Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

martaseq · 2011-04-22 20:55:56

I have also upgraded to kernel26 2.6.38 and I still get what seems like kernel panics, I'm not sure because I don't get any error messages, but my computer freezes, both my keyboard and mouse don't work and my caps lock light keeps blinking.

I tried to set maxcpus=1 in the grub.cfg file but the problem persists. I completely removed the broadcom-wl driver, so that shouldn't be a problem.

I can't reproduce the kernel panics, and sometimes they even occur when I'm logging on: I just logged on or I'm still typing my password and it crashes.

I've run out of solutions, can somebody help me with this? The crashes are becoming really annoying.

litemotiv · 2011-04-23 08:11:24

martaseq, how do you know this is caused by the brcm80211 module? If you are not sure, please start a thread in Kernel & Hardware instead, and refer to this one for possible causes.

One thing you can test is to blacklist the brcm80211 module and see if the kernel panics persist.

martaseq · 2011-04-23 14:29:54

litemotiv wrote:

martaseq, how do you know this is caused by the brcm80211 module? If you are not sure, please start a thread in Kernel & Hardware instead, and refer to this one for possible causes.
One thing you can test is to blacklist the brcm80211 module and see if the kernel panics persist.

I'm not sure but I assumed that because the problem started by the same time I changed from the broadcom-wl to the brcm80211, and the panics would only happen with heavy traffic. But then I upgraded to kernel26 2.6.38 and now the panics seem to happen kind of randomly.

So I'm now trying what you suggested, keeping the brcm80211 module disabled and waiting to see what happens. Thanks

RolandVossen · 2011-04-24 07:54:59

Hello MartaSeq,

martaseq wrote:

litemotiv wrote:
martaseq, how do you know this is caused by the brcm80211 module? If you are not sure, please start a thread in Kernel & Hardware instead, and refer to this one for possible causes.
One thing you can test is to blacklist the brcm80211 module and see if the kernel panics persist.
I'm not sure but I assumed that because the problem started by the same time I changed from the broadcom-wl to the brcm80211, and the panics would only happen with heavy traffic. But then I upgraded to kernel26 2.6.38 and now the panics seem to happen kind of randomly.
So I'm now trying what you suggested, keeping the brcm80211 module disabled and waiting to see what happens. Thanks

First of all, I am really interested to know if the result of your 'keeping brcm80211 disabled' experiment. The phenomena you describe sound familiar in the sense that half a year ago, a bug was fixed that caused the driver to crash at light loads. Ref: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.k … eral/63560

Are you running an Ubuntu system ? How did you upgrade your kernel: by building it yourself ? Or did you use a package manager.

Thanks, Roland.

martaseq · 2011-04-25 13:19:55

RolandVossen wrote:

Hello MartaSeq,
First of all, I am really interested to know if the result of your 'keeping brcm80211 disabled' experiment. The phenomena you describe sound familiar in the sense that half a year ago, a bug was fixed that caused the driver to crash at light loads. Ref: http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.k … eral/63560
Are you running an Ubuntu system ? How did you upgrade your kernel: by building it yourself ? Or did you use a package manager.
Thanks, Roland.

Hello,

So far I haven't had any panics with the module disabled, but I'd like to give it more time, since the panics sometimes take a while to happen.

About the link you provided: my chip is actually the 4313 and I already tried the fix someone mentioned before in this thread, setting maxcpus=1 so that it would run with one core, but the kernel panics would continue to happen. And I experienced panics with heavy traffic but since I upgraded to kernel26 2.6.38, I don't have kernel panics on heavy traffic anymore, now they occur randomly most of the time.

I'm not running an Ubuntu system, I'm just using Arch Linux and I upgraded my kernel through pacman. The current version of my kernel is 2.6.38.3-1.

Thanks.

METZGERR · 2011-04-25 19:25:43

I receive a system freeze with the native drivers after several minutes (1 or 2 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes). The system totaly freezes, i need to press and hold the power button for 5 seconds to shut it down. By doing so the system wont start on the next boot and freezes after loading the gdm daemon to enter gnome. Again, pressing and holding the power button is the only way out.

I'm with a PCI-ID [14e4:4727] / Name BCM4313, everything is up to date. System freezes with both, networkmanager and wicd.

