Arch Linux

kindaro

Member

Registered: 2017-01-16

Posts: 19

Can I make Broadcom BCM43142 an Access Point?

I have some Lenovo laptop at hand that I want to turn to an access point. lspci tells me it has a Broadcom BCM43142 wireless card. It can work with the drivers from broadcom-wl, but, unfortunately, according to iw list, it would not handle AP mode. As I gather from the Internet, there used to be another driver, called brcmsmac, that was able to support AP on this chip. The links are dated 2014, and it appears that the driver has become outdated and would not work with modern Linux kernels.

Are there solutions to run Access Point on this laptop?
Would it be reasonable to try find the source code for brcmsmac driver and build it for a modern kernel, or downgrade the kernel?

Last edited by kindaro (2018-01-11 10:06:14)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,471

Website

Re: Can I make Broadcom BCM43142 an Access Point?

...it appears that the driver has become outdated and would not work with modern Linux kernels.

Where did you get this idea?  It is still included in the kernel.  I've used it not long ago myself, and it is listed in the broadcom wiki as being built in with the kernel still.

EDIT: confirmed, still there:

$ /usr/bin/modprobe -v -n brcmsmac
insmod /lib/modules/4.14.12-1-ARCH/kernel/drivers/bcma/bcma.ko.xz
insmod /lib/modules/4.14.12-1-ARCH/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/brcm80211/brcmutil/brcmutil.ko.xz
insmod /lib/modules/4.14.12-1-ARCH/kernel/lib/cordic.ko.xz
insmod /lib/modules/4.14.12-1-ARCH/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/brcm80211/brcmsmac/brcmsmac.ko.xz

$ pacman -Fs brcmsmac.ko.xz
core/linux 4.14.13-1
    usr/lib/modules/4.14.13-1-ARCH/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/brcm80211/brcmsmac/brcmsmac.ko.xz
extra/linux-zen 4.14.13-1
    usr/lib/modules/4.14.13-1-zen/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/brcm80211/brcmsmac/brcmsmac.ko.xz
community/linux-hardened 4.14.13.a-1
    usr/lib/modules/4.14.13-1-hardened/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/broadcom/brcm80211/brcmsmac/brcmsmac.ko.xz

Last edited by Trilby (2018-01-11 12:47:55)

---

"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,318

Re: Can I make Broadcom BCM43142 an Access Point?

This particular broadcom chip isn't supported by the brcmsmac driver, though. Your only option is broadcom-wl.
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/ke … m_hw_ids.h

Last edited by progandy (2018-01-11 12:58:42)

---

| alias CUTF='LANG=en_XX.UTF-8@POSIX ' | alias ENGLISH='LANG=C.UTF-8 ' |