Hi,
I am posting after more than 1.5 years. The last openSUSE i used was 11.0 — for 2.5+ years — including 6 months at least even after the support got over! Then i shifted to CentOS so that i did not have to face issues regarding upgrade problems — my desktop is more than 7 years old. Now i’ve purchased a new laptop and have returned to SUSE (Gnome) to have good hardware support.
I went through some of the sticky threads and downloaded broadcom-wl drivers. The wireless connection started working but it only works when i boot the default kernel. I think that during the updates a new kernel with the same version number 3.4.11.2-16 came in with desktop as the last word. Now by default the desktop kernel gets loaded and YaST -> hardware info does not list wireless lan.
**iwlist scan **does not output anything other than ‘lo Interface doesn’t support scanning’. I need to boot into the default kernel to get the wireless running.
What do you folks suggest?
On 11/05/2012 09:46 AM, Sauerland wrote:
>
> Please post:
> Code:
> --------------------
> zypper se -si kernel
> --------------------
>
> Code:
> --------------------
> zypper se -si broadcom
> --------------------
When using an out-of-kernel driver such as wl, the drivers MUST be reinstalled
EVERY time the kernel is changed, and the version built for that specific
kernel must be used! That is an absolute rule - no getting around it.
[QUOTE=lwfinger;2501466
When using an out-of-kernel driver such as wl, the drivers MUST be reinstalled
EVERY time the kernel is changed, and the version built for that specific
kernel must be used! That is an absolute rule - no getting around it.[/QUOTE]
Hi,
I don’t get it. If by booting into the new kernel i need to reinstall the wireless card drivers — how do i reinstall it when my wireless connection no longer works with the new kernel?
What am i missing?
On 11/06/2012 07:36 AM, samrat rao wrote:
>> I don’t get it. If by booting into the new kernel i need to reinstall
>> the wireless card drivers — how do i reinstall it when my wireless
>> connection no longer works with the new kernel?
>>
>> What am i missing?
How did you install that driver in the first place? It certainly did not come
off the install medium. Repeat that process.
Obviously, you need to plan ahead. If you rely on some special repo such as
Packman for an out-of-kernel driver, you must not upgrade the kernel unless the
driver is available. If you use an external source for the driver, then you need
to make certain that you have all the necessary components to rebuild that driver.
If the package is available as an rpm, you can always download it using some
other system, transport it with a USB stick, and install it on the target system
with the rpm command.
Avoiding such complications is the reason that so many of us devote a lot of
time to preparing driver code that is built into the kernel. With such drivers,
kernel changes are transparent. Unfortunately, Broadcom has a lousy record of
cooperating with Linux.
Hi lwfinger,
I’m not sure what happened but now even with broadcom drivers not installed my Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 wireless card is getting detected. I uninstalled the desktop kernel and only have the default kernel.
I had made some mistake with the Packman repo — i think that i took the 12.1 or some 11.x repo. I corrected that. Hope everything will be fine now.
Hi Sauerland,
zypper se -si kernel
S | Name | Type | Version | Arch | Repository
–±----------------±--------±------------------±-------±--------------------
i | kernel-default | package | 3.4.11-2.16.1 | x86_64 | openSUSE-12.2-Update
i | kernel-firmware | package | 20120719git-2.9.1 | noarch | openSUSE-12.2-Update
zypper se -si broadcom
Loading repository data…
Reading installed packages…
No packages found.
Thanks for helping.
On 11/07/2012 01:46 AM, samrat rao wrote:
>
> Hi lwfinger,
>
> I’m not sure what happened but now even with broadcom drivers not
> installed my Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 wireless card is getting
> detected. I uninstalled the desktop kernel and only have the default
> kernel.
>
> I had made some mistake with the Packman repo — i think that i took
> the 12.1 or some 11.x repo. I corrected that. Hope everything will be
> fine now.
I do not understand what you wrote; however, if your BCM4313 has a PCI ID of
14e4:4727, then it should be handled by the built-in driver brcmsmac. You do not
need the Packman repo, and you seem to have the kernel-firmware package available.
Please post the output of
lsmod | egrep "brcm|wl"
I have a BCM4313 available here, but I have not tried it in a long time.
By Broadcom drivers i meant the ones in Packman repo — broadcom-wl. The kernel that i have has the word ‘default’ appended to it. I think it is the distribution kernel.
Initially when my wireless card was not getting detected i downloaded the driver from Packman repo — the wireless then started working. I don’t know what happened but another kernel came in with the word ‘desktop’ appended to it — whether via updates or otherwise i have no idea. This latter one did not support wireless.
I uninstalled the latter kernel since it had no wireless support — then removed the drivers from Packman repo so that i could reinstall it - just to be safe — and then all of a sudden without any Packman drivers my wireless was up and running.
lsmod | egrep "brcm|wl"
brcmsmac 568746 0
brcmutil 14755 1 brcmsmac
crc8 12893 1 brcmsmac
cordic 12535 1 brcmsmac
mac80211 543217 2 brcmsmac,b43
cfg80211 208339 3 brcmsmac,b43,mac80211
bcma 35637 2 brcmsmac,b43
As you said my BCM4313 has a PCI ID of 14e4:4727
lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation Device [14e4:051b]
Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge
03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR8162 Fast Ethernet [1969:1090] (rev 10)
Subsystem: Lenovo Device [17aa:3978]
I don’t know why initially (i.e. before getting the broadcom drivers from Packman) even after a couple of reboots iwlist scan did not show anything relevant and the wireless connection did not come up. So i needed the Packman repo (though the incorrect one).
On 11/07/2012 10:46 AM, samrat rao wrote:
> I don’t know why initially (i.e. before getting the broadcom drivers
> from Packman) even after a couple of reboots iwlist scan did not show
> anything relevant and the wireless connection did not come up. So i
> needed the Packman repo (though the incorrect one).
That is not a correct interpretation. As your device is using the brcmsmac
driver, which is built into every recent kernel, you have no need for the
Packman repo.
Yep, it does seem odd that initially the wireless card did not get detected automatically and i had to use Packman repo.
Anyways… after a little search i found that the kernel with the word ‘desktop’ appended to it would be more useful as a desktop configuration. So i reinstalled it (have no idea whether it was supposed to be there during the 12.2 installation process itself). With this new ‘desktop’ kernel and brcmsmac driver the wireless is getting detected, which was not the case earlier.
Whatever the problem was i don’t know… i think that this thread should be closed now.
Cheers!