Broadcom 802.11 Wireless Lan Adapter

[Saurabh Cloudas]

Sorryyou ran into this issue, but unfortunately, the PC market has recently been flooded with lots of flaky poorly documented combo WiFi/Bluetooth hardware chipsets which work like crap in Linux (and often in Windowz as well) and Broadcom is one of the WORST offenders.

This situation has regressed Linux by about a decade and a half back to the point where, if you want your WiFi and Bluetooth to work properly, you really need to check to make sure that the fancy new laptop or netbook you are considering has good Linux driver support BEFORE you plonk down the cash to buy it.

Hi

I do thank you very much for your help!I performed some commands that might be useful to find out what kind of wireless adapter I have and what kind of driver I need.When you will have time, could you take a look to the attachments?Thank you very much!Kindest regards!

Hi SteveThank you very much for trying to help me! I attach the result of some commands I performed. If you will be so kind, could you take a look at the attachments? Could you find out what should I do next?Thank you very much!Kindest Regards!

I got the following info from a post KerfufflyKitty posted in the old forums back in January 2018. I think the info is very useful for those with Broadcom WiFi cards/chips, so I'm going to add the info to the new forums.

downhill Just to confirm this is still valid as a fix using the latest Kernel and drivers.

The LTS kernel had no issues with the WiFi once the drivers were installed but the current kernel need the cmd posted to get it working.

Many Thanks for this valuable info.

Device= Old MacBook Pro with intel core 2 duo

downhill That's not remotely accurate. Most broadcom cards work fine after installing the broadcom-sta-current package and there are quite a few that work without even needing that. You will need to restart your computer for the Kernel to detect the hardware and load the new modules. I am unsure why your specific card requires that additional step, but if it is anything like what I have seen, it probably isn't officially supported by the driver.

downhill - - - dang I have been messing with this silly Broadcom in this old Gateway Laptop and nothing was getting it to show the WiFi wireless network in house or neighbors.

All I did was copy and paste what you had Downhill and did the restart and it works like a freaky champ on restart, shows mine and the 6 others I can tag in to.

The Broadcom drivers available with Solus do not work for all models (specifically for those below bcm4312). I have an old Dell laptop with the bcm4311, and it was always a hassle to get it installed in any version of Linux (Manjaro being the exception, as the correct drivers are included with the ISO) until I read somewhere that once the Broadcom drivers were properly extracted, they could be copied and used on any system. So, if anyone is struggling with installing Broadcom wireless drivers for a bcm4311 (it may work for other models also), I have uploaded the b43 firmware folder and if you follow the instructions below, it should install without a hitch.

Dang! I gave up hope with my older Dell Latitude with the broadcom drivers in it. I spent days trying to troubleshoot it on ubuntu. When I installed Solus, there was no change. Which I just figured it was a Linux thing in general.

I have updated my laptop yesterday. Unfortunately, since the update, my Broadcom BCM43142 doesn't work anymore.

A few months ago, I get my wifi working thanks to the instructions of this thread.

I tried to reinstall the driver, following these instructions with no success.

Maybe I will wait for some updates.

Just wanted to point out that as of end of July 2020, after fresh install of Solus 4.1 Plasma on to an older ASUS laptop with BCM43142, still had to follow the steps from post #1 to make WLAN working.

I ran the sp72931.exe and it updated the driver to 6.30.223.267 but it didn't solve the problem. The Device Manager, network adapter, Broadcom... says the device is working properly, but the wireless status indicatore in the lower right side of the display either indicates an error condition that the troubleshooter can't solveor is puts the adapter into Airplane Mode. Same results as before.

The .267 driver didn't work. However, I reinstalled Win 10 from scratch (from Microsoft, not from the HP recovery partition), and the wireless adapter started working. I downloaded the Win 10 critical updates during the installation fine, powered down and up, and loaded some other software just fine. Then the outstanding Win 10 automatic updates got downloaded and installed, and the wireless adapter stopped working. So, something in the WIn 10 updates is causing the problem. What can I do now?

Now for the slightly embarrassing conclusion. I ran the troubleshooter, and instead of pointing to the wireless adapter, it pointed to the router. There is nothing wrong with the router, so I tried the lowest possible low-tech solution and moved the computer closer to the router. It worked fine. I think the reinstall of Win 10 cured the problem, since it was working after that before it stopped. Who knows why it couldn't make the connection to the router, but after it got the connection it held it when I took the computer back to the original location.

