Hi,
I recently updated my 11 year old daughter's laptop (a hand-me-down Dell Inspiron 1501 she uses to help with her schoolwork) from lubuntu 12.04 to lubuntu 12.10.
Everything seemed to go OK except wifi no longer works.
Previously, I believe I needed to blacklist the ssb and b44 drivers and to enable the b43 driver, to match her wifi-only usage pattern. I recall seeing a post somewhere that said there was some sort of incompatibility between the b43 and (ssb+b44) combination - they should not be loaded in the same session. In any case, it worked in lubuntu 12.04 :)
After the lubuntu upgrade, there seems to be a link now between b43 and ssb. See example session below, where you can see that there is a new ssb_hcd driver that seems to be needed for b43, but it also brings the full ssb along too :(
Code:
$ lsmod | grep ssb
ssb_hcd 12749 0
ssb 50087 1 ssb_hcd
$ sudo modprobe -r ssb_hcd
$ lsmod | grep ssb
$ sudo modprobe b43
$ lsmod | grep ssb
ssb_hcd 12749 0
ssb 50087 2 ssb_hcd,b43
$ sudo modprobe -r b43
$ lsmod | grep ssb
ssb_hcd 12749 0
ssb 50087 1 ssb_hcd
$ sudo modprobe -r ssb_hcd
$ sudo modprobe -r ssb
$ sudo modprobe b43
$ lsmod | grep ssb
ssb_hcd 12749 0
ssb 50087 2 ssb_hcd,b43
Here is the output of sudo lsh -C network (with b43 and b44 enabled)
Code:
$ sudo lshw -C network
*-network
description: Network controller
product: BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=0
resources: irq:18 memory:d0200000-d0203fff
*-network UNCLAIMED
description: Ethernet controller
product: BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:08:00.0
version: 02
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm cap_list
configuration: latency=64
resources: memory:d0300000-d0301fff
*-network DISABLED
description: Wireless interface
physical id: 1
logical name: wlan0
serial: 00:19:7d:35:be:19
capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=b43 driverversion=3.5.0-18-generic firmware=666.2 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg
Note that the last block disappears if b43 is not enabled. The first block mentions b43-pci-bridge which is not recognised by modprobe. Interestingly, the last block has a serial that looks like a MAC address (of the Broadcom BCM4311 card?), the first one does not. Perhaps some combination of these blocks would be enough to get it working, but I've had no success so far with this.
I have noticed the wifi indicator light on the laptop case flash on briefly (< 1 second) when the laptop boots up.
I should mention the laptop has an F2 hotkey, which in its past Windows XP life, caused wifi to toggle on/off, but lubuntu does not seem to recognise it.
If I could get it to boot with wifi enabled, that would be great. As administrator, I am happy to enable a wired connection if necessary, but for obvious reasons I would prefer not to give extra privileges (e.g., to run modprobe) to my daughter.
I would be very grateful for any advice on how to resolve the issue- I have spent several fruitless hours trying various 'fixes' suggested in this and other forums :confused:
