dell inspiron broadcom chipset what to do for wireless

[Gödel]

Originally Posted by narayans

As per your intelligent advice I erased all previous drivers as were suggested by hadrons123
and did folllowing

...
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

blacklist b43-pci-bridge
blacklist ssb
blacklist bcma
blacklist b43
blacklist brcmsmac

and reboot
and then there is no wireless again and with your akmod-wl installed lspci -vnn shows

0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1397 WLAN Mini-Card [1028:000c]
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 4
	Memory at f69fc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
	Capabilities: [58] Vendor Specific Information: Len=78 <?>
	Capabilities: [e8] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
	Capabilities: [d0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
	Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
	Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel

	Capabilities: [16c] Power Budgeting <?>
	Kernel modules: ssb

I thought you were a super genius.
I want to specially mention that this machine is a dual boot machine and Ubuntu 11.10 x86_64 installed there I can easily use my wireless but not in Fedora 16 with all the methods suggested by your super cool hin min chao type super geek dudes.

Can you actually read? Does your blacklist match the one I posted above?

No it does not.

That is why it did not work for you.

the wl module refuses to load if the ssb module loads, the ssb module loads if other modules like b44 are loaded. Therefore you must blacklist exactly the list of modules I gave you to blacklist.

Also you must not disable NetworkManager and/or add extra silly apps to try to control your wifi.

If you had done as I said exactly your wifi would work.

How do I know this? Because I have been installing linux on dell based laptops for years, in fact I have a dell inspiron with exactly your chipset and I came across the problem with broadcom-wl way back in kernel-2.6.30 , if you search you will find I have posted one of the earliest threads with the solution.

It is important I post this information as otherwise some unfortunate might find this thread and try to follow your misguided attempts to get it working.

check output of 'lspci -vnn | grep -A6 [Nn]et'

$ rpm -qa | grep "\-wl"
akmod-wl-5.100.82.112-2.fc16.x86_64
kmod-wl-3.2.3-2.fc16.x86_64-5.100.82.112-2.fc16.4.x86_64
broadcom-wl-5.100.82.112-2.fc16.noarch

$ lspci -vnn | grep -A6 [Nn]et
03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX [14e4:170c] (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:01f1]
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 10
	Memory at f9bfe000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel modules: b44

--
0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card [1028:000b]
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
	Memory at f9ffc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: wl
	Kernel modules: wl, ssb

$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf 
#
# Listing a module here prevents the hotplug scripts from loading it.
# Usually that'd be so that some other driver will bind it instead,
# no matter which driver happens to get probed first.  Sometimes user
# mode tools can also control driver binding.
....

blacklist b43-pci-bridge
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist ssb
blacklist b43
blacklist b44

blacklist nouveau

(and don't forget, that if you now want to use hardwired ethernet port you must manually do 'modprobe b44' (as root) first if your chipset uses b44 like above)

[narayans]

Originally Posted by Gödel

the wl module refuses to load if the ssb module loads, the ssb module loads if other modules like b44 are loaded.

My LAN card does not uses a b44 and by the way what you mention is correct partially but blacklisting alone does not solve the problem.

Originally Posted by Gödel

$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
#
# Listing a module here prevents the hotplug scripts from loading it.
# Usually that'd be so that some other driver will bind it instead,

This is wrong.

Read here
http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/README.txt
following lines from above link

Note: On some systems such as Ubuntu 9.10, the ssb module may load during
boot even though it is blacklisted (see note under Common Issues on how to
resolve this. Nevertheless, ssb still must be removed
(by hand or script) before wl is loaded. The wl driver will not function 
properly if ssb the module is loaded.

They mention Ubuntu but I see this problem in Fedora 16 which I am currently .



check output of 'lspci -vnn | grep -A6 [Nn]et'

09:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [10ec:8136] (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Dell Device [1028:02cf]
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 45
	I/O ports at de00 [size=256]
	Memory at f0010000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]
	Memory at f0000000 (64-bit, prefetchable) [size=64K]
	[virtual] Expansion ROM at f0020000 [disabled] [size=128K]
	Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
	Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
	Capabilities: [70] Express Endpoint, MSI 01
	Capabilities: [ac] MSI-X: Enable- Count=2 Masked-
	Capabilities: [cc] Vital Product Data
	Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting

	Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel
	Kernel driver in use: r8169
	Kernel modules: r8169

0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1397 WLAN Mini-Card [1028:000c]
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 4
	Memory at f69fc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
	Capabilities: [58] Vendor Specific Information: Len=78 <?>
	Capabilities: [e8] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+
	Capabilities: [d0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
	Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
	Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel
	Capabilities: [16c] Power Budgeting <?>

                  <---------------------Kernel Driver in Use Line is Missing I have not hided it from lspci output.

	Kernel modules: ssb

and

modprobe wl
FATAL: Module wl not found.

while rpm shows

 rpm -qa | grep "\-wl"
akmod-wl-5.100.82.112-2.fc16.x86_64
kmod-wl-5.100.82.112-2.fc16.4.x86_64
kmod-wl-3.2.3-2.fc16.x86_64-5.100.82.112-2.fc16.4.x86_64
broadcom-wl-5.100.82.112-2.fc16.noarch

I did not installed the 2 different versions as seen above I am a poor guy who says yes to what ever yum says.
When you install broadcom-wl akmod-wl and kmod-wl there is a file automatically created named
/etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-wl-blacklist.conf which has following lines in it

blacklist ssb
blacklist bcma
blacklist b43
blacklist brcmsmac

As per you saying I add

blacklist b44

I also have in blacklist.conf

blacklist b43-pci-bridge
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist ssb
blacklist b43
blacklist b44

So at 2 different files blacklist.conf and broadcom-wl-blacklist.conf these modules are already blacklisted when you download them via yum.

