BCM4360 card compatibility with arch linux

ufospotting · 04-06-2019, 09:56 AM

Hi all, I'm pretty new to linux use and was trying to run arch for a hoot however I've not been able to get my BCM4360 card to show up as a wireless connection option in the "ip a" command. due to this I've been having a real humdinger of a time using the system at all and it appears there is not much support for Broadcom cards around. The b34 driver lists the hardware in question as unsupported so I was wondering if any of you have advice on drivers that may work?

I'm reasonably competent with basic linux use so please ask questions if you need any more info about the situation.

jsbjsb001 · 04-06-2019, 09:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ufospotting

Hi all, I'm pretty new to linux use and was trying to run arch for a hoot however I've not been able to get my BCM4360 card to show up as a wireless connection option in the "ip a" command. due to this I've been having a real humdinger of a time using the system at all and it appears there is not much support for Broadcom cards around. The b34 driver lists the hardware in question as unsupported so I was wondering if any of you have advice on drivers that may work?

I'm reasonably competent with basic linux use so please ask questions if you need any more info about the situation.

Open up a terminal window and then post the output of the following commands, using CODE tags;

Code:

lspci -nnk | grep -i -A3 net
dmesg | grep -i firmware

ufospotting · 04-06-2019, 10:23 AM

Thanks for the speedy reply

for the pci bus info I've omitted the cards other than the wireless card

Code:

09:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43a0] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Broadcom Inc. and Subsidiaries BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:0619]
        Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge
        Kernel modules: bcma, wl

Here's the kernel buffer

Code:

[    0.182496] Spectre V2 : Enabling Restricted Speculation for firmware calls
[    0.398587] ACPI: [Firmware Bug]: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored

jsbjsb001 · 04-06-2019, 10:30 AM

From your output it seems that the driver for your wifi card IS loaded - you can confirm this with the "lsmod" command. Can you post the output of the "ip a" command?

ufospotting · 04-06-2019, 10:40 AM

I think the issue might not be whether there is a driver, but which driver to use? I'm still very new to this sort of troubleshooting though. Also I cannot copy from one machine to another so I'm going to omit the "1: lo:" section for the sake of brevity. there are only two entries and I believe this one is just the Ethernet?

Code:

2: enp0s31f6: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state DOWN group default qlen 1000
      link/ether 1c:1b:0d:e1:7c:f1 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

jsbjsb001 · 04-06-2019, 10:47 AM

Hmmmm, I'd check if it's blocked, try running the command below to check. The "lo" is the "loopback interface", that's normal. Yes, your output only lists your ethernet interface.

Code:

rfkill list all

ufospotting · 04-06-2019, 10:51 AM

rfkill didn't have any output. an checking ip a again got the same result.

jsbjsb001 · 04-06-2019, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ufospotting

rfkill didn't have any output. an checking ip a again got the same result.

What exactly do you mean it "didn't have any output" ? Did you get any message on the screen at all - as you should have got something. If it was "command not found", then you need to install the package that contains the "rfkill" program.

ufospotting · 04-06-2019, 10:59 AM

nothing at all, no "command not found" just then next blank line in terminal.

rfkill is most definitely installed there just aren't any devices for it to work with I think.

jsbjsb001 · 04-06-2019, 11:07 AM

That's very strange, while it should still work without running it under the root user account; perhaps see if you get the same result running it as root instead (if you weren't before).

You could also have a look at this, although I'm not sure it mentions much that we haven't already covered. I suspect your wifi card might be blocked, and that's why you're not getting an interface for it. From what you've posted so far, it doesn't appear to be the lack of a driver, and it doesn't appear to be any missing firmware that's causing the problem.

There's also this page on the Arch Linux wiki as well.

ufospotting · 04-06-2019, 11:22 AM

Thanks for help troubleshooting. I will try the broadcom-wl driver instead and see if anything changes (I will close this thread if it works). there will be a long delay as it is 2:30 in the morning here, but having narrowed it down is nice.

jsbjsb001 · 04-06-2019, 11:30 AM

No worries. You could also try using your wifi card on another system, and if it works fine on that, then it's either blocked or it's a driver issue of some kind that's the problem.

Let us know how you go with it.