bcm4322 - switching from ubuntu to fedora 12

[houserparker]

With the experience that i have had with ubuntu i would like to make the switch to fedora but before i do want to find out whether i will have the same problem that i had with ubuntu in Fedora.

Problem with Ubuntu:-

The only way of running o/s ati drivers to optimise hd3000 series (r600) graphics card and opengl was by running kernel 2.6.32rc6 which renders the broadcom bcm4322 wireless card unoperational.

Fedora 12 looks promising but i would like to know whether there is support for Broadcom bcm4322 wireless cards and how hard they are to get up and running.

Thanks

[stoat]

i would like to know whether there is support for Broadcom bcm4322 wireless cards and how hard they are to get up and running.

Hello houserparker,

Yes, most Broadcom cards work well in Fedora. Between the built-in b43 driver, the third-party broadcom-wl driver, and ndiswrapper, most can be made to work. But they all require you to do something (e.g., install firmware, install a third-party driver, install ndiswrapper and a Windows driver). None of that is hard after you know it. It's getting there that can sometimes drag on for a while. The BCM4322 is documented here to work with the new Broadcom 802.11 STA Linux driver (aka broadcom-wl).

Starting with Fedora 12 in a few days, some Broadcom wireless cards (I don't yet know which ones) will begin to work "out of the box" as they say because of the built-in OpenFWWF driver. I now use b43 for which I have to install some firmware (60 seconds of work). But I'm sort of looking forward to trying out the new driver.

P.S.: The current Fedora kernel is 2.6.30.9-96.fc11.

[houserparker]

Stoat, thankyou for your reply.

[ravi]

Hi houseparker,

I have been unable to get BCM4322 working with broadcom-wl on F12 while it worked fine on F11. I hope that a new kernel/broadcom-wl will arrive soon that fixes this problem. Note that the 4322 is not supported by openfwwf at this time according to their webpage.

[houserparker]

Hi Ravi,

I ended up getting the broadcom bcm4322 working. All i did is as follows:-

From a fresh install of Fedora 12:-

1. Added rpm fusion repo using the following in terminal. Link http://rpmfusion.org/Configuration

su -c 'rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm'

2. yum update.

3. yum install broadcom-wl

After installation of broadcom-wl is complete close terminal and it should start working.

Let me know how you go.

[Waleed.harbi]

At the end you should install this package

yum install kmod-wl-`uname -r`

[ravi]

Hi houseparker,

Could you tell me whether you are in x86_64? On a fresh install of F12 along with the commands you describe, I could not get my BCM4322 card working. All the reports I have seen of BCM4322s not working in F12 are on x86_64.

To Waleed.harbi: installing broadcom-wl via yum pulls in the kmod directly for me without needing an explicit install command.

[houserparker]

Hi Ravi,

It was a fresh install of fedora 12 x86_64 off a DVD ISO.

Edit: Ravi,

One other note is that from what i have read there are different types and variations of the bcm4322 cards and some of them are not supported. This could be yours.

There is one other option i can think of if this is the case which would involve the use of proprietary drivers using ndiswrapper. I have seen post and stckies regarding this.

[griznog]

I have tried a couple of fresh installs of fedora 12 x86_64 on my Dell M2400 with the BCM4322 with no luck. None of the available rpmfusion choices work (broadcom-wl was what I used in Fedora 11 I think). I'm not sure what to do to troubleshoot it, as from all the logs and output I've been able to find there's no obvious error, it just doesn't work. Also tried building the wl module from the broadcom hybrid download with no luck.

this gets logged by network manager:

Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): driver supports SSID scans (scan_capa 0x01).
Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): new 802.11 WiFi device (driver: 'wl')
Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): exported as /org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/1
Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): now managed
Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): device state change: 1 -> 2 (reason 2)
Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): preparing device.
Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): deactivating device (reason: 2).
Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium NetworkManager: supplicant_interface_acquire: assertion `mgr_state == NM_SUPPLICANT_MANAGER_STATE_IDLE' failed
Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium NetworkManager: <info> modem-manager is now available
Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium NetworkManager: <WARN> default_adapter_cb(): bluez error getting default adapter: The name org.bluez was not provided by any .service files
Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium NetworkManager: <info> Trying to start the supplicant...
Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant manager state: down -> idle
Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): device state change: 2 -> 3 (reason 0)
Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium kernel: RPC: Registered udp transport module.
Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium kernel: RPC: Registered tcp transport module.
Nov 25 11:53:18 amusium NetworkManager: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: starting -> ready

