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I have an old (how could it be otherwise) HP elitebook 745 with an AMD processor and a broadcom wifi. The driver was not present until running

apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

but apparently loads now. this step was also listed in the referenced "installing broadcom drivers article".

A new problem appears, visible from dmesg

[    1.591898] bcma: bus0: Found chip with id 43228, rev 0x00 and package 0x08
[    1.591923] bcma: bus0: Core 0 found: ChipCommon (manuf 0x4BF, id 0x800, rev 0x25, class 0x0)
[    1.591942] bcma: bus0: Core 1 found: IEEE 802.11 (manuf 0x4BF, id 0x812, rev 0x1E, class 0x0)
[    1.592049] bcma: bus0: Core 2 found: PCIe (manuf 0x4BF, id 0x820, rev 0x12, class 0x0)
[    1.592068] bcma: bus0: Core 3 found: SDIO Device (manuf 0x4BF, id 0x829, rev 0x07, class 0x0)
[    1.604210] bcma: bus0: Bus registered

[    5.164775] b43 bcma0:1 wlp2s0b1: renamed from wlan0
[    5.188343] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlp2s0b1: link is not ready
[    5.348195] b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 666.2 (2011-02-23 01:15:07)
[    5.468139] [drm] ib test on ring 1 succeeded in 0 usecs
[    5.512831] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlp2s0b1: link is not ready
[    5.563673] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlp2s0b1: link is not ready
[    5.620189] AMD-Vi: Event logged [
[    5.620196] INVALID_DEVICE_REQUEST device=00:00.1 address=0x000000fdf80c0020 flags=0x0a00]

The symptom is that now "WiFi networks" is shown as an option in the "Network" menu, but is grayed out (no actual WLAN networks are shown). If I try to connect to a wlan as hidden network it fails, and dmesg shows the last lines of the above script again.

ifconfig yields

wlp2s0b1: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        ether ac:e0:10:my:ma:ca  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

following a comment I also issued below command:

lspci -knn | grep Net -A3; rfkill list
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM43228 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:4359]
    Subsystem: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM43228 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:05e2]
    Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge
    Kernel modules: bcma
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
1: hci0: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

I then removed firmware-b43-installer and used apt install bcmwl-kernel-source. Further I uncommented in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

# replaced by b43 and ssb.
# blacklist bcm43xx

Then we still have the bcma as a kernel module ...

lspci -knn | grep Net -A3
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM43228 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:4359]
    Subsystem: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM43228 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:05e2]
    Kernel driver in use: wl
    Kernel modules: bcma, wl

After removing the comment in blacklist.conf and checking rfkill the situation is as before, the wifi seems to be known to the system, but is not operational, is grayed out and does not see networks.

I am checking:

iw wlo1 info
Interface wlo1
    ifindex 3
    wdev 0x1
    addr ac:e0:10:3d:f2:f4
    type managed
    wiphy 0
    txpower 200.00 dBm

so in principle it should be fine. However in dmesg I see sometimes: IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlo1: link is not ready. (Bluetooth firmware load fails now, but I suppose that does not matter).

Could this be a networking issue? What could be missing?

tommi_s
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1 Answers1

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Starting with an Xubuntu clean install the answer to using the broadcom wifi was to

  1. use bcmwl-kernel-source and
  2. start the kernel with intremap=off

The bcmwl-kernel-source can be installed as pilot6 mentioned, or (in Xubuntu) via software & updates -> add drivers -> using proprietary, which also will mention the bcmwl-kernel-source.

The kernel switch answer is found in the thread below in post #10: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2405673. Other switches that worked were pci=noacpi, or acpi=off, or acpi=noirq.

thanks for the help received for this question

tommi_s
  • 21