Broadcom BCM4313 Wireless Sometimes doesn't Work on Startup [Ubuntu 11.04 64 bit]

[ramkumarh]

This is brilliant thanks to jsgosselin for starting this and chili555 for helping.

Summarizing the steps here for naive users like me:

sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

and add the following lines and save.

blacklist mac80211
blacklist brcm80211
blacklist cfg80211
blacklist wl
blacklist lib80211_crypt_tkip
blacklist lib80211

sudo vim /etc/rc.local

and add the following line before "exit 0" line in the file and save.

modprobe wl

Restart ubuntu!!

[nisarg127]

This is brilliant thanks to jsgosselin for starting this and chili555 for helping.

Summarizing the steps here for naive users like me:

sudo vim /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

and add the following lines and save.

blacklist mac80211
blacklist brcm80211
blacklist cfg80211
blacklist wl
blacklist lib80211_crypt_tkip
blacklist lib80211

sudo vim /etc/rc.local

and add the following line before "exit 0" line in the file and save.

modprobe wl

Restart ubuntu!!

This helped me to connect to my Wireless Network. However, my system hangs 2/3 times while shutting down. Moreover, if i turn-off my wi-fi and restart it my system hangs.
Any help??

[prashastha]

I am very happy that I found this thread, I have been facing the same problem for nearly 6 months now !! suspend/resume is a great work around and looks like it works every time thanks for this work around. I have still not been able to solve the dependencies can you explain the final solution to me, from what I read it looks like blacklisting the following:

mac80211
brcm80211
cfg80211
wl
lib80211_crypt_tkip
lib80211

and adding

modprobe wl to /etc/rc.local solved the issue.

Also from linux kernel 2.6.39 onwards the brcm driver has been changed to brcmsmac does this solution apply to the new version of driver as well ?

thanks!
Prashastha

[ramkumarh]

This problem reappeared with Ubuntu 11.10. And the steps I used above did not solve it. Any help would be appreciated. !!

The "Additional Drivers" utility shows "Broadcom STA wireless driver".. but clicking on "Activate" fails with the following message "Sorry, installation of this driver failed. Please have a look at the log file for details: /var/log/jockey.log "

/var/log/jockey.log had this:

2011-10-27 01:26:05,018 DEBUG: BroadcomWLHandler enabled(): kmod disabled, bcm43xx: blacklisted, b43: enabled, b43legacy: enabled
2011-10-27 01:26:05,531 DEBUG: BroadcomWLHandler enabled(): kmod disabled, bcm43xx: blacklisted, b43: enabled, b43legacy: enabled
2011-10-27 01:26:05,634 DEBUG: BroadcomWLHandler enabled(): kmod disabled, bcm43xx: blacklisted, b43: enabled, b43legacy: enabled
2011-10-27 01:26:06,014 DEBUG: BroadcomWLHandler enabled(): kmod disabled, bcm43xx: blacklisted, b43: enabled, b43legacy: enabled
2011-10-27 01:26:06,119 DEBUG: BroadcomWLHandler enabled(): kmod disabled, bcm43xx: blacklisted, b43: enabled, b43legacy: enabled

[dyh]

I am a complete novice, but I had a similar issue, where I could use the Windows Wireless application to install the drivers and wireless would work, but only until the next reboot. I solved the problem by using the "Additional Drivers" utility to deactivate the "Broadcom STA wireless driver".

Good luck!

[dyh]

I spoke to soon. Now the Wireless firmware is missing!

[dyh]

This did the trick:

"My wireless adapter is a Broadcom 802.11b/g BCM4306 and I just had to install the package firmware-b43-installer. It works now! Just simply a sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer command."

Source: http://askubuntu.com/questions/88854...-11b-g-adapter

[sportsdude81]

Hello,

I have a Dell Inspiron 14R installed with Ubuntu 11.04 64bit Natty upgraded from a fresh install of Ubuntu 10.10 Maverick.