Any clues about how to troubleshoot or fix this would be appreciated. I can plug in an external USB wifi adapter for access, so it's not a super-critical bug for me but would like to get this back to a working state as it was with Fedora 11. I also tried to use the Windows drivers with ndiswrapper, but when I modprobe to load ndiswrappers with the broadcom drivers installed, the modprobe hangs.

Thanks,

griznog

lspci:

0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)
Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1510 Wireless-N WLAN Mini-Card
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
Memory at f1ffc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: wl
Kernel modules: wl, ssb

relevent dmesg snippet:

wl: module license 'MIXED/Proprietary' taints kernel.
Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
wl 0000:0c:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
wl 0000:0c:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
firewire_core: created device fw0: GUID 434fc0003c053a01, S400
lib80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'TKIP'
eth1: Broadcom BCM432b 802.11 Wireless Controller 5.10.91.9
udev: renamed network interface eth1 to wlan0

[ravi]

griznog: This is exactly the same I issue I have with the exact same Dell 1510 card. The only difference I see is that you use wlan0 rather than eth0 (left over udev.rules from a long time ago, I guess), which should not matter. I will try a newer kernel from koji to see if that helps.

Edit: Alright, here's a "solution" which is undeniably horrid, but works:

Download kernel-2.6.30.9-100.fc11.x86_64 and kernel-devel-2.6.30.9-100.fc11.x86_64 RPMs from koji, install using rpm -ivh --oldpackage and reboot into that kernel. Lo and behold, wireless works! I know that the right thing to do is to debug the difference in calls to the wl shim between the two kernels but that calls for greater knowledge and commitment that I have this thanksgiving. Sorry!

[fred_m]

Hi Guys,

For Broadcom you can try to use the native driver of Broadcom for linux.
Check article bellow, I've write it in Portuguese but if you follow the steps you can get it to work.

http://www.madeira.eng.br/wiki/index...m+no+Fedora+12

Best Regards,

[griznog]

fred_m: in theory I should already be trying that, the broadcom_wl pulled in from rpmfusion is this driver I think. Just to be sure I have tried building it myself with the same results as other drivers, it loads and then remains disconnected in NetworkManager and I can't make it scan or enter scanning mode with any iw* tools.

ravi: Thanks, it's good to know there is a possible fallback and if nothing that solves this shows up soon I may try the older kernel approach.

I have upgraded to the kernel and kmod-wl from testing and can verify that it still does not work with my hardware. The lack of traffic with respect to this implies that a) I am doing something wrong or b) this is a hardware thing specific to my revision of the dell bcm4322 and there just aren't that many people seeing this issue. Unfortunately I need to be running x86_64 so switching to i686 isn't an option for me.

griznog

---------- Post added at 08:29 PM CST ---------- Previous post was at 11:23 AM CST ----------

Adding intel_iommu=off to the kernel parameters has fixed this on my Dell M2400 laptop. It's currently working with the broadcom-wl driver from rpmfusion. No idea why this works or what side effects there might be, but so far things seem fine.

griznog

[yurid]

griznog: Thank you! Adding intel_iommu=off has fixed problem on my Dell Latitude E6400.

[ravi]

griznog: Thank you. Just like yurid, adding intel_iommu=off fixed my problem as well. This is in line with kernels from F11 which had intel_iommu switched off by default. It seems that this sort of bug is triggered by hardware (BCM4322 in this case), rather than by software. Hence some Broadcom chips (say 4318) could work fine while others do not.

The main side effect is that KVM PCI device sharing does not work if you are running virtual machines.

[pkimball]

Thanks. Fixed my problem too. Is this being reported to either the kernel folks or Broadcom?