I erased wicd and reinstalled network manager gnome reboot.

This does not solves the issue.Going back to step 1 a network manager is just a GUI it does not have any drivers.Drivers are different from a GTK or QT based Application like Network Manager Gnome or wicd.
The fact the even after blacklisting ssb in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf ssb is loading rather than wl is my problem.
This is the reason why wl driver is not working.Do you have any solution for this?

Additional information:
1) The hardware switch is not off.
2) In Ubuntu it is working absolutely perfectly.I have used Ubuntu 9.04 10.4 10.10 11.04 11.10 all x86_64 on this machine with Broadcom STA driver from their restricted driver repos which is available in installation media of Ubuntu ISO's pool folder also.
3) If you read the thread from beginning the problem was not that wireless was not working.
The problem was after working on wireless for some time I used to get disconnected.A GTK window used to popup asking me to enter authorization after every 10 minutes.
Even upon entering the credentials I was not able to connect to the wireless network.You actually have deviated my issue.The issue is not driver missing or missing firmware which a lame dick user
is unaware for 14e4:4315 chipset.The issue was disconnection of device after working for 10-15 minutes.Due to which hadrons123 suggested to replace the broadcom driver with b43 when that did not worked then he suggested to replace Network Manager with wicd.Which seemed to solve the issue partially until I got disconnected after 1 hour 20 minutes. Which was further dealt
as suggested by hadrons123 here to try editing ifup-wireless by a user http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showpo...33&postcount=2

So then I changed a line in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-wireless

iwconfig $DEVICE retry 40
# ^ MY NEW LINE

Which also did not helped.Reverted back to original ifup-wireless line in later circus on Fedora.
I have one more laptop with me which works perfectly fine in these conditions so router is not in problem.The same machine works perfectly with Ubuntu 11.10 so it is not a hardware failure either.

My kernel
3.1.0-7.fc16.x86_64



lspci output updated after comment below for further postmortem

[Gödel]

you didn't post the full output of 'lspci -vnn | grep -A6 [Nn]et' , you should not run this command as root otherwise the output info will be very long and we can't see the kernel module info at the end.

Sorry but the info about ssb I posted is not wrong it is correct, to prevent it loading you must blacklist it and any other modules that cause it to load. In fact the quote you posted agrees with me, not you.

NetworkManager is not just a gui, in fact it is mostly not a gui, it is a service, the gui is a simple frontend to make it simple to interact with it. There used to be a purely command line version, cnetworkmanager which worked just as reliably. You should not disable NetworkManager unless you know what you are doing.

[narayans]

I am wiping out Fedora from my box.So I am closing this issue for ever.Thanks for your patience and suggestions.I have been able to convince my supervisor not to use Fedora we were trying to make it work since Wednesday we will not waste any more time on this issue.I get paid to do the work.My focus should not be to dive deep into Operating System and its working.My focus should be to get assigned tasks done.That is what they pay for me.Lack of my fundamentals about Fedora should not be termed as inefficiency.Infact the +ve side is I tried all possible solutions in this world which were time consuming and they did not helped.
My supervisor is also reading this thread.I have also posted this issue to bugzilla
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=789226
Thanks once again.

[Gödel]

they should employ someone like me.

for future reference I'll post ubuntu's /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-bcm43.conf on the same machine as above

# Warning: This file is autogenerated by bcmwl-kernel-source. All changes to this file will be lost.
blacklist b43
blacklist b43legacy
blacklist ssb
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist b44
install wl modprobe -r b43 b44 b43legacy ssb; modprobe --ignore-install wl ; modprobe --ignore-install b44

that's from from ubuntu 10.04 LTS (NB don't use this blacklist file in Fedora, it's just here for comparison)

to be honest, I wouldn't use latest fedora 16 in a workplace in any case, but not because of wifi issues.

[stoat]

When Fedora works and everything is humming, nothing can touch it IMO. When it's not working, Fedora can drive a person quickly and directly into barking madness. It sounds sort of like that's where narayans is about now.

[Gödel]

Originally Posted by stoat

When Fedora works and everything is humming, nothing can touch it IMO. When it's not working, Fedora can drive a person quickly and directly into barking madness. It sounds sort of like that's where narayans is about now.

Maybe, but it helps to be systematic rather than trying a sequence of random fixes.

He should first have tried the wl driver with the (correct) blacklist, that works for 99% of bcm4312 chipsets, unfortunately the rpmfusion package doesn't seem to create a sufficient default blacklist for all cases, which is the usual cause of problems (ubuntu's installer gets it right) In the rare case that wl doesn't work, the 2nd best option, imho, is ndiswrapper since there are 32bit and 64bit windows drivers available (link) and there's an akmod from rpmfusion, so the install is almost as simple as for akmod-wl (eg see here )

You have to work a little harder with fedora when proprietary drivers are involved, but not that much harder.

If this sort of thing is a problem, then Fedora 16 is not a good idea anyway, since it has many more obvious issues, probably best to wait for gnome-shell to mature ~fedora 18, especially for workplace environment, maybe use Ubuntu 10.04 LTS until its support ends in April 2013