My Wlan0 is a Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01). I'm using the Broadcom STA wireless driver version 2.6.38-10-generic and it works well.

However, sometimes on startup (~30% to 100% of the times), Network-Manager doesn't show any wireless network (although there is undoubtedly some). As a workaround, I Suspend/Resume. This as proven to solve the issue each time, but it is annoying to have to do this almost 50% of the time I open my computer. The problem was not present in Maverick, so it is probably something specific to my setup I've done wrong since then.

Would it be possible to have someone help me to trace back the source of my problem please? This would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks you very much. JS

*******************************

UPDATE:
The BCM4313 broadcom wireless card is compatible either with the open source brcm80211 driver directly included in the standard kernel or the proprietary broadcom-wl driver that can be installed from the Additional Drivers feature in Ubuntu (see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Broadcom_wireless and https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...Driver/bcm43xx for more informations). As explained in my OP statement, my wireless was not initiating properly on startup for whatever reason.

As a workaround, I first blacklisted the wl and brcm80211 modules and all their dependencies.

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

and added

blacklist mac80211
blacklist brcm80211
blacklist cfg80211
blacklist wl
blacklist lib80211_crypt_tkip
blacklist lib80211

after that I edited the rc.local file:

sudo gedit /etc/rc.local

and added, above exit 0

modprobe brcm80211

This way the module associated with the brcm80211 driver is loaded at the end of the boot process. If I would have liked to use the proprietary broadcom-wl instead, I would have modprobe wl instead of modprobe brcm80211.

This worked for me on my HP folio 13 except I used this in my rc.local

modprobe wl

Thanks so much

[sportsdude81]

Okidooki, I've tried it, but the issue still occurred on startup. To be sure, I blacklisted the mac80211, brcm80211 and cfg80211 modules before rebooting. wl and lib80211 were both loaded correctly it seems. Had to suspend/resume to make my wireless work as usual. Here is some more information coming from dmesg while the problem was occurring (if you could tell me how to use grep with multiple subjects, I would be grateful):

jsgosselin@jsgosselin-Inspiron-N4010:~$ dmesg | grep eth1
[   20.049478] eth1: Broadcom BCM4727 802.11 Hybrid Wireless Controller 5.100.82.38
[   37.047448] eth1: no IPv6 routers present
jsgosselin@jsgosselin-Inspiron-N4010:~$ dmesg | grep wl
[   19.782694] wl: module license 'MIXED/Proprietary' taints kernel.
[   19.859296] wl 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 17
[   19.859311] wl 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
jsgosselin@jsgosselin-Inspiron-N4010:~$ dmesg | grep lib80211
[   19.778059] lib80211: common routines for IEEE802.11 drivers
[   19.778063] lib80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
[   19.956391] lib80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'TKIP'

Note that the wl driver use eth1 for my wireless connection. It seems to be a known issue from what I've read on the net.

Also, there is something I should have said to you from the beginning. I'm not using the standard Ubuntu kernel. Instead, I'm using this:

uname -a
Linux jsgosselin-Inspiron-N4010 2.6.38-10-generic #44+kamal~mjgbacklight4-Ubuntu SMP Mon Jun 6 19:40:12 UTC 2011 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

This is from https://launchpad.net/~kamalmostafa/...l-mjgbacklight. I need this in order to be able to control the screen brightness of my computer, which is a feature quite important to me.

However, I've tried your suggestion on a standard kernel I still had installed on my computer,

uname -a
Linux jsgosselin-Inspiron-N4010 2.6.38-8-generic #42-Ubuntu SMP Mon Apr 11 03:31:24 UTC 2011   x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

,and the same behavior was also present.

I've done a little more research on my issue on the net and I will try to post here a summary of it soon. I think maybe I will have to recompile the bcmwl driver myself...this idea comes from https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=923608.

I have an HP folio and my brightness buttons don't work either. Is this what you fixed (not necessarily on an HP folio) with your custom kernel?