HP Elitebook 755 G2 - no wireless

[r1348]

So, I got myself a brand new shiny HP Elitebook 755 G2 with one of those new fancy AMD Kaveri APUs. After a bit of meddling, I did manage to install F20 (got to start with nomodeset at first, can be dropped after kernel, linux-firmware and mesa are updated), but so far I've had no luck with wireless.
It comes with one of those dreaded Broadcom chips, the BCM43228 to be precise. Kernel driver b43 should support it starting with kernel 3.17, but for now I'm stuck on 3.16, so I installed the proprietary (bleh) driver from Broadcom, gently provided by rpmfusion.org.
Now the wireless LED does indeed turn on, but that's pretty much all it does: Network Manager is unable to find any available networks.

Here's the dmesg:

http://pastebin.com/G7yn4eX9

Note the error message near the end:

AMD-Vi: Event logged [INVALID_DEVICE_REQUEST device=00:00.1 address=0x000000fdf80c0020 flags=0x0a00]

Any hint? Help? Kind words of support?

Thanks!

[r1348]

Ok I solved it, basically you have to boot with intremap=off otherwise networking goes bananas. I hope this helps others too!

[spudzy]

run that down for me. intremap=off? no clue.

[r1348]

Well, intremap=off disables the kernel interrupt remapping, which might point to a buggy bios or hardware. You have to pass it as a kernel parameter on boot time.
To permanently add it to the kernel boot line, modify /etc/default/grub and add intremap=off to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX and save.
Then update grub.cfg. If you made a legacy BIOS install, grub.cfg will be in /boot/grub2, so run:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

If you made an UEFI installation, run instead:

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/fedora/grub.cfg

Then reboot.

[wilhepworth]

Go to the head of the class.

Thanks for saving my 755 from a damn good thrashing!

[r1348]

Btw I extracted the firmware needed to have fully functional bluetooth on this laptop, grab it from here https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_c...ew?usp=sharing and just copy it in /lib/firmware/brcm/

[sluscombe]

You sir, are a lifesaver. I just got the 745 and had resigned myself to needing a USB wifi adapter, but this worked perfectly!

[r1348]

Glad this is helpful, btw is anyone having issues with headphones after the BIOS update to 1.06?

[sluscombe]

My BIOS is on 1.04 and I can't get sound from the headphone jack at all.

Searching about it seems that other people with a combined headphone/mic jack on HP machines are having a similar problem.

[sluscombe]

Another quick search revealed a working result!

http://sourceforge.net/p/alsa/mailman/message/33597118/

Make the file
/etc/modprobe.d/snd-hda-intel.conf (and reboot):

alias char-major-116 snd

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias snd-card-1 snd-hda-intel

options snd-hda-intel id=Generic_1 index=0
options snd-hda-intel id=Generic index=1

options snd-hda-intel model=hp,headset-mic

[r1348]

When I bought this laptop in August 2014 it came with BIOS 1.01 and the headphone was working (although with an annoying hiss that is present even in Windows), but after I updated to 1.06 it stopped working. I noticed that now Windows turns off the sound if nothing is using it, so maybe they just added power management...
I'm going to try the solution you posted to see if it works!

[r1348]

Your solution seems to work fine except for one minor annoyance: the mute button no longer turns orange when you press it. A minor thing, but I'll look into it this weekend to see what's happening.

[r1348]

Good news! The BIOS of this laptop doesn't seem to have a hardware whitelist so changing the wireless chip for a linux-friendlier version is actually an option! I popped in an Intel 5100 chip from an old Dell laptop and it worked flawlessly, I now ordered an Atheros AR9462 off ebay to also have bluetooth, I'll keep you posted on how it goes.

EDIT 3/5/15: The Atheros chip works like a charm, I strongly suggest to use it so you can get rid of the Broadcom proprietary crap, it sells on ebay for around 15€, totally worth it.

[r1348]

Just popping in to say that HP seems to have fixed the networking problem. With the latest BIOS available (1.09 as of writing) you no longer have to add intremap=off to your kernel command line, so I really recommend an update. Tested with vanilla F22, and with the latest kernels available in updates and updates-testing (4.1.10 and 4.2.3).

[Atsuri]

Just popping in to say that HP seems to have fixed the networking problem. With the latest BIOS available (1.09 as of writing) you no longer have to add intremap=off to your kernel command line, so I really recommend an update. Tested with vanilla F22, and with the latest kernels available in updates and updates-testing (4.1.10 and 4.2.3).

I'm actually interested in this parameter for my Broadcom BCM4322. It would or wouldn't randomly work on several distributions and there seemed to be no sense when and how it works. Heck, sometimes suspend + resume (Manjaro, all spins) would restore the wireless, pointing to some power routing / PCI addressing issue. Since I already opened a thread on BCM4322 a few months back, I will simply bump it with new tests/info.

Thanks a lot for the intel!