Arch Linux

taylorthurlow

Member

Registered: 2016-12-16

Posts: 8

[SOLVED] broadcom-wl[-dkms] BCM3960 working intermittently on Air 7,2

Currently trying to get WiFi working consistently on my Macbook Air 7,2 (2015). I've tried broadcom-wl and broadcom-wl-dkms - obviously preferring the dkms variant seeing as the way I understand it, the driver has to be rebuilt with every kernel upgrade. I'm running into an issue where about 80% of startups, the entire WiFi interface is missing.

$> dmesg | grep wl
[    3.198399] wl: module license 'Mixed/Proprietary' taints kernel.
[    4.378618] wl 0000:03:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[    4.378789] wl driver 6.30.223.271 (r587334) failed with code 1
[    4.378792] ERROR @wl_cfg80211_detach : NULL ndev->ieee80211ptr, unable to deref wl

I've looked around and looked at a couple possible solutions, like blacklisting the wrong modules:

$> cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
blacklist b43
blacklist b43legacy
#blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist brcmsmac
blacklist brcmfmac
blacklist brcm80211
blacklist bcma
#blacklist wl

I'm sort of lost at this point, have a good amount of experience with managing my own Ubuntu server but this is my first real foray into anything other than Ubuntu. Any suggestions would be fantastic!

-----

Solution: Use "broadcom-wl-lts" instead of "broadcom-wl".

Last edited by taylorthurlow (2017-05-07 20:07:18)

bryan.paradis

Member

Registered: 2016-10-22

Posts: 43

Re: [SOLVED] broadcom-wl[-dkms] BCM3960 working intermittently on Air 7,2

How long have you been running this setup? Is there a difference in lsmod output between boots that work and boots that don't? Which kernel are you running?

taylorthurlow

Member

Registered: 2016-12-16

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] broadcom-wl[-dkms] BCM3960 working intermittently on Air 7,2

How long have you been running this setup? Is there a difference in lsmod output between boots that work and boots that don't? Which kernel are you running?

Not long, a week or so? Still getting everything ironed out. I'd say that it worked more regularly before, but I've been restarting it more as of late, so it's hard to say. Kernel is 4.8.13-1-ARCH. I'll take a look at lsmod and post back as soon as I get it to restart with the driver working.

EDIT: I must have just restarted it 15 times, and each time the driver loads properly. I'm going to play with it for a while and see if it pops up again and see if anything is different that could be causing the issue.

Last edited by taylorthurlow (2016-12-16 10:02:31)

taylorthurlow

Member

Registered: 2016-12-16

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] broadcom-wl[-dkms] BCM3960 working intermittently on Air 7,2

Alright well it's doing it still, thought it might have been only not working if there were 0 available networks around, but that's not the case. Really not sure what's going on here. The output of lsmod is identical to when it's working.

Last edited by taylorthurlow (2016-12-16 18:36:19)

bryan.paradis

Member

Registered: 2016-10-22

Posts: 43

Re: [SOLVED] broadcom-wl[-dkms] BCM3960 working intermittently on Air 7,2

Well there are some perhaps some comments here: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/broa … mments=all related as people are getting the similar logs at least. You could try the linux-lts kernel instead of running linux. You should read kernel switching info in wiki but the below would switch you over to the lts kernel instead.

sudo pacman -S linux-lts linux-lts-headers
sudo pacman -R linux

taylorthurlow

Member

Registered: 2016-12-16

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] broadcom-wl[-dkms] BCM3960 working intermittently on Air 7,2

Well there are some perhaps some comments here: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/broa … mments=all related as people are getting the similar logs at least. You could try the linux-lts kernel instead of running linux. You should read kernel switching info in wiki but the below would switch you over to the lts kernel instead.

sudo pacman -S linux-lts linux-lts-headers
sudo pacman -R linux

Ah, interesting.  I now realize there's a giant "all comments" button. I'll give the LTS kernel a try. I'm assuming this stands for "long term support"?

taylorthurlow

Member

Registered: 2016-12-16

Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] broadcom-wl[-dkms] BCM3960 working intermittently on Air 7,2

Looks like that's done the trick.  I should note to anyone else who happens to find this thread, that you'll need broadcom-wl-lts instead of broadcom-wl.

bryan.paradis

Member

Registered: 2016-10-22

Posts: 43

Re: [SOLVED] broadcom-wl[-dkms] BCM3960 working intermittently on Air 7,2

Looks like that's done the trick.  I should note to anyone else who happens to find this thread, that you'll need broadcom-wl-lts instead of broadcom-wl.

lts = long term support. You assumed correctly.

I am running broadcom-wl-dkms and the module will be rebuilt with each kernel update. Providing you have installed the headers for the kernel you are using I believe if you use either other package you will need to update off of aur each time your kernel changes.

Last edited by bryan.paradis (2016-12-17 02:07:27)