[SOLVED] After upgrade to linux-3.1.4, missing WLAN Broadcom firmware

kennym · 2011-11-11 18:44:44

After upgrading to linux-3.1.4 from core, the firmware was missing for my wireless card. I fixed that by installing b43-firmware from AUR, and typing `modprobe b43` in a shell.

I opened this thread, as my troubleshooting may benefit other users.

System information:

Kernel: 3.1.0-4-ARCH 
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43225 802.11b/g/n (rev 01)

I wonder if it would be appropriated to update the wiki page which talks about the 2.6.x kernel series.

Last edited by kennym (2011-11-11 23:50:38)

tomk · 2011-11-11 20:27:57

I guess you meant to post your Broadcom card's details, instead of that Atheros information?

FYI a kernel upgrade has no effect on /lib/firmware/b43, the location of the files in question. I'm glad you got it working again, but the cause of the issue lies elsewhere.

For that reason, I believe a wiki update is unnecessary.

kennym · 2011-11-11 20:43:22

tomk wrote:

I guess you meant to post your Broadcom card's details, instead of that Atheros information?

Fixed. Nice spot

FYI a kernel upgrade has no effect on /lib/firmware/b43, the location of the files in question. I'm glad you got it working again, but the cause of the issue lies elsewhere.

I just restarted my system again, and I am not able to connect a WLAN network, but no 'Firmware missing' warning anymore. I guess I need another firmware. :-(

Gusar · 2011-11-11 20:53:03

b43-firmware is the correct package for 3.1. For 3.2 b43-firmware-latest will be required.

Did you by any chance blacklist bcma? If you want to use b43, you should not do that. You should only do that if you want to use brcmsmac. Hmm, perhaps *that* is your problem - you didn't blacklist brcmsmac. Yeah, it's kind of a mess with two drivers supporting the same cards.

kennym · 2011-11-11 21:38:51

Gusar wrote:

b43-firmware is the correct package for 3.1. For 3.2 b43-firmware-latest will be required.
Did you by any chance blacklist bcma? If you want to use b43, you should not do that. You should only do that if you want to use brcmsmac. Hmm, perhaps *that* is your problem - you didn't blacklist brcmsmac. Yeah, it's kind of a mess with two drivers supporting the same cards.

I am going to try that right away...

kennym · 2011-11-11 22:06:31

Gusar wrote:

Hmm, perhaps *that* is your problem - you didn't blacklist brcmsmac. Yeah, it's kind of a mess with two drivers supporting the same cards.

I blacklisted brcmsmac, but no results. Even worse, now I cannot see my networks anymore.

I also installed b43-firmware-latest and dropped b43-firmware.

Ideas?

Last edited by kennym (2011-11-11 22:19:55)

Gusar · 2011-11-11 22:11:54

kennym wrote:

I also install b43-firmware-latest and dropped b43-firmware.

Why??? I said b43-firmware is the correct one. No wonder you don't have any wireless right now, the driver crashed because of wrong firmware.

kennym · 2011-11-11 22:19:00

Gusar wrote:

kennym wrote:
I also install b43-firmware-latest and dropped b43-firmware.
Why??? I said b43-firmware is the correct one. No wonder you don't have any wireless right now, the driver crashed because of wrong firmware.

OK, so you're telling me to:

Install b43-firmware, [bold]not[/bold] b43-firmware-latest
Blacklist brcmsmac in /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf

right?

Gusar · 2011-11-11 22:31:37

kennym wrote:

OK, so you're telling me to:
Install b43-firmware, [bold]not[/bold] b43-firmware-latest
Blacklist brcmsmac in /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf
right?

Yes.

If it won't work, post the output of dmesg. If we won't be able to get b43 running, we'll go the other way - get brcmsmac up. It's easy, just unblacklist brcmsmac and blacklist bcma. But let's try b43 first.

kennym · 2011-11-11 22:45:07

Gusar wrote:

kennym wrote:
OK, so you're telling me to:
Install b43-firmware, [bold]not[/bold] b43-firmware-latest
Blacklist brcmsmac in /etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf
right?
Yes.
If it won't work, post the output of dmesg. If we won't be able to get b43 running, we'll go the other way - get brcmsmac up. It's easy, just unblacklist brcmsmac and blacklist bcma. But let's try b43 first.

Whenever I did that, I kept getting the same errors, until I stumbled over this wiki section: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Br … leshooting

So, I blacklisted `bcma` instead of `brcmsmac`, and it works now!

