Problems with Broadcom BCM4322

English Network/Internet
1

I am running a HP tx2-1275dx with openSuSE 11.4. this is my first attempt at running suse, and its going well, except the absolute hell I have been having over the last 5 days trying to make the wireless card work. I have tried the ‘broadcom-wl’ drivers from the repositories, and iwconfig returns nothing. Ihave tried using the xp driver from HP’s website usind ndiswrapper, and nothing. I tried compiling the Broadcom STA drivers from thier site, and I get the message


highpander-pc:/home/thehighpander/Documents/hybrid_wl # make
KBUILD_NOPEDANTIC=1 make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=`pwd`
make: *** /lib/modules/2.6.37.1-1.2-desktop/build: No such file or directory.  Stop.
make: *** [all] Error 2

Below is all the relivant information I can collect. If anyone can point me in the right direction, I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks


from lspci

<6>   20.197164] Broadcom 43xx driver loaded  Features: PMLS, Firmware-ID: FW13 ]




from system information

36: PCI 800.0: 0280 Network controller
  [Created at pci.318]
  Unique ID: GBI1.xG25lbw5CO1
  Parent ID: CvwD.CGA6cCOaCB7
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:05.0/0000:08:00.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:08:00.0
  Hardware Class: network
  Model: "Broadcom BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller"
  Vendor: pci 0x14e4 "Broadcom"
  Device: pci 0x432b "BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller"
  SubVendor: pci 0x103c "Hewlett-Packard Company"
  SubDevice: pci 0x137f 
  Revision: 0x01
  Driver: "b43-pci-bridge"
  Driver Modules: "ssb"
  Memory Range: 0xd1100000-0xd1103fff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  IRQ: 17 (12449 events)
  Module Alias: "pci:v000014E4d0000432Bsv0000103Csd0000137Fbc02sc80i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: ssb is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe ssb"
  Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
  Attached to: #15 (PCI bridge)



from boot.msg
<6>   20.197164] Broadcom 43xx driver loaded  Features: PMLS, Firmware-ID: FW13 ]
2

First, remove NDISWRAPPER.

This thread should help you out installing the correct driver.
Install Broadcom Drivers from Packman

There are lots of threads on getting broadcom cards to work. If that thread doesn’t help you a quick search will find many more threads.

There’s also an open source driver that you can use. But you would have to search around to find how to do that.

3

I should have specified, I did a fresh install between attempts, so ndiswrapper is no longer present.

secondly,

I have tried the ‘broadcom-wl’ drivers from the repositories, and iwconfig returns nothing.

and I have been searching for 5 days now, and these (ndis, repository, and STA) are the only three options I can find. I have yet to find any other drivers for this chip.

4

post the output from

rfkill list

You may have to install it first.

zypper in rfkill

A much easier to read output for your pci device can be done like this…

lspci -nnk | grep -i bcm

That will eliminate the extra information you don’t need.

5

highpander-lpc:/home/thehighpander/Documents/hybrid_wl # rfkill list
0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no

highpander-lpc:/home/thehighpander/Documents/hybrid_wl # lspci -nnk | grep -i bcm
08:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:432b] (rev 01)

Hows that?

6

Much better output :slight_smile:

Looks like you’re not having the common rfkill issue.

Apparently you need to install both “broadcom-wl” and “broadcom-wl-kmp-XXXXX” from the packman repo.

Replace XXXXX with “default”, “pae”, “xen”, or “desktop”, depending on which kernel you run.

This card won’t be supported in the kernel for quite a while, therefore the need to use the wl driver from packman.

This will show you the proper kernel info.

uname -r
7

On 04/30/2011 12:36 AM, rodhuffaker wrote:
>
> Much better output :slight_smile:
>
> Looks like you’re not having the common rfkill issue.
>
> Apparently you need to install both “broadcom-wl” and
> “broadcom-wl-kmp-XXXXX” from the packman repo.
>
> Replace XXXXX with “default”, “pae”, “xen”, or “desktop”, depending on
> which kernel you run.
>
> This card won’t be supported in the kernel for quite a while, therefore
> the need to use the wl driver from packman.

True, but it will work with b43 from compat-wireless. At least mine does.

8

Interesting. According to this page b43 - Linux Wireless it’s only partially supported from 2.6.39+.
Is that page somewhat dated? The latest I see available from opensuse is 2.6.38.2.

9

Allright. Well I installed both of the Broadcom drivers from packman, and it works now. Its odd, because i could swear I tried this yesterday. Oh well, linux will never cease to confuse/amaze me. Thank you so much for all your help!

10

On 04/30/2011 01:36 AM, rodhuffaker wrote:
>
> Interesting. According to this page ‘b43 - Linux Wireless’
> (http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43) it’s only partially
> supported from 2.6.39+.
> Is that page somewhat dated? The latest I see available from opensuse
> is 2.6.38.2.

Yes, it is dated. 2.6.39 only could handle rates up to 11M, but the current
wireless-testing code, which is in compat-wireless and will be in 2.6.40,
handles full transmission rates.

11

Just because I am nosy:

To test it someone would have to build such a cutting edge b43 driver
(for a broadcom device with the numeric ID 14e4:432b)
by himself? By following the description on
Download - Linux Wireless
and with the code in the linux-next compat-wireless releases ?

Regards
Martin
(pistazienfresser)

12

On 05/04/2011 01:36 PM, pistazienfresser wrote:
>
> lwfinger;2333009 Wrote:
>> On 04/30/2011 01:36 AM, rodhuffaker wrote:
>>>
>>> Interesting. According to this page ‘b43 - Linux Wireless’
>>> (‘b43 - Linux Wireless’
>> (http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43)) it’s only partially
>>> supported from 2.6.39+.
>>> Is that page somewhat dated? The latest I see available from
>> opensuse
>>> is 2.6.38.2.
>>
>> Yes, it is dated. 2.6.39 only could handle rates up to 11M, but the
>> current
>> wireless-testing code, which is in compat-wireless and will be in
>> 2.6.40,
>> handles full transmission rates.
>
> Just because I am nosy:
>
> To test it someone would have to build such a cutting edge b43 driver
> (for a broadcom device with the numeric ID 14e4:432b)
> by himself? By following the description on
> ‘Download - Linux Wireless’
> (http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Download)
> and with the code in the linux-next compat-wireless releases ?

Nope, you need only to install the compat-wireless package. For all wireless
drivers, that gets close to the current state, warts and all. Of course, the
latest compat-wireless source package that you would build yourself from

http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Download

will be somewhat newer than the binary package from the openSUSE wireless repo,
but in most cases, that is not critical.