I can't tell what makes the system crash. Sometimes it's freezing when the system idles, while downloading, while surfing, while coding with scribes. See: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 24#p923724

martaseq · 2011-04-25 23:56:20

METZGERR wrote:

I receive a system freeze with the native drivers after several minutes (1 or 2 minutes, sometimes 30 minutes).

My computer also freezes for a minute while trying to connect to a wireless network (I only noticed it recently).

METZGERR · 2011-04-26 09:34:54

In addition: My PC freezes while being already connected to a wireless network.

RolandVossen · 2011-04-26 10:23:56

Hello MartaSeq,

martaseq wrote:

So far I haven't had any panics with the module disabled, but I'd like to give it more time, since the panics sometimes take a while to happen.
About the link you provided: my chip is actually the 4313 and I already tried the fix someone mentioned before in this thread, setting maxcpus=1 so that it would run with one core, but the kernel panics would continue to happen. And I experienced panics with heavy traffic but since I upgraded to kernel26 2.6.38, I don't have kernel panics on heavy traffic anymore, now they occur randomly most of the time.
I'm not running an Ubuntu system, I'm just using Arch Linux and I upgraded my kernel through pacman. The current version of my kernel is 2.6.38.3-1.
Thanks.

I assume that the kernel you use is pulled straight from kernel.org. I just checked what brcm80211 stability patches have landed in that kernel. Answer: very few. A method to upgrade your kernel to include more brcm80211 stability patches is to install the compat-wireless package. Refer to: http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Download . Did you already try that ?

Thanks, Roland.

McFlow · 2011-04-26 11:33:46

I was adviced to post in this thread too...
I also suffer random system freezes with my broadcom wireless card. I have a Dell Studio 1558 laptop.

04:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

It's 4312 and not 4313. Accodring to the wiki page the brcm80211 is not suitable for it and I doubt I am right in this thread
So I use the broadcom-wl from AUR. Everything else is blacklisted. My networkmanager is WICD.

MODULES=(!b43 !ssb !lib80211 !brcm80211 lib80211_crypt_tkip wl)

The system freezes will occur randomly. Sometimes while connecting sometimes when I am already connected. My system will freeze during everything then. It does not matter if I watch movies, have a presentation, write documents or whatever... But I did not notice a freeze when WLAN is deactivated or not connected at all. If it freezes I have to hold the power off button to force it turning off.
More detailed information in my original thread.
Does it make sense to try the brcm82011 driver at all?

Last edited by McFlow (2011-04-26 11:35:44)

RolandVossen · 2011-04-26 12:20:03

Hi McFlow,

McFlow wrote:

I was adviced to post in this thread too...
I also suffer random system freezes with my broadcom wireless card. I have a Dell Studio 1558 laptop.
04:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)
It's 4312 and not 4313. Accodring to the wiki page the brcm80211 is not suitable for it and I doubt I am right in this thread
So I use the broadcom-wl from AUR. Everything else is blacklisted. My networkmanager is WICD.
MODULES=(!b43 !ssb !lib80211 !brcm80211 lib80211_crypt_tkip wl)
The system freezes will occur randomly. Sometimes while connecting sometimes when I am already connected. My system will freeze during everything then. It does not matter if I watch movies, have a presentation, write documents or whatever... But I did not notice a freeze when WLAN is deactivated or not connected at all. If it freezes I have to hold the power off button to force it turning off.
More detailed information in my original thread.
Does it make sense to try the brcm82011 driver at all?

brcm80211 does not support bcm4312 at this moment: it will not work.

Bye, Roland.

METZGERR · 2011-04-26 13:17:35

brcm80211 doesn't even work with bcm4313 over here...

martaseq · 2011-04-26 13:30:39

RolandVossen wrote:

Hello MartaSeq,
I assume that the kernel you use is pulled straight from kernel.org. I just checked what brcm80211 stability patches have landed in that kernel. Answer: very few. A method to upgrade your kernel to include more brcm80211 stability patches is to install the compat-wireless package. Refer to: http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Download . Did you already try that ?
Thanks, Roland.

Thanks, I hadn't tried that, but I did it right now and I felt no freezes while it was trying to connect to a network, so that's a good sign. I'll wait to see if the panics went away for good.

