Network VM and Broadcom BCM43228 802.11a/b/g/n

[Lance Vermilion]

Hello,

I have a Dell Latitude E6430 and have loaded Qubes R2. Everything so far seems to be working except for Wifi. If I list the devices on PCI bus I see Network controller: Broadcomm BCM 43228 802.11a/b/g/n. If I left click Network Connections I see device not managed for the Ethernet Network I believe is associated with Wifi. If I right click Network Connections, left click Edit Connections I see the SSID of my local WAP but everything is grayed out. I figured the reason I can not connect to Wifi is because the Broadcomm BCM 43228 802.11a/b/g/n device was not associated with the the NetVM. So I added it to the NetVM and restarted Qubes R2 but still have the same problem.

Does anyone have any thoughts how I can resolve this?

TIA.

-Lance Vermilion

[Robin Green]

Yes! Just did a quick Google because I know Qubes is based on Fedora Linux, so generally most things that work in Fedora should work in Qubes:

From

http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/README.txt

here are some Fedora-specific instructions that should work on Qubes, if you run them in the TemplateVM and then restart the NetVM:

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'

su -

yum update

yum install kmod-wl

Note: rpmfusion is a third-party repo for a small number of packages that can't/won't be included in Fedora. It's used for things like MP3 support due to patent issues.

[Robin Green]

On 18 May 2013 11:26, Robin Green <gre...@gmail.com> wrote:

if you run them in the TemplateVM

and shutdown the TemplateVM, I forgot to say. 

[Marek Marczykowski]

Actually to use such packages with additional modules, you need set netvm
kernel to "none" (via qvm-prefs), then copy one of them from
/var/lib/qubes/vm-kernels to /var/lib/qubes/servicevms/netvm/kernels. File
list should look like this:
/var/lib/qubes/servicevms/netvm/kernels
/var/lib/qubes/servicevms/netvm/kernels/initramfs
/var/lib/qubes/servicevms/netvm/kernels/vmlinuz
/var/lib/qubes/servicevms/netvm/kernels/modules.img
Only then /lib/modules will be writable.
Perhaps even better will be creating new standalonevm as netvm (qvm-create
--standalone --net) - to have also other system files preserved across reboots
(like /etc or /lib/firmware).

Details:
http://wiki.qubes-os.org/trac/wiki/TemplateImplementation#modules.imgxvdd

@Joanna: perhaps we should use pvgrub and keep VM kernel (and modules) inside
of VM? This would ease solving problems with missing/outdated modules for
wireless interfaces.

--
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski
Invisible Things Lab

[Joanna Rutkowska]

Yeah, given we're not planning to implement untrusted storage domain, we
don't need to provide explicit kernels/initramfs for VMs. However, I
don't think we should change this mechanism at this moment, i.e. just
before the final Beta 3. Unless this was trivial...

joanna.

[Marek Marczykowski]

Not very complicated (I hope), but also not trivial. So indeed this isn't good
time for such change.

[Marek Marczykowski]

On 19.05.2013 03:11, Lance Vermilion wrote:
> You mention preserving across reboots. Does that mean the first suggestion
> is not persistent through reboots?

In non-standalone VM, all files outside of /rw are lost at VM reboot -
including /etc, /usr, /lib, rpm database etc.

/home and /usr/local are on /rw.
If you set kernel to "none", also /lib/modules is persistent (regardless of
standalone VM or not).

[Lance Vermilion]

Does this mean that I will be creating a standalone netvm and setting the kernel to none AFTER I have downloaded the RPM Robin suggested? Or would it be best for me to only do that yum update/install from the new netvm (I am calling netvmwifi)?

[Lance Vermilion]

I tried to do the creating of a standalone netvm and shortly after doing so I keep get a notification that says: "A problem in the polkit-0.107.4-fc18 package has been detected". It then wants a but report. What does this mean?

[Lance Vermilion]

All,

Thank you for all the help.

Here is where I am right now.

1.) I install the RPM for the "rpmfusion" repo in the template-vm (wish I didn't do that know, I think the standalone VM was a better idea after the fact).

2.) Copied the /var/lib/qubes/vm-kernels/3.7.6-2/* to /var/lib/qubes/servicevms/netvm. Created a standalone net vm "netvmwifi" with the kernel set to none.

3.) In the net vm "netvmwifi" I added the LAN NIC as a device so I could try doing certain installs. Stopped netvm and start netvmwifi.

4.) Test connectivity and tried the steps mentioned above but I was never able to succeed for the reasons I have put below.

Errors when attempting to get Broadcom kmod-wl installed via a variety of way:

A.) "yum install kmod-wl" results in a failure because there is not enough room for the 3.9.2-200.fc18 kernel update. I is asking for another 109MB of space.

B.) Tried to build from source but I can't do that because Qubes-R2 is running 3.7.6-2 custom qubes kernel and I can not seem to find the kernel-devel-3.7.6-2.pvops.qubes.x86_64.rpm anywhere in the qubes-os repo. If I had that RPM might be able to manually build the kernel-devel.