Thank you for pointing me into the right direction!... Still I would like to know what are the functions of each kernel module and why it affected the behavior like they did... All pretty black magic to me.

Gusar · 2011-11-11 23:02:54

Bah, I was hoping you'd get b43 working. Worked for this person here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=130134
Oh well, for you working wireless is probably more important than experimentation. I'll need to find myself a machine with new-ish broadcom wireless to play with . I only briefly had one a few months ago.

It goes like this: Broadcom cards use special communication busses. In your case bcma; the other is ssb, it's used by older Broadcom cards. The kernel has bcma and ssb drivers to support these busses and it has the b43 driver for the wireless chips. So bcma+b43 (or ssb+b43) gives you working wireless. b43 is a reverse engineering effort, because in the past Broadcom was very non-opensource. But then Broadcom released their own opensource driver - brcmsmac. So now there's two drivers in the kernel supporting the same cards: bcma+b43 and brcmsmac. You have to blacklist either one or the other.

Last edited by Gusar (2011-11-11 23:07:35)

kennym · 2011-11-11 23:49:36

Gusar wrote:

Bah, I was hoping you'd get b43 working. Worked for this person here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=130134
Oh well, for you working wireless is probably more important than experimentation. I'll need to find myself a machine with new-ish broadcom wireless to play with . I only briefly had one a few months ago.

I guess I am still using b43 firmware (aur/b43-firmware).

It goes like this: Broadcom cards use special communication busses. In your case bcma; the other is ssb, it's used by older Broadcom cards. The kernel has bcma and ssb drivers to support these busses and it has the b43 driver for the wireless chips. So bcma+b43 (or ssb+b43) gives you working wireless. b43 is a reverse engineering effort, because in the past Broadcom was very non-opensource. But then Broadcom released their own opensource driver - brcmsmac. So now there's two drivers in the kernel supporting the same cards: bcma+b43 and brcmsmac. You have to blacklist either one or the other.

Thank you for clearing things up... wiki material?

I am marking this as solved.

Gusar · 2011-11-12 00:01:22

kennym wrote:

I guess I am still using b43 firmware (aur/b43-firmware).

Nope, brcmsmac uses different firmware. It comes with the linux-firmware package and you'll find it in /lib/firmware/brcm

kennym wrote:

Thank you for clearing things up... wiki material?

I don't have a wiki account, and I don't think I'll be creating one just now, but yeah, it'd be useful to have this there. So go ahead, you can put it there. Another useful bit of info is that brcmsmac doesn't support ssb cards. For those, ssb+b43 is the driver to use (or ssb+b43legacy for some really old cards, like my BCM4306/2 ).

Arch Linux

#1 2011-11-11 18:44:44

[SOLVED] After upgrade to linux-3.1.4, missing WLAN Broadcom firmware

#2 2011-11-11 20:27:57

Re: [SOLVED] After upgrade to linux-3.1.4, missing WLAN Broadcom firmware

#3 2011-11-11 20:43:22

Re: [SOLVED] After upgrade to linux-3.1.4, missing WLAN Broadcom firmware

#4 2011-11-11 20:53:03

Re: [SOLVED] After upgrade to linux-3.1.4, missing WLAN Broadcom firmware

#5 2011-11-11 21:38:51

Re: [SOLVED] After upgrade to linux-3.1.4, missing WLAN Broadcom firmware

#6 2011-11-11 22:06:31

Re: [SOLVED] After upgrade to linux-3.1.4, missing WLAN Broadcom firmware

#7 2011-11-11 22:11:54

Re: [SOLVED] After upgrade to linux-3.1.4, missing WLAN Broadcom firmware

#8 2011-11-11 22:19:00

Re: [SOLVED] After upgrade to linux-3.1.4, missing WLAN Broadcom firmware

#9 2011-11-11 22:31:37

Re: [SOLVED] After upgrade to linux-3.1.4, missing WLAN Broadcom firmware

#10 2011-11-11 22:45:07

Re: [SOLVED] After upgrade to linux-3.1.4, missing WLAN Broadcom firmware

#11 2011-11-11 23:02:54

Re: [SOLVED] After upgrade to linux-3.1.4, missing WLAN Broadcom firmware

#12 2011-11-11 23:49:36

Re: [SOLVED] After upgrade to linux-3.1.4, missing WLAN Broadcom firmware

#13 2011-11-12 00:01:22

Re: [SOLVED] After upgrade to linux-3.1.4, missing WLAN Broadcom firmware

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