broadcom-wl and BCM4328

[KirkD]

I've been running broadcom-wl with a BCM4328 wireless card A-OK with F10 2.6.27.5-117.fc10.i686. About 50% of the time I would have to restart at least once to get the wireless working. I installed a kernel update to 2.6.27.7-134.fc10.i686 and after a couple of reboots it came back to life. (I had installed akmod-wl so it should be rebuilding on kernel updates.) Now it seem to have stopped working altogether. Reboot after reboot, cold and warm, I don't seem to be able to get wireless up and going. I'm not sure how to troubleshoot this one, so any help is appreciated.

-Kirk

[BlueC]

Is the kernel module loading properly? Try "lsmod | grep wl" and see if it is loaded. If it isn't do "modprobe wl".

I must admit I've never tried using the akmod package so no idea whether it works - did you try removing the akmod and just updating the wl-kmod package through yum?

[KirkD]

I'll give all of those suggestions a try and post back here my results.

Thank you!

-Kirk

[KirkD]

OK, so as I was in process to check the details you mentioned, things seem to have automagically fixed themselves. What?? That's right, it seems that for now at least, my wireless card is working A-OK in F10. I didn't actually do anything to get it fixed, but I did go through another set of updates using a wired connection. Perhaps something that was conflicting is now not conflicting. Dunno.

Thanks for your help, regardless.

-Kirk

[KirkD]

OK, I'm back again. It seems that the driver stopped working again. I get about 50% of the time it works and the other 50% it fails. I'm tempted to go back to ndiswrapper as that worked well in F9.

Also, from the Broadcom web page I see that broadcom-wl supports this hardware:

BCM4311-, BCM4312-, BCM4321-, and BCM4322-based hardware

I'm using a BCM4328 card, so I assume this driver doesn't work for me and maybe that explains the problem.

Also, while in the kernel that isn't working (2.6.27.7-134.fc10.i686) I see by lsmod | grep wl that the module _is_ loaded. For whatever reason, it just isn't functioning.

lsmod | grep wl

wl                   1067012  0
ieee80211_crypt         8324  1 wl

As always, any help whatsoever is GREATLY appreciated!!

-Kirk

[stoat]

Originally Posted by KirkD

Also, from the Broadcom web page I see that broadcom-wl supports this hardware:

BCM4311-, BCM4312-, BCM4321-, and BCM4322-based hardware

Hello KirkD,

That's right. But the HOWTO by Chris (aka here as BlueC) makes this comment (FWIW)...

Originally Posted by cenolan.com

This is an official-release of Broadcom's IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n hybrid Linux device driver for use with Broadcom's BCM4311-, BCM4312-, BCM4321-, and BCM4322-based hardware. This driver also supports the incorrectly identified BCM4328 chipset which is actually a BCM4321 or BCM4322 chipset.

I realize that doesn't necessarily mean a thing in your case, but I just wanted to mention it.

Here's another thing FWIW. I use BCM4306 cards which happen to work by either the native b43 Linux driver or ndiswrapper and the XP driver. I have used compiled ndiswrapper and the kmod binary versions. All of these methods have worked well for that card. Over the years, I have gone back and forth among these methods depending on what worked best at the moment. I guess the most troublesome method was the Livna (now RPM Fusion) kmod version because they were sometimes late getting in the repo (sometimes really late). If I allowed the kernel to update before the kmod packages were ready, then no wireless for that kernel for a while. The compiled ndiswrapper was very reliable for me, but it had to be recompiled for a new kernel (two minutes of work). For the longest time now, I have stuck with b43 (which unfortunately doesn't support your card). I guess the point of this ramble is that I hope it's normal to change wireless driver methods every now and then (when it's possible) because I do it, too.

[KirkD]

stoat,

Thanks for the info. I'm glad to see that the 4328 is indeed supported. It is at least a step in the right direction for me. As for ndiswrapper, I had stopped using it when I upgraded to F10. I couldn't get ndiswrapper to work, but I was using the PAE kernel then. I switched back to the standard kernel but I haven't tried ndiswrapper again. I may give it a shot. Under F9 I had ndiswrapper set up such that it recompiled when the kernel updated (using akmod) but again, I haven't tried it under F10 yet.

It would be nice if I could get the broadcom-wl package working consistently or at least figure out why it is on again, off again.

Thanks again!

-Kirk

UPDATE: I just updated to the new kernel, removed the previous install of broadcom-wl, and then reinstalled so that I get broadcom-wl and kmod-wl without akmod-wl under 2.6.27.9-59 but no wireless working. ugh.

Maybe there's a better way. Does anyone have a suggestion of a laptop wireless card (mini or PCMCIA) that works with Fedora 10 nicely?


Update #2: I uninstalled broadcom-wl along with kmod-wl and went back to kmod-ndiswrapper and bmcwl5.inf/.sys All seems to work fine right now.