Arch Linux

sclarckone

Member

Registered: 2011-10-05

Posts: 22

[solved] b43 & bcm4311 - Cannot scan wireless networks

Hi guys,

I'm quite a newbie with Arch and I'm having troubles with my WiFi card...

I followed the instructions on the Wireless Setup & Broadcom Wireless Wiki pages and the wireless.kernel.org page about the b43 driver.
I'm also using Ubuntu on the same laptop with the b43 driver and it works perfectly (it didn't with the officila broadcom-sta driver).

Both the driver and firmware seem to work on my laptop...

The WiFi card is recognized:

iwconfig | grep 
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off

And the b43 driver is loaded (by udev?) at boot:

lsmod | grep b43
b43                   297353  0 
mac80211              191541  1 b43
cfg80211              138620  2 b43,mac80211
ssb                    42291  1 b43
mmc_core               65089  3 b43,sdhci,ssb
pcmcia                 31470  2 b43,ssb

I don't notice any other driver in the lsmod output that could be conflicting with b43.

But here is the output when I try to scan the wireless networks:

iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0     No scan results

Does anybody has an idea to solve my problem? Thanks a lot!

Last edited by sclarckone (2011-10-05 18:25:26)

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: [solved] b43 & bcm4311 - Cannot scan wireless networks

Check the output of dmesg. My guess would be wrong firmware version. But dmesg should tell you for sure.

sclarckone

Member

Registered: 2011-10-05

Posts: 22

Re: [solved] b43 & bcm4311 - Cannot scan wireless networks

Thanks for helping me...

It could be a firmware issue but a subtle one because when I invoke

ip link set wlan0 up

I don't get any error message and the WiFi card led switch from orange to blue (that usually means that the WiFi card is activated).

Anyway, I'm not really familiar with dmesg but I've tried to look for messages about my WiFi card by filtering on 'b43'. Here is the result:

At boot:

[    4.649137] b43-pci-bridge 0000:02:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 16 (level, low) -> IRQ 16
[    4.649150] b43-pci-bridge 0000:02:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[    5.385411] b43-phy0: Broadcom 4311 WLAN found (core revision 10)
[    5.467621] Registered led device: b43-phy0::tx
[    5.467649] Registered led device: b43-phy0::rx
[    5.467680] Registered led device: b43-phy0::radio

After invoking 'ip link set wlan0 up':

[  290.943443] b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 666.2 (2011-02-23 01:15:07)

And after invoking 'iwlist wlan0 scan'

[  384.332131] Modules linked in: nls_cp437 vfat fat uas usb_storage snd_hda_codec_conexant arc4 joydev b43 mac80211 cfg80211 snd_hda_intel snd_hda_codec i915 snd_hwdep drm_kms_helper snd_pcm drm snd_timer sdhci_pci iTCO_wdt iTCO_vendor_support ssb snd r592 firewire_ohci soundcore thermal memstick psmouse sdhci intel_agp i2c_algo_bit firewire_core battery video hp_wmi intel_gtt snd_page_alloc agpgart ac button sparse_keymap rfkill sg i2c_i801 mmc_core i2c_core e100 mii evdev pcmcia serio_raw pcmcia_core pcspkr wmi processor crc_itu_t btrfs zlib_deflate crc32c libcrc32c sr_mod sd_mod cdrom pata_acpi uhci_hcd ahci libahci ata_piix libata ehci_hcd scsi_mod usbcore
[  384.332274] Pid: 837, comm: irq/16-b43 Not tainted 3.0-ARCH #1
[  384.332408]  [<f8a5b382>] ? b43_tsf_read+0x32/0x50 [b43]
[  384.332430]  [<f8a75cfd>] b43_rx+0x3cd/0x5a0 [b43]
[  384.332439]  [<f8a7af0e>] b43_dma_rx+0x1fe/0x300 [b43]
[  384.332452]  [<f8a5f32d>] b43_do_interrupt_thread+0x35d/0x5e0 [b43]

which is repeated 8 times.

And now I realize you must be right because of this line:

[  384.332274] Pid: 837, comm: irq/16-b43 Not tainted 3.0-ARCH #1

indeed, on the wireless.kernel.org dedicated page it's written:

If you are using the b43 driver from 3.2 kernel or newer:

After installing b43-fwcutter, download version 5.100.138 of Broadcom's proprietary driver and extract the firmware from it

and the Arch iso I used for installation has the 3.0.3 kernel version.

So I guess I'm supposed to use the following firmware:

If you are using the b43 driver from older kernel:

After installing b43-fwcutter, download version 5.10.56.27.3 of Broadcom's proprietary driver and extract the firmware from it

.

If I'm right this time, should I do something to uninstall my current firmware or should I just run the installation script of the older one?

Last edited by sclarckone (2011-10-05 15:11:14)

Gusar

Member

Registered: 2009-08-25

Posts: 3,605

Re: [solved] b43 & bcm4311 - Cannot scan wireless networks

Remove the contents of the /lib/firmware/b43 folder and run b43-fwcutter as instructed on the 5.10.56.27.3 driver. An alternative to doing this manually is the b43-firmware package from AUR.

sclarckone

Member

Registered: 2011-10-05

Posts: 22

Re: [solved] b43 & bcm4311 - Cannot scan wireless networks

It worked perfectly! Thanks a lot Gusar for helping me. I promise next time I'll read more carefully...