I thought about trying to downgrade to 3.7.4 because I was able to find the kernel-devel rpm (kernel-devel-3.7.6-2.pvops.qubes.x86_64.rpm) in the repo, but figure I would wait till I hear the answer to the question above.

I dug around on the rpmfusion repo a little bit and decided I would try just to install kmod-wl-3.7.6-201.fc18.x86_64-5.100.82.112-7.fc18.10.x86_64.rpm or kmod-wl-3.7.5-201.fc18.x86_64-5.100.82.112-7.fc18.9.x86_64.rpm but again I failed due to mismatch kernel version.

The last thing I tried was assigning the Wireless PCI device to the Windows 7 HVM I have install but I Windows 7 said it had hardware of Network Controller and PCI device (IIRC). I tried downloading drivers from Dell but that failed. I suspect the devices true identity isn't getting presented because if I put my Window 7 hard drive in place of the Qubes R2 hard drive everything is detect just fine. :(

I am starting to wonder if I am going to need to download source for qubes and build this set of RPMs so I can run this install and have a working system. :) If anyone can provide me the kernel-devel rpm (ideally via the repo) that would be great. I prefer not to do the source for obvious reasons.

BTW, I still have the really annoying error in the notification tray: "A problem in the polkit-0.107.4-fc18 package has been detected".

I am presuming it is a known issue that when you stop the VMs and try to remove a device from it you end up with the following window: "[Dom0] Houston, we have a problem..." "Whoops. A critical error has occured. This is most likely a bug in Qubes Manager. TypeError: C++ type 'list' is not supported as a signal argument type at line 42 of file /usr/lib64/python2.7/site-packages/qubesmanager/multiselectwidget.py".

[Philip Torrance]

On Thursday, May 16, 2013 11:22:43 PM UTC-7, Lance Vermilion wrote:

I have a Dell Latitude E6430 [ON THE HCL but with unspecified wifi ]

[...]  Network controller: Broadcomm BCM 43228 802.11a/b/g/n [...]

Does anyone have any thoughts how I can resolve this?

an HCL like XenClient XT's HCL: 

. it seems XenClient XT's HCL 

is trying to do the same thing as Qubes' HCL;

(google this: (your laptop) "XenClient XT"  site:citrix.com/ready)

and, their HCL includes such info as

the fact that not every wifi choice will do;

for instance,

the E6430 provided by Dell

http://configure.us.dell.com/dellstore/config.aspx?oc=slctt2&amp;model_id=latitude-e6430&amp;c=us&amp;l=en&amp;s=bsd&amp;cs=04

has an option to get a model of wifi chip,

the Dell Wireless™ 1504,

that is not listed by citrix as compatable;

http://www.citrix.com/ready/en/dell-inc/dell-latitude-e6430

and, 

it was just such an incompatability,

the "Broadcomm BCM 43228" 

that LV complained of back in May

and got no working response about .

. if I choose everything mentioned by Qubes HCL,

how would I choose a particular BIOS version?

. in order to get the right BIOS from Dell,

don't I need to request their VPRO option ?

. but wasn't it said on the Qubes dev or user list

that VPRO is not the only path to

having a BIOS that activates VT-d,

and that VPRO adds remote BIOS configurability

that you might not want for security reasons?

. does anyone expect Dell's BIOS to let VT-d work

without requesting the VPRO option?

[lordch...@googlemail.com]

Is there any experience if this is module is included in the qubes-os release 3 ?

[Marek Marczykowski-Górecki]

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https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/1261

Is that you?
Anyway I'm afraid it still doesn't work.

- --
Best Regards,
Marek Marczykowski-Górecki
Invisible Things Lab
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
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[Oliver Reinhardt]

Hey Marek,

no this isn't me.

but i am looking forward for a way to install my wifi card in my desktop pc. Right now i am using some kind of a wifi-bridge, to bypass the problems which isnt pleasent at all ;-).

But, I did experience some lags of the gui, when my wifi isn't disabled in the bios.

Do you know if the broadcom xen modules would work?

[tek...@gmail.com]

Hi,
I have a Dell E6420 with wlan controller BCM43228 running QubesOS R3.
At first I had freezes whenever adding the device to a netvm. Note: it seems that others BCM controllers have the same issue too (https://github.com/QubesOS/qubes-issues/issues/1261). After solving this issue by enabling PCI permissive mode for this device (see https://www.qubes-os.org/doc/AssigningDevices/ for how-to), I could assign it to a netvm but it still lacked a firmware to make it work.
I followed guideline from http://linuxwireless.sipsolutions.net/en/users/Drivers/b43/ to install B43 driver with firmware from broadcom's proprietary driver; note that I used driver version 6.30.163.46 (http://www.lwfinger.com/b43-firmware/broadcom-wl-6.30.163.46.tar.bz2) instead of version 5.100.138.
Now it works fine but only in 802.11b/g modes as 802.11n seems not supported by B43 driver yet.