BCM 43142 Wireless Card Issue

English Network/Internet
#1

Hello,

I have an issue with my wireless cad, BCM 43142, being that it’s not recognized. Most likely some driver issue,but after a day of searching I got nowhere. Any help would be appreciated.

I have tried broadcom-wl, b43, b43legacy etc from YaST, but the card was not visible.

lspci

08:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43142 802.11b/g/n (rev 01)

uname -a

Linux PC.site 3.16.7-7-desktop #1 SMP PREEMPT Wed Dec 17 18:00:44 UTC 2014 (762f27a) x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

ifconfig

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:462 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:462 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:38520 (37.6 Kb)  TX bytes:38520 (37.6 Kb)

iwconfig

eth0      no wireless extensions.
lo        no wireless extensions.
#2

Well, your device is only supported by broadcom-wl, but the current package in Packman is for Kernel 3.16.7-13 (which is no longer available) and does not work on others.

See also https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/506772-broadcom-wl-kmp-desktop-Need-help! .

You have to either download and rebuild the .src.rpm yourself, or wait until the package in Packman is updated.
If you are lucky, we’ll get another kernel update tomorrow (but it might be on Monday too), then broadcom-wl should work again shortly afterwards.

#3

I have tried to find some sources to build, but no success with them. All of them needed the new kernel or failed for some reason.
I’m waiting until tomorrow to see if something is going to happen.

#4

You need to download the source package (broadcom-wl-6.30.223.248-2.3.src.rpm) from here e.g.:
http://packman.links2linux.de/package/broadcom-wl

Then run “rpmbuild --rebuild broadcom-wl-6.30.223.248-2.3.src.rpm” and it should work if you have the necessary development packages installed (it will tell you what’s missing otherwise). And no, this does not need a specific kernel.

I’m waiting until tomorrow to see if something is going to happen.

Probably the better idea if you can wait.
It was said that the kernel update will be re-released on Monday, an updated broadcom-wl package should be available on Packman soon after (it can take a few hours until it is available from the mirrors though).

#5

Nearly forgot to mention it:
the kernel update has been released a few days ago, and Packman has updated braodcom-wl packages for that kernel meanwhile.
So you should have no problems any more to install them.

#6

Hello,

yes so there were quite a few kernel updates appearing on my laptop. Now I have about 4-5 versions of some kernel 4.0.0.3.1.g53xxxxxx and then 3.16.7-21-default.

I have installed
broadcom-wl
broadcom-wl-default
from YaST2 however the latter has the following requirements:

| Requires:
|

| coreutils
broadcom-wl
grep
kernel-default
kernel-uname-r = 3.16.7-21-default
/bin/sh

|

I have booted to the 3.16.7-21-default kernel, but with sudo ifconfig I still cannot see my card. Also in kernels4.xxxx I get the same.
What am I doing wrong?

#7

???
Where did you get Kernel 4.0.0 from?
Remove that (use YaST’s “Versions” tab for that), and the corresponding repo, that’s rather counter-productive if you need/want to use the proprietary broadcom-wl driver (which by itself doesn’t even support kernel 3.16.7, but Packman added patches for it to work)…

If in doubt, please post your repo list:

zypper lr -d

I have installed
broadcom-wl
broadcom-wl-default
from YaST2 however the latter has the following requirements:

I have booted to the 3.16.7-21-default kernel, but with sudo ifconfig I still cannot see my card. Also in kernels4.xxxx I get the same.
What am I doing wrong?

Are you really using kernel-default? Apparently not, otherwise you shouldn’t have a problem with the requirements.
The default is kernel-desktop, and that’s what you rather should be using anyway (for that you need broadcom-wl-kmp-desktop though). Although kernel-default should work too.

Please post also a list of all installed kernel and broadcom packages:

rpm -qa | egrep "kernel|broadcom"

And again, the broadcom-wl-kmp package has to match your kernel, so there’s no way to get this to work with kernel 4.x. (unless you rebuild the package for that kernel yourself)