Wireless connectivity issues 11.4 (HP Mini 311, broadcom wifi, gobi 3g)

brcm80211 will only work correctly for a certain time after booting into safemode from the login splash. I would like to replace it with the broadcom-wl which is installed, but the computer keeps using the brcm80211 driver instead.

I would like to be able to use my Verizon 3G as well. From what I understand it uses the Gobi chipset with qcserial driver. I have gotten it to work once, with no effort under a XFCE based distro, before wifi drivers were installed.

Ethernet will not work at all, which is odd. forcedeth0 driver. I think its a conflict with the wifi drivers since the netbook has the various parts tightly integrated.

Remove the brcm with:

sudo /sbin/modprobe -rv brcm80211

Install the wl drivers:
Install Broadcom Drivers from Packman

You may need to

sudo /sbin/modprobe -v wl

reboot might be an idea

  • Be sure the wl install gets the kernel package to match your kernel

This looks to have worked. Network Manager is showing the wl driver now. Haven’t rebooted yet. The brcm driver works, but not consistently hence the need for wl.

Thank you!

Any idea how to get the built in 3g to work? It worked once under Fedora xfce spin.

No experience with 3g - sorry

FYI: Just in case you experience issues. I notice some comments here
Wifi doesn’t work on 11.4 KDE x86-64 with Broadcom 4312

Actually I finally got it to work. However, by default it will blank out the Mobile Broadband tab which would make configuration a pain. When brcm80211 was screwing up though, it would let me set one up which I was able to edit later.

provider: Verizon

number = #777

username = 10 digit phone number

password = vzw

Just reinstalled. Can’t get the brcm80211 to go away in favor of wl. Not sure why. brcm80211 seems to cause kernel panics.

On 04/01/2011 09:06 PM, Shadowolf7 wrote:
>
> Just reinstalled. Can’t get the brcm80211 to go away in favor of wl. Not
> sure why. brcm80211 seems to cause kernel panics.

Blacklist brcm80211 in /etc/modprobe.d/50-blacklist.conf.

I used modprobe -r -b… A method I used in an older install worked then, but not now.

On 04/01/2011 10:06 PM, Shadowolf7 wrote:
>
> I used modprobe -r -b… A method I used in an older install worked
> then, but not now.

modprobe -r will remove the driver, but it needs to be done after every boot.
Blacklisting will cover all reboots.

What is the failure with the modprobe -r step?

Man pages say -b blacklists that driver as well.

On 04/01/2011 11:36 PM, Shadowolf7 wrote:
>
> Man pages say -b blacklists that driver as well.

No, it says to use the blacklist files, not that it updates the blacklist. In
addition, a quick test here shows no changes in any file in /etc/modprobe.d. You
need to do it manually.

Ah, ok. The explanation in man was a bit over my head. How do I blacklist?

Why are drivers like that being included in the kernel anyway? Isn’t that against the modularity idea of *nix systems? I liked being able to handle the drivers through package management as was the case in 11.3. There should be a YAST module for all this driver fiddling i think.

kdesu kwrite /etc/modprobe.d/50-blacklist.conf

add in

blacklist brcm80211

assuming that’s the device driver you want to blacklist

On 04/02/2011 12:36 AM, Shadowolf7 wrote:
>
> Ah, ok. The explanation in man was a bit over my head. How do I
> blacklist?
>
> Why are drivers like that being included in the kernel anyway? Isn’t
> that against the modularity idea of *nix systems? I liked being able to
> handle the drivers through package management as was the case in 11.3.
> There should be a YAST module for all this driver fiddling i think.

Do the following:


su -
cp /etc/modprobe.d/50-blacklist.conf /etc/modprobe.d/50-blacklist.conf_save
echo "blacklist brcm80211" >> /etc/modprobe.d/50-blacklist.conf
exit

Be careful with the cp command.

The module handling is correct. In fact, there is no real difference between
11.3 and 11.4, other than brcm80211 is in kernel 2.6.37 and was not in 2.6.34.
The idea is for every device to be recognized by its ID and have the correct
driver loaded automatically. The only problem is that brcm80211 is relatively
new and the bugs are still being fixed. The driver wl that you want to use is
closed source and violates nearly every principle of Linux and openSUSE. It must
NEVER be included without some degree of fiddling.