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mrueegg

Member

Registered: 2013-08-24

Posts: 13

[SOLVED] Problems with Broadcom wifi on new MacBook Air 2013

Hi. I have problems getting my wifi (broadcom 14e4:43a0 / MacBook Air 2013) to work with the suggested AUR package "broadcom-wl-dkms". After the installation, I was not able to see the wlan interface with "ip link".

"modprobe wl" yields "FATAL: Module wl not found". I also tried to enable the systemd service DKMS as was suggested in one of the comments of the AUR package, but this did not help either.

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated. Thanks.

Last edited by mrueegg (2013-08-25 21:37:09)

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: [SOLVED] Problems with Broadcom wifi on new MacBook Air 2013

Use dkms manually from the command line to make sure that it is built and installed.

What does the output of dkms status give?

mrueegg

Member

Registered: 2013-08-24

Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] Problems with Broadcom wifi on new MacBook Air 2013

"dkms status" does not yield anything:

# dmks status
# echo $?
0

Last edited by mrueegg (2013-08-25 17:07:18)

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: [SOLVED] Problems with Broadcom wifi on new MacBook Air 2013

That means the module is not built.  So you will have to do:

# dkms install -m broadcom-wl -v <version#> -k 3.10.9-1-ARCH 

I am not sure if 'broadcom-wl' is the name the module is added as, nor do I know precisely what version number that v6 module is, but you get the idea.  If using bash, the dkms tab completion is pretty awesome.

Though if starting the dkms.service does not autmatically build the module for the booted kernel, then I think yu might be experiencing other problems here.

mrueegg

Member

Registered: 2013-08-24

Posts: 13

Re: [SOLVED] Problems with Broadcom wifi on new MacBook Air 2013

That means the module is not built.  So you will have to do:

# dkms install -m broadcom-wl -v <version#> -k 3.10.9-1-ARCH 

I am not sure if 'broadcom-wl' is the name the module is added as, nor do I know precisely what version number that v6 module is, but you get the idea.  If using bash, the dkms tab completion is pretty awesome.

Though if starting the dkms.service does not autmatically build the module for the booted kernel, then I think yu might be experiencing other problems here.

That worked! After the manual installation, I'm now able to use my internal Broadcom wifi. Thanks a lot!

WonderWoofy

Member

From: Los Gatos, CA

Registered: 2012-05-19

Posts: 8,414

Re: [SOLVED] Problems with Broadcom wifi on new MacBook Air 2013

Excellent!  Don't forget to mark the thread as [Solved].

As a side note, I have found that the module will tend to work through a number of kernel versions.  There is no way to tell when it will happen, but sometimes there are binary breakers that will require a rebuild of the module.  Of course, this will only be the case if the broadcom-wl-dkms setup puts the module in the 'extramodules' directory.