nmcli             
wlan0: connected to ...
        "Broadcom and subsidiaries BCM4360"
        ....

enp3s0: disconnected
        "Qualcomm Atheros Killer E220x"
        1 connection available
        ethernet (alx), D8:CB:8A:9E:28:1F, hw, mtu 1500

wlan1: disconnected
        "Microsoft XBOX ACC"
        wifi (mt76x2u), 0A:FF:59:78:EC:90, hw, mtu 1500

p2p-dev-wlan1: disconnected
        "p2p-dev-wlan1"
        wifi-p2p, hw

lo: unmanaged
        "lo"
        loopback (unknown), 00:00:00:00:00:00, sw, mtu 65536

DNS configuration:
        servers: 192.168.1.254
        domains: home
        interface: wlan0

Marking as solved.

Last edited by ryang (2020-12-31 13:45:56)