[SOLVED] Yesteday's updates broke wireless Broadcom BCM4310 chipset HP Compaq 6720s

[dhruvraj]

I have the exact same issue on a Dell using BCM4310.

The driver was working seamlessly till the last time I updated packages (yesterday) - it shows not in use now, and if I enable it asks for a restart - after which it still says not in use. bah.

frustrating

Getting b43 to work seems like a never ending effort

[mringer]

I have a problem that looks superficially similar on different h-ware.
I cannot recall exactly
when I updated or what updates got installed, please is there a log somewhere? As a temp work-around I got wireless to work using this
post:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=684495

but the interface name has changed, it used to be eth1 & is now wlan0.

[pytheas22]

when I updated or what updates got installed, please is there a log somewhere?

Yes, type "gedit /var/log/dpkg.log" to view the log.

As a temp work-around I got wireless to work using this
post:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=684495

but the interface name has changed, it used to be eth1 & is now wlan0.

What exactly did you do from that post to get your card working? Did you install ndiswrapper, which would explain why eth1 changed to wlan0? If not, then let us know what you did because maybe a solution/workaround to the wl driver problem lies there.

Otherwise, switching to ndiswrapper would be a solution for everyone with this problem. You just need to add wl to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist, install ndiswrapper (sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper* ndisgtk) and then install the Windows drivers for your card. But hopefully the problem with the native driver will just be fixed soon.

[mexpolk]

The same with me...

$ dmesg | grep wl

[   24.390807] wl: module license 'unspecified' taints kernel.
[   24.390847] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_get
[   24.391028] wl: Unknown symbol wf_channel2mhz
[   24.391055] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_isr
[   24.391100] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_set
[   24.391141] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_statsupd
[   24.391183] wl: Unknown symbol bcm_bprintf
[   24.391320] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_dpc
[   24.391387] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_chipmatch
[   24.391434] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_reset
[   24.391518] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_sendpkt
[   24.391584] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_intrsrestore
[   24.391611] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_init
[   24.391641] wl: Unknown symbol bcm_parse_tlvs
[   24.391758] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_down
[   24.391801] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_iovar_getint
[   24.391844] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_iovar_setint
[   24.391884] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_up
[   24.391961] wl: Unknown symbol bcm_qdbm_to_mw
[   24.391988] wl: Unknown symbol bcm_mkiovar
[   24.392024] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_intrsoff
[   24.392052] wl: Unknown symbol bcm_mw_to_qdbm
[   24.392097] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_intrsupd
[   24.392123] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_ioctl
[   24.392164] wl: Unknown symbol wf_mhz2channel
[   24.392190] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_intrson
[   24.392217] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_attach
[   24.392273] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_iovar_op
[   24.392300] wl: Unknown symbol wlc_detach
[   24.392337] wl: Unknown symbol pktsetprio

Immediately after notice the problem, I tried to boot with older kernel but I only have revision 16 and 19. So no luck with booting with older kernel.

Hardy has been a mayor nightmare to me!!! I miss Gutsy | Feisty (performed better out of the box)

[mexpolk]

Update:

I tried installing linux-image-2.6.24-18-generic and nothing. Te driver isn't listed at all (wl).

[bdamon]

Same problem here. BCM4310

[mringer]

[snip]
What exactly did you do from that post to get your card working?

This is a long story, I will give outline only.

Dell Inspiron 1525, B-com 4310 (we all LOVE these, dont we?).
Installed X-Ub 8.04, network manager, and then ndiswrapper after
other attempts failed. Ref:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...eisty_No-Fluff

This worked partially. About 2 weeks ago I installed WICD which was working until yesterday. (July 4)

Late last night: updated lots of things including the Linux restricted modules mentioned in the first post.

This morning: wireless dead.

I am sure that I correctly remember that before the crash the wired net device was eth0 and the wireless was eth1. Now eth1 seems to have vanished, e.g.

sudo ifconfig eth1
error: no such device

To answer the actual question:

sudo ifconfig eth0 down
sudo ifconfig wlan0 down
sudo dhclient -r wlan0
sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid "X"
sudo iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
sudo dhclient wlan0

where "X" stands for the actual essid.

This worked for me. I am sorry but if it doesnt work for you, I cannot help any further.

[mexpolk]

I've found a post that fixed the problem, thanks to Nathan.Flow who posted it here.

1. Download latest stable ndiswrapper. And compile and install it (make, make install).
2. Download your latest AND CORRECT drivers. I've an XPS M-1330 with Broadcom BCM4310 USB, and I downloaded drivers from here.
2. Follow this instructions.

Hope that works for you also.

[qwallis]

It should also work to boot into the older kernel--at the boot menu you should have two different kernels to boot into. Choose the second one and see if the wireless works under that.

I got things working by stepping back to *14 which was still listed in GRUB: but I read other posts saying a clean install would work so tried that and am still suffering the problem with no other boot options.

Looks like you can add D-Link's DWL-G510 to the list of cards affected.

[otto3108]

I can also confirm problems after an upgrade to the latest kernel. I'm using Gutsy on a Compaq Presario C310 (Broadcom 4311) and upgraded to kernel 15 last night. No wireless found this morning, but reverting to previous kernel in the Boot loader has restored wireless functionality.