WLAN B43 hardware/software annoyance

mkoco · 11-24-2009, 05:43 PM

Hi everyone, I'm having a strange problem. I've been using my wireless flawlessly for about a month, when suddenly last night, it died for no apparent reason! I reboot into windows (groan) and wireless works fine there, so its not a hardware problem per se.

In case you care, its a Dell e1705 laptop.

lspci:

Code:

                                                             
0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN (rev 01)

I was having to initialize the interface by hand with:

Code:

iwconfig wlan0 essid <blah>
dhclient wlan0

And that was working fine. But now when I turn the interface on with

Code:

ifconfig wlan0 up

I get some erratic behavior. I think its a bug I've read about where there is a hardware switch not agreeing with the driver turning on the radio or something? Look at this dmesg:

Code:

[/b43-phy0: Broadcom 4311 WLAN found
Broadcom 43xx driver loaded [ Features: PMLR, Firmware-ID: FW13 ]
input: b43-phy0 as /devices/virtual/input/input23
b43 ssb0:0: firmware: requesting b43/ucode5.fw
b43 ssb0:0: firmware: requesting b43/pcm5.fw
b43 ssb0:0: firmware: requesting b43/b0g0initvals5.fw
b43 ssb0:0: firmware: requesting b43/b0g0bsinitvals5.fw
b43-phy0: Loading firmware version 410.2160 (2007-05-26 15:32:10)
Registered led device: b43-phy0::radio
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
b43-phy0: The hardware RF-kill button still turns the radio physically off. Press the button to turn it on.
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to ENABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to ENABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to ENABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to ENABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to ENABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to ENABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to ENABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to ENABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
...... etc, etc.

There is no physical switch on my laptop, only by pressing Fn+F2 can I (de)activate my wlan card. But this doesn't seem to do anything in Slackware. Anyone ever encountered this or have some ideas?

Appreciate the help.

grissiom · 11-24-2009, 07:02 PM

Did you upgraded the kernel or something like that?

nimnull22 · 11-24-2009, 07:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by enkoan

Hi everyone, I'm having a strange problem. I've been using my wireless flawlessly for about a month, when suddenly last night, it died for no apparent reason!r

You are talking about Linux, not windows. Nothing can happen "for no apparent reason!".

mkoco · 11-24-2009, 07:32 PM

Its the stock slackware 13 kernel. In fact I just re-installed slackware 13 to make sure it wasn't some software settings I screwed up somehow. Updated the firmware, and its behaving exactly the same. @nimnull22: ...um, yeah.

Basically here is what happens. When I try to initialize the wlan card I get this:

Code:

Registered led device: b43-phy0::radio
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
b43-phy0: The hardware RF-kill button still turns the radio physically off.  Press the button to turn it on.

Which seems to suggest that I need to switch on the wireless interface by hand. There is often a switch like this on laptops. In my case (on this Dell e1705) its the key sequence Fn+F2. So, I do it.
Then this crap starts to happen...

Code:

b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to ENABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to ENABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to ENABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to ENABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to ENABLED
b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
....

This just goes on and on, switching back a forth every few seconds until I hit Fn+F2 again, turning the radio off by hand. I can't make any progress connecting to anything with that happening.

I'm pretty much at a loss about its cause.

grissiom · 11-24-2009, 07:47 PM

Hrm, it seems I have had problems like that before... But all the things go back to normal after a reboot in my case...

nimnull22 · 11-24-2009, 07:54 PM

You have to find that f**** keypressed daemon, it should be laptop specific stuff. It (I think) just writes 0/1 in /sys/modele/...
And you can simply modprobe -r b43, and then load it. May be it helps. Also disable bluetooth auto activation.

mkoco · 11-24-2009, 07:59 PM

Thank you, I thought along the same lines. What I did was, I just went into the BIOS and turned off the on/off switch for WiFi card all together. I never use it anyway. Then, like magic, problem solved.

Now I am a happy panda.

nimnull22 · 11-24-2009, 08:02 PM

Yes, but now it will be always ON - not good - it will eat battery.

grissiom · 11-24-2009, 08:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by enkoan

Thank you, I thought along the same lines. What I did was, I just went into the BIOS and turned off the on/off switch for WiFi card all together. I never use it anyway. Then, like magic, problem solved.

Now I am a happy panda.

Cool

I think it's a kernel bug and you may ask the kernel people by creating an entry in bugzilla.kernle.org. But I still cannot understand why "suddenly" it broken... Maybe non-fatal hardware failure?

mkoco · 11-24-2009, 09:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nimnull22

Yes, but now it will be always ON - not good - it will eat battery.

I usually don't turn it on and off. In fact, I never have. Makes sense that it would save battery life though, so I'll look into it. But after hours of struggling, this is a good enough solution for now.

nimnull22 · 11-24-2009, 09:25 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by enkoan

I usually don't turn it on and off. In fact, I never have. Makes sense that it would save battery life though, so I'll look into it. But after hours of struggling, this is a good enough solution for now.

No doubt.

You can try black list driver. When you decide to use wireless, just load it. I do that way.

mkoco · 11-24-2009, 10:08 PM

I did use 'modprobe -r b43' when trying to fix it. Is this considered the same as blacklisting?

nimnull22 · 11-24-2009, 10:16 PM

Result the same, you unload the module, but if you blacklist it module will not be loaded at all.