Hey,

I am a newbie, or rather an Arch-newb. Booted the iso live, only to see that it does not show the card. Tried using rfkill, tried installing b43 drivers from AUR, installed NetworkManager, broadcom-wl, broadcom-wl-dkms, searched through the entire internet, but none of them seem to work. The most fascinating stuff, though is that I have Garuda Linux installed (drivers initially did not work though) but synced the repositories, rebooted the system and the network card just magically worked.

I also tried doing the same with arch linux but in vain. Copied Garuda Linux drivers to Arch Linux but still did not work.

Is this dependent on the kernel installed?

Yes, you don't have the wl driver (properly) installed and there's no working driver for the chip (hence the bcma-pci-bridge module, which is not a broadcom wireless driver)

I guess the b43/bcma drivers are blacklisted by the wl package, but the module doesn't fit the kernel.

Please post the verbatim outputs of

In a similar problem of mine with a BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43a0] (rev 03) , it was necessary to blacklist the modules bcma brcm80211 brcmsmac through /etc/modprobe.d/

The choice rmmod / modprobe (as terminal command) has no result for this chipset. There is a big conflict with the modules.

For example you can try to blacklist the modules bcm43xx ssb b43 b43legacy ndiswrapper brcmfmac bcma brcm80211 brcmsmac, all of them or one by one .....

Properly unloading all the relevant modules "should" work but I'm not entirely certain on all the modules involved here. The problem is that the problem starts on the live disk and any blacklist you define would not persist, an option to ensure they are blacklisted would be using the command line. I was also under the impression the live disk should already blacklist the non-wl modules

Unloaded these kernel drivers and tried to load back wl but received a 'FATAL' message, saying that the driver (or module?) was not found at a specific location. Would you like me to post the full error message?

Please always post all the outputs you get in full for everything, otherwise if you blankly state "doesn't work" we don't know whether that was due to an error in your execution of the command, an error in general, or whether it might be an outright incompatibility that we can't do much about.

Based on what you mentioned it sounded like the commands went through successfully but you still didn't get an interface allocated, which is an entirely different issue to look at than outright failure to load the module.

Note that if you actually installed the system now you need to explicitly install the broadcom-wl package it isn't going to be inherently part of your installation, that package should in turn already have all the proper blacklists. In doubt post the outputs seth asked for in #9

Why is this the archiso again? I was under the impression you had installed the system what lead to the situation in post #16/#17 ???

Is the output in #21 from the iso or the installed system?

What's the output of

Broadcom has a noted history with its support for Wi-Fi devices regarding GNU/Linux. For a good portion of its initial history, Broadcom devices were either entirely unsupported or required the user to tinker with the firmware. The limited set of wireless devices that were supported were done so by a reverse-engineered driver. The reverse-engineered b43 driver was introduced in the 2.6.24 kernel.

In August 2008, Broadcom released the 802.11 Linux STA driver officially supporting Broadcom wireless devices on GNU/Linux. This is a restrictively licensed driver and it does not work with hidden ESSIDs, but Broadcom promised to work towards a more open approach in the future.

In September 2010, Broadcom released a fully open source driver. The brcm80211 driver was introduced in the 2.6.37 kernel and in the 2.6.39 kernel it was sub-divided into the brcmsmac and brcmfmac drivers.

To know what driver(s) are operable on the computer's Broadcom wireless network device, the device ID and chipset name will need to be detected. Cross-reference them with the driver list of supported brcm80211 and b43 devices.

An Internet connection is the ideal way to install the broadcom-wl driver; many newer laptops with Broadcom cards forgo Ethernet ports, so a USB Ethernet adapter or Android tethering may be helpful. If you have neither, you will need to first install the base-devel package during installation. Then, use another Internet-connected computer to download linux-headers and the driver tarball from the AUR, and install them in that order.

Monitor mode is used to capture 802.11 frames over the air. This can be useful for diagnosing issues on a network or testing the security of your wireless network. Often, monitor mode is required to capture certain frames for wireless penetration testing, but it may be unethical or even illegal to capture frames on any network you do not own, manage or have permission to perform penetration testing against.

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