BCM4313 - 2 drivers installed, how to choose which is used?

[adamr]

I've got a BCM4313 in this Lenovo G580, and through various things I've got two drivers installed. wl and bcma.

The problem is bcma is terrible, the connection is slow and frequently drops. Using wl I have a great connection. However, the drivers load randomly, so sometimes bcma loads at boot, sometimes bcma, and I have no idea what I can do to stop bcma loading. I've tried adding it to the blacklist in /etc/modprobe.d/, but it's not making any difference.

Can anyone help either a) remove bcma (the driver that loads for that module is bcma-pci-bridge), or b) make sure wl is the one that loads.

Here is my lspci -vv :

02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)
   Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation Device 0587
   Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
   Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
   Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes
   Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 17
   Region 0: Memory at f0500000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
   Capabilities: <access denied>
   Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge
   Kernel modules: wl, bcma

[steeldriver]

Hmm... it looks like the bcma-pci-bridge driver might be manually loading the module so I'm not sure how you'd stop that. Unless you have a left-over 'modprobe' in /etc/rc.local for example (which would happen after the boot time blacklist)

There *are* documented ways of manually unbinding / binding drivers to devices (via /sys/bus/[pci|usb]/drivers/) if that's really what it takes - I've never done it though and I've never heard of it being necessary for the BCM4313

[adamr]

If I install the bcmwl-kernel-source drivers from additional drivers, nothing seems to happen. I've checked rc.local, there's nothing in there.

I've tried manually installing the broadcom drivers from their website, but the make fails because it's for an older kernel.

[Hadaka]

Hi, please post the output of..

lsb_release -a

 lspci-nn | grep 0280

 grep -i blacklist /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

thanks.

[adamr]

lspci -nn | grep 0280:

02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01)

grep -i blacklist /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:

blacklist evbug
blacklist usbmouse
blacklist usbkbd
blacklist eepro100
blacklist de4x5
blacklist eth1394
blacklist snd_intel8x0m
blacklist snd_aw2
blacklist i2c_i801
blacklist prism54
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist bcma-pci-bridge
blacklist bcma
blacklist garmin_gps
blacklist asus_acpi
blacklist snd_pcsp
blacklist pcspkr
# from being initialised (Ubuntu: #297750). Blacklist so that the driver
blacklist amd76x_edac

The bcma-pci-bridge and bcma lines in blacklist.conf are my attempt to stop it loading, which have failed so far.

[Hadaka]

Hi, try this..

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic
sudo apt-get install --reinstall bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo modprobe wl

sudo su
echo 'wl' >> /etc/modules

boot and see if that helps

*if the bcma is not removed, then delete the 2 bcma items you
put in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf. Then re-run the above commands
and the reinstall of wl will put all the bcma stuff in the blacklist file under
bcm43xx.....its magic

[adamr]

No difference.

It re-installed the driver by the looks ok it, but it's still using bcma-pci-bridge, despite showing bcma and wl as the kernel modules when I lspci -vv

[Hadaka]

Hi, if you havent already done so, please remove the 2
bcma items in the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf file
then..

 rmmod bcma 

and re-run this also please.

sudo apt-get install --reinstall bcmwl-kernel-source

[adamr]

I can't rmmod bcma:

adam@adam-Lenovo-G580 ~ $ sudo rmmod bcma
ERROR: Module bcma is in use by brcmsmac

[Hadaka]

Hi, fun stuff huh?
ok lets see just what modules you are loading at boot...

lsmod

thanks