Josko · 2011-04-26 16:12:00

Hello,

I've been using brcm80211 since, probably, 2.6.37-rc2 went public on kernel.org and it's been working nicely on my HP Mini 5012 (bcm 4313). Then with the advent of 2.6.38 it went even better so for now I'm sticking with 2.6.38.4 from the arch repo. I have to admit it's working fine, no panics, freezes, lockups, nothing but I got two problems torturing me:

1) in wicd-curses, the signal strength is always at least 25% and never above 80%ish percent which is often misleading to which AP I should connect. But not sure if this is wicd related but it only happens on 2.6.38.x kernels using brcm80211 IIRC
2) a lot of disconnects from a dynamic wep 802.1x network and perhaps a bit more on other types of encryption

Those two problems in sync make it difficult for me to find the best network and do my studies but I'm not too sure if it's all brcm80211-related.

Side question: is there any better location to get fresh brcm80211 code then staging-next?

Last edited by Josko (2011-04-26 16:13:46)

RolandVossen · 2011-04-26 17:56:43

Hello Josko,

Josko wrote:

Hello,
I've been using brcm80211 since, probably, 2.6.37-rc2 went public on kernel.org and it's been working nicely on my HP Mini 5012 (bcm 4313). Then with the advent of 2.6.38 it went even better so for now I'm sticking with 2.6.38.4 from the arch repo. I have to admit it's working fine, no panics, freezes, lockups, nothing but I got two problems torturing me:
1) in wicd-curses, the signal strength is always at least 25% and never above 80%ish percent which is often misleading to which AP I should connect. But not sure if this is wicd related but it only happens on 2.6.38.x kernels using brcm80211 IIRC
2) a lot of disconnects from a dynamic wep 802.1x network and perhaps a bit more on other types of encryption
Those two problems in sync make it difficult for me to find the best network and do my studies but I'm not too sure if it's all brcm80211-related.
Side question: is there any better location to get fresh brcm80211 code then staging-next?

Thanks for reporting this. I will take a better look at the phenomena you describe tomorrow, but for now some short answers (and a question).

The brcm80211 driver does not perform encryption/decryption but leaves that up to Mac80211. That might change in the future, but for now that's the status.

The staging-next tree from Greg KH is indeed the place where the patches are first submitted. This will change once the driver leaves the staging dir and moves into mainline.

Do you use the latest compat-wireless package ?

Thanks, Roland.

METZGERR · 2011-04-26 18:01:29

Roland,

I will try adding following to my rc.conf so that it will look like this

MODULES=(fuse !usblp fglrx mac80211 brcm80211)

Can you confirm that this is all I have to do? No installation required? I'm using the native drivers with wicd.

RolandVossen · 2011-04-26 19:38:20

METZGERR wrote:

Roland,
I will try adding following to my rc.conf so that it will look like this
MODULES=(fuse !usblp fglrx mac80211 brcm80211)
Can you confirm that this is all I have to do? No installation required? I'm using the native drivers with wicd.

I don't use Arch Linux myself, I use Ubuntu which has a different rc.conf structure. Mac80211 depends on the lib80211 module, so perhaps you should add that one as well.

Bye, Roland.

RolandVossen · 2011-04-27 06:58:48

Firmware with stability fix (finally) available.

Hi,

David Woodhouse has found time to pull the V610.811 firmware into his git tree (git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/dwmw2/linux-firmware).

This is the firmware I talked about in previous posts: it brings a stability fix. You are advised to upgrade to this newer firmware. Installation instructions are at http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drive … stallation .

Bye,

Roland Vossen
Broadcom

Josko · 2011-04-27 13:11:22

RolandVossen wrote:

Hello Josko,
Thanks for reporting this. I will take a better look at the phenomena you describe tomorrow, but for now some short answers (and a question).
The brcm80211 driver does not perform encryption/decryption but leaves that up to Mac80211. That might change in the future, but for now that's the status.
The staging-next tree from Greg KH is indeed the place where the patches are first submitted. This will change once the driver leaves the staging dir and moves into mainline.
Do you use the latest compat-wireless package ?
Thanks, Roland.

I've obtained, built and installed the latest compat-wireless (26-04-2011) and I've replaced my old firmware with the new one. Can't test the connection stability since I'm at home right now but the problem with signal strength still persists:

http://www.deviantpics.com/images/untitlxqx.png

My home network is 90%+ on our other two laptops (Debian with BCM4312, broadcom-sta driver and Windows 7 BCM4312) but the highest "strength" I've seen on my BCM4313 is 74%. The router is 2.5 meters away, unobstructed.

Thank you for your reply.

