Wireless driver broken on 12.04 upgrade

**mellery** · May 1st, 2012

Originally Posted by chili555

If kindly old Dr. Chili were the kind of person to curse, he'd start now. Your device is claimed by three competing drivers and none are b43! We have some work to do. First, let's try to get bcmwl-kernel-source going:

Code:

sudo su
apt-get remove --purge bcmwl-kernel-source
apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source
echo "blacklist bcma" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
echo "blacklist brcmsmac" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
echo wl >> /etc/modules
exit

If all this goes without drama, reboot and let us have your report.

I think there is a very slight possibility that one of the two that we blacklisted is correct. I hope I'm wrong.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/12355...king-correctly

I found this post, and it says to try brcmsmac, I'll try it tonight. Where did you see that 3 drivers were claiming my card?

**chili555** · May 1st, 2012

I found this post, and it says to try brcmsmac, I'll try it tonight. Where did you see that 3 drivers were claiming my card?

In modinfo:

Code:

chili@LAPTOP60:~$ modinfo wl | grep 4727
alias:          pci:v000014E4d00004727sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
chili@LAPTOP60:~$ modinfo bcma | grep 4727
alias:          pci:v000014E4d00004727sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
chili@LAPTOP60:~$ modinfo brcmsmac | grep 4727
alias:          pci:v000014E4d00004727sv*sd*bc*sc*i*

Your device is listed in the aliases for all three drivers.

Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01)

I have had several other cases where wl, the driver provided by the elusive brcmwl-kernel-source, works fine. That's not to say that brcmsmac wouldn't; we just haven't tried it. It should be easy to test:

Code:

sudo modprobe brcmsmac
iwconfig

Do you get a wireless interface? Can you connect?

Frankly, I don't understand how the answers at Askubuntu can be relied on without confirming the exact device in lspci. The pci.id, which was never listed there is, in my humble opinion, everything.

**mellery** · May 1st, 2012

Your device is listed in the aliases for all three drivers. I have had several other cases where wl, the driver provided by the elusive brcmwl-kernel-source, works fine. That's not to say that brcmsmac wouldn't; we just haven't tried it. It should be easy to test:

Code:

sudo modprobe brcmsmac
iwconfig

Do you get a wireless interface? Can you connect?

Success! The above two commands got me working wireless, they didn't take effect after reboot so I had to run them again. Is there a way to automatically modprobe the driver? Thanks for all the help.

**chili555** · May 1st, 2012

Awesome! Did you blacklist as I suggested above? Please do:

Code:

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

Make sure these lines appear:

Code:

blacklist bcma
blacklist wl

Proofread, save and close gedit. Now do:

Code:

sudo gedit /etc/modules

Make sure this appears:

Code:

brcmsmac

If any other Broadcom driver is in there except brcmsmac, remove it. Proofread, save and close gedit.

You should be all set. If so, please use thread tools at the top to Mark Solved.

**mellery** · May 1st, 2012

everythings working great now, marking as solved. Is there any reason to get the wl driver working in the future on my laptop (better support/stability/features, etc)?

Thanks again