Arch Linux

spencerjp

Member

Registered: 2013-09-27

Posts: 12

Broadcom wifi problems

Hey. I have system running on my iMac, and everything is great but the wifi. I have an 802.11 chip (BCM4321). I installed b43-firmware from the AUR, and my computer seems to accept the driver. The problem is it never finds any networks.
Here's my iwconfig:

ens5      no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off

Running

wifi-menu wlan0

prints

Scanning for networks... failed
No networks found

every time.
I know there should be networks here, other computers and the other OS on this computer finds them.
Any ideas?

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 19,803

Re: Broadcom wifi problems

What is the output of sudo iw wlan0 scan     ??

What is the output of rfkill list  ??  (You may have to install that)

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spencerjp

Member

Registered: 2013-09-27

Posts: 12

Re: Broadcom wifi problems

iw wlan0 scan printed "command failed: Network is down (-100)"
So I turned it on with ip link set wlan0 up.
Then I ran it again, this time it printed absolutely nothing.
rfkill list:

0: hci0: Bluetooth
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
	Soft blocked: no
	Hard blocked: no

mr.MikyMaus

Member

From: disabled

Registered: 2006-03-31

Posts: 285

Re: Broadcom wifi problems

Broadcom chips are pain in the ass. You may want to fiddle with drivers, there is a couple of options (brcsmac/brchmac, b43, b43-legacy, ...), check the wiki.

Also, my laptop with some shitty broadcom wlan does not show my Android's hotspot wifi in listing, no matter how hard I try. It shows other thoug so I suspect there might be frequency/channel problem there. After about half a year of troubleshooting I resigned and solved it by buying an external wifi for less than $10. As a bonus it lets me do some Aircrack magic as well

Probably not what you want to hear but that would be my suggestion.

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What happened to Arch's KISS? systemd sure is stupid but I must have missed the simple part ...

... and who is general Failure and why is he reading my harddisk?