Last edited by Josko (2011-04-27 18:43:03)

METZGERR · 2011-04-27 16:18:07

I can't agree that the latest fireware solved my problems with random freezes / system crashes.

staticnature · 2011-04-28 11:36:37

The latest firmware does not work for me either, whenever I try to connect when using the brcm80211 module the kernel panics and crashes the entire system without leaving any form of error in any of the logs.

I've found once the crash happens, it will keep happening every time I connect until I boot up a different OS (Mac OS X Install Disk), connect to the wireless using that, disconnect and switch back to linux. Then I am able to connect to the wifi with the brcm80211 module, the same freeze happens after about 30 minutes of use connected to a wireless N network and I need to go through the same steps again before I am able to connect. My machine is a Macbook Pro (#6.2) with a BCM43224, fresh Arch Linux install with 2.6.38.4 kernel, works fine with the broadcom-wl driver though (which Im now using).

Last edited by staticnature (2011-04-28 11:36:56)

METZGERR · 2011-04-28 11:40:39

staticnature, exactly the same thing happens to me.
After a system freeze occurs, a reboot fails by loading gdm and the system freezes again.

staticnature wrote:

My machine is a Macbook Pro (#6.2) with a BCM43224, fresh Arch Linux install with 2.6.38.4 kernel, works fine with the broadcom-wl driver though (which Im now using).

Could you please explain step by step what you have done to make it work again? Which firmware do i need, which drivers should be installed?

Thank you in advance, cheers from Croatia!

multiphrenic · 2011-04-28 12:24:12

I am using 2.6.38 and am getting the following errors repeatedly, hundreds of times, in /var/log/messages

wl0: fifo 0: descriptor error
wl0: fatal error, reinitializing

I've tried bringing wlan0 down and up, unloading and reloading the modules, restarting wicd but none of that seems to help.Sometimes resolved by a reboot, but as time goes on, even reboots don't seem to resolve this anymore.

I've had to unload the module, blacklist it, and then go back to the wl module.

staticnature · 2011-04-28 23:09:37

METZGERR wrote:

staticnature wrote:
My machine is a Macbook Pro (#6.2) with a BCM43224, fresh Arch Linux install with 2.6.38.4 kernel, works fine with the broadcom-wl driver though (which Im now using).
Could you please explain step by step what you have done to make it work again? Which firmware do i need, which drivers should be installed?

All I needed to do was install the broadcom-wl package from the AUR and add the module 'wl' to the rc.conf modules list whilst blacklisting 'brcm80211' just before it, like;

MODULES=( .. !brcm80211 wl .. )

I also added the 10-network.rules file into the udev rules to stop the ethernet and wireless switching interface names after a reboot, check the wiki for the details.

multiphrenic · 2011-04-29 02:18:47

multiphrenic wrote:

I am using 2.6.38 and am getting the following errors repeatedly, hundreds of times, in /var/log/messages
wl0: fifo 0: descriptor error
wl0: fatal error, reinitializing
I've tried bringing wlan0 down and up, unloading and reloading the modules, restarting wicd but none of that seems to help.Sometimes resolved by a reboot, but as time goes on, even reboots don't seem to resolve this anymore.
I've had to unload the module, blacklist it, and then go back to the wl module.

Update, for what it's worth, I reinstalled Arch, without installing wicd, and blacklisted atl1c and am working fine now with the brcm80211 drivers....

Arch Linux

#51 2011-04-22 20:55:56

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#52 2011-04-23 08:11:24

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#53 2011-04-23 14:29:54

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#54 2011-04-24 07:54:59

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#55 2011-04-25 13:19:55

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#56 2011-04-25 19:25:43

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#57 2011-04-25 23:56:20

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#58 2011-04-26 09:34:54

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#59 2011-04-26 10:23:56

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#60 2011-04-26 11:33:46

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#61 2011-04-26 12:20:03

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#62 2011-04-26 13:17:35

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#63 2011-04-26 13:30:39

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#64 2011-04-26 16:12:00

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#65 2011-04-26 17:56:43

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#66 2011-04-26 18:01:29

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#67 2011-04-26 19:38:20

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#68 2011-04-27 06:58:48

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#69 2011-04-27 13:11:22

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#70 2011-04-27 16:18:07

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#71 2011-04-28 11:36:37

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#72 2011-04-28 11:40:39

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#73 2011-04-28 12:24:12

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#74 2011-04-28 23:09:37

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

#75 2011-04-29 02:18:47

Re: Broadcom wireless driver - brcm80211

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