Just upgraded to 11.4 from 11.3 and am having an issue getting the wireless working. I read through a couple posts and believe this is the relevant info:
I removed the brcm80211 driver and installed the b43 driver which didn’t work (continually prompted me for my wireless password despite it being correct). Then I installed the wl drivers from packman but lspci -nnk kept showing b43 drivers. I didn’t have a 50-broadcom-wl-blacklist.conf in /etc/modprobe.d/ so I created one with:
Any idea why ssb still shows up in “hwinfo --wlan” despite being blacklisted? I tried rmmod’ing it but it was being used by the b44 module. I tried rmmoding b44 and then ssb and then my wired connection seemed to be gone from knetworkmanager so I added them both back and now that seems normal.
Anyway, now with the “wl” drivers installed I can’t find any wireless connections. I’ve been messing around with the wireless switch but no dice. Any suggestions?
Can’t believe I missed that… Anyway it’s installed now but I have another issue. “hwinfo --wlan” now produces no output while “/sbin/lspci -nnk” now says the driver in use is: b43-pci-bridge instead of wl. I tried running “/sbin/modproobe -rv b43” followed by “/sbin/modprobe -v wl” and rebooting but it still shows b43-pci-bridge.
I’ve also had to blacklist acer-wmi on my Lenovo S12 to get my wireless to connect automatically, and reconnect after hibernation or standby. You may also want to install rfkill.
Yes I su’ed before and my 50-broadcom-wl-blacklist.conf has the same contents. knetworkmanager doesn’t seem to be seeing the card anymore, wireless options don’t pop up when selecting the system tray icon. Neither wired or wireless appear there. They do show up (without any signal strength) when I select “manage connections…” though. Whast does rfkill do?
rfkill list
0: dell-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
In looking at the entire output of hwinfo I came across this (not sure if it’s relevant):
<4> 6.921117] wl: module license ‘unspecified’ taints kernel.
<4> 6.921123] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
And wl is listed under Driver Info #1 (after ssb) under “Network Controller”. I can post more of these outputs if desired, I just have to run to the other room and hook the laptop up to the line to get internet on it.
hm looks like I deleted the /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware script…
Update: with wl driver gone iwconfig gives:
wlan 0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID: off/any
Mode:Managed AccessPoint: Not-Associated Tx-Power=0 dBm
Retry long limit: 7 RTS thr: off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key: off
Power Management: off
lspci still shows b43-pci-bridge as the driver. I’m beginning to think something’s broke with the packman build. I may try to build from source later tonight. I don’t understand why lsicp showed wl before in installed broadcom-wl. Is that more proof that it’s broke (at least for me)?
I actually just looked for that script and it seems to be gone from /usr/sbin/. I checked my back history and I didn’t explicitly delete it. I’ll try googling for it.
Ok so I’m not sure what kind of voodoo I did to my machine to make b43 not work at first, but I seem to subsequently have undid it as I am now successfully using the wifi! Thanks for the help and patients caf!