Arch Linux

dwysocki

Member

Registered: 2015-05-26

Posts: 6

[SOLVED] Installing wireless drivers on Dell XPS 13 (2015 model)

I have been tearing my hair out trying to get Arch running on my new Dell XPS 13, and have finally caved in to ask for help. At this point, I haven't even been able to successfully run

pacstrap /mnt base

My laptop came with the Dell DW1560 802.11ac adapter (Broadcom BCM4352). The wiki explains that either the broadcom-wl or broadcom-wl-dkms package will provided the needed drivers for this card (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/De … 15%29#WiFi). I was able to compile broadcom-wl on my old Arch install, transfer it via a flashdrive, and successfully install using pacman -U. The problem is that it requires a reboot before taking effect, and since I'm only on a liveUSB that will make me lose everything.

Now I only know of a few non-ideal options left, but if there wasn't something better more people would be complaining about this laptop. One is to get a USB ethernet port (honestly, how did Dell think Ethernet was optional?). The other is to buy the Intel wireless adapter online. If there were a way to permanently install the drivers to the liveUSB, or just reload the drivers without rebooting, this wouldn't be a problem, but I haven't found anything yet.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Last edited by dwysocki (2015-05-26 18:15:12)

Mercader1902

Member

Registered: 2014-09-01

Posts: 55

Re: [SOLVED] Installing wireless drivers on Dell XPS 13 (2015 model)

I have been tearing my hair out trying to get Arch running on my new Dell XPS 13, and have finally caved in to ask for help. At this point, I haven't even been able to successfully run

pacstrap /mnt base

My laptop came with the Dell DW1560 802.11ac adapter (Broadcom BCM4352). The wiki explains that either the broadcom-wl or broadcom-wl-dkms package will provided the needed drivers for this card (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/De … 15%29#WiFi). I was able to compile broadcom-wl on my old Arch install, transfer it via a flashdrive, and successfully install using pacman -U. The problem is that it requires a reboot before taking effect, and since I'm only on a liveUSB that will make me lose everything.

Now I only know of a few non-ideal options left, but if there wasn't something better more people would be complaining about this laptop. One is to get a USB ethernet port (honestly, how did Dell think Ethernet was optional?). The other is to buy the Intel wireless adapter online. If there were a way to permanently install the drivers to the liveUSB, or just reload the drivers without rebooting, this wouldn't be a problem, but I haven't found anything yet.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Why? modprobe doesn't load the module?

lkarunan

Member

Registered: 2015-05-11

Posts: 7

Re: [SOLVED] Installing wireless drivers on Dell XPS 13 (2015 model)

I have been using the dkms driver on my XPS13 2015. Have you tried making a package for that?  I can share the one I built, if required. So far it has worked on every stock kernel. When you install it, pacman provides instructions for removing and adding the modules manually, so no reboot is required:

rmmod b43 2>/dev/null
rmmod b43legacy 2>/dev/null
rmmod ssb 2>/dev/null
rmmod bcm43xx 2>/dev/null
rmmod brcm80211 2>/dev/null
rmmod brcmfmac 2>/dev/null
rmmod brcmsmac 2>/dev/null
rmmod bcma 2>/dev/null
modprobe wl

As it happened, I used a USB ethernet convertor to install Arch. I would recommend that as an alternative because it worked flawlessly for me.  Hope this helps.

Last edited by lkarunan (2015-05-26 11:54:16)

dwysocki

Member

Registered: 2015-05-26

Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] Installing wireless drivers on Dell XPS 13 (2015 model)

Why? modprobe doesn't load the module?

It seems that the module is not being loaded. From reading this I found that the module is wl. Trying to modprobe it results in the following

# modprobe wl
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'wl': Exec format error

# dmesg | grep wl
[ 4412.018036] wl: disagrees about version of symbol module_layout
[ 4427.344383] wl: disagrees about version of symbol module_layout

I did some searching, and think this may be caused by building on my old laptop running Linux-4.0.4-2-ARCH, while the liveUSB is running Linux-4.0.1-1-ARCH. I am going to continue working at this, but I want to leave this post as it might help somebody in the future (I'll have to summarize everything in one post once everything works).

dwysocki

Member

Registered: 2015-05-26

Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] Installing wireless drivers on Dell XPS 13 (2015 model)

Success, I was able to successfully install the drivers, in a bit of a roundabout manner.

Since I built the drivers under a different kernel, I needed to either change the kernel on my working setup or change the kernel on the installation media. I elected to do the latter.

At first I tried downloading the linux-4.0.4-2-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz, as it was what I am running on my working setup, placing it on a second USB drive, and installing it with pacman -U. However, this caused some problems, as certain programs were still looking in the directory that the old kernel (4.0.1-2-ARCH) was installed in. That's when I discovered archiso. I installed archiso to my working setup, and built my own installation ISO using the releng profile (I tried baseline at first, but was unable to boot into it, which I believe was due to it not creating the ARCHISO_EFI partition). This was done as follows (replace DATE and /dev/sdX with the appropriate date and device):

# pacman -S archiso
$ cp -r /usr/share/archiso/configs/releng/ ~/archlive
$ cd ~/archlive
# ./build.sh -v
# sudo dd bs=4M if=out/archlinux-DATE-dual.iso of=/dev/sdX && sudo sync

I built broadcom-wl, and copied it to another flash drive.

$ wget https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/br/broadcom-wl/broadcom-wl.tar.gz
$ tar xvzf broadcom-wl.tar.gz
$ cd broadcom-wl
$ makepkg -s

Then I booted into the liveUSB on the XPS13, mounted the drive with the broadcom-wl package on it, and installed it (replace /dev/sdXN and VERSION with the appropriate partition and package version)

# mkdir /flashdrive
# mount /dev/sdXN /flashdrive
# cd /flashdrive
# pacman -U broadcom-wl-VERSION-x86_64.pkg.tar.xz
# modprobe wl

And, like magic, wifi-menu works, and I'm connected to the Internet.

Hope this helps somebody some day (or me when I reinstall some day haha).

Last edited by dwysocki (2015-05-26 22:50:44)

guyonvarch

Member

Registered: 2015-08-19

Posts: 1

Re: [SOLVED] Installing wireless drivers on Dell XPS 13 (2015 model)

Hi, I was able to get a wifi internet connection, then install arch on my dell xps13 thanks to your advices dwysocki. I have some information to add however.

First, I tried archiso with baseline instead of releng, but it was too minimal, I did not have the required tools. Finally, before the last command modprobe wl, I had to put down some things. I got information with the following command :

lspci -vnn -d 14e4:

I saw at the bottom bcma and wl, I tried to put down bcma but I had to put down b43 first, so the required commands are presented below :

rmmod b43
rmmod bcma
modprobe wl

And now, ip link should show you your wifi interface and wifi-menu is able to run.

Last edited by guyonvarch (2015-08-19 08:21:36)