No Wi-Fi connection in Macbook (Early 2015)

thiagowfx · 2015-12-17 06:54:43

Hey guys!

After some time away from Arch, I'm trying to get back into it, this time on a Macbook. I can connect to wireless networks perfectly okay with the Arch Live Media; it is just a matter of running 'wifi-menu' and connecting to the appropriate network.

However, after installing Arch in a dual boot with OS X and then booting into it, whenever I run 'wifi-menu', several error messages are spitted out to the console (interrupting the prompt, as garbage text). It looks kinda random; sometimes these messages appear before I try to run 'wifi-menu'; other times they appear after running it, and anyways they usually persist even after I do a Control-C.

These messages are from the 'brcmfmac' (for the broadcom wireless card of my Mac) driver. In the end, I followed the instructions from [1] but still couldn't successfully connect to any access point. I tried all of the three drivers listed in this wiki page. Here are two things:

1. Which information would be useful for me to post in here to try to troubleshoot this? (Yes, I know I provided nothing, but I don't know what to provide besides the error messages)

2. If it works okay from the USB media, then I believe there is a fix, maybe some it is some package or configuration that I've missed.

Error messages:
a) http://imgur.com/qbDtsT0
b) http://imgur.com/qWzjb4K

[1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Broadcom

Last edited by thiagowfx (2015-12-20 04:37:09)

thiagowfx · 2015-12-21 21:23:57

As an update, I installed another distribution (Fedora) as a test and the network card is working okay on it. I will post here if I discover what is/was the problem with the brcmfmac kernel module in Arch.

Edit: related: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=205656

Last edited by thiagowfx (2015-12-21 21:46:52)

KonkilA · 2015-12-23 10:28:03

Hi thiagowfx!

With your live boot, use pacstrap to install NetworkManager onto the Arch system on the hard drive and try using that instead of wpa_supplicant/wifi-menu. This enabled me to use the wifi again after experiencing the same issue as you. I guess this is more of a workaround than a fix though, as dmesg is still showing some errors:

dmesg | grep brcmf                                                  
[    1.141396] usbcore: registered new interface driver brcmfmac
[    1.158624] brcmfmac 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac43602-pcie.txt
[    1.458680] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware version = wl0: Mar 13 2015 08:11:
[    1.478536] brcmfmac: brcmf_cfg80211_reg_notifier: not a ISO3166 code
[    1.484438] brcmfmac 0000:03:00.0 wlp3s0: renamed from wlan0
[    2.702877] brcmfmac: brcmf_add_if: ERROR: netdev:wlp3s0 already exists
[    2.702943] brcmfmac: brcmf_add_if: ignore IF event
[    2.772438] brcmfmac: brcmf_add_if: ERROR: netdev:wlp3s0 already exists
[    2.772503] brcmfmac: brcmf_add_if: ignore IF event

thiagowfx · 2015-12-23 19:53:11

Hey KonkilA, thanks for your reply! Yeah, I'll try that.

Last edited by thiagowfx (2015-12-23 19:53:18)

Arch Linux

#1 2015-12-17 06:54:43

No Wi-Fi connection in Macbook (Early 2015)

#2 2015-12-21 21:23:57

Re: No Wi-Fi connection in Macbook (Early 2015)

#3 2015-12-23 10:28:03

Re: No Wi-Fi connection in Macbook (Early 2015)

#4 2015-12-23 19:53:11

Re: No Wi-Fi connection in Macbook (Early 2015)

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