Ok I modified the /etc/modules file and put wl.ko on the list, and it does not run at start up, I just tried.

Modprobe does seem like it would be a much more useful command then... Thanks.

Maybe broadcom does have a problem with this kernel version. As you can see the kernel version is 2.6.31-17-generic, I'm not sure if it is supported or not.

I don't think you need the .ko, just having wl should be fine. I'm not sure if this will make a difference or not in terms of getting the module loaded at boot.

Unfortunately, Broadcom is no help in this either as they don't bother to tell us what kernels they actually do support. Googling isn't a lot of help here either. There are bug reports about wl not working with 2.6.31 very well, but a fair number of them appear to be user error, not necessarily a driver problem. However, one common problem seems to be that the ssb module interferes with wl. If you look in lsmod, is ssb loading?

Can I ask, is wireless the only issue you're having with Ubuntu? This seems to be unusually painful and my experience with Dells is that they run Linux fairly well. I guess I'm trying to figure out if this is a hardware issue or an Ubuntu issue and you might save yourself a lot of trouble with a different distro.

I think the ssb module is loading at boot, and if that conflicts, I bet that is the problem. Every time I do an lsmod search for it ssb shows up, and even after I use rmmod on it it comes back up the next boot... That must be the problem. Now that I think about it, it makes sense, since every time I rmmod the ssb and install the wireless drivers, wireless starts working... The question now I guess is how to permanently get rid of ssb.

Wireless is the only issue I am having with ubuntu so far, an ATI driver wouldn't load at first but I did get that one working, so wireless is the last thing that I am having any problems with. Out of curiosity though what other distros are similar to ubuntu?

And I'll modify /etc/modules to wl, not wl.ko.

is ssb listed in /etc/modules? If it is then it will be loaded on boot. Might be worth it to put a # at the beginning of the line to comment out ssb in /etc/modules. Then try rmmod and reboot to see if it loads.

There should be a file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist. If you add ssb to that file, in theory it will be prevented from loading. Now that said, I have seen a thread here suggesting that ssb is also used by the b43 driver which is for some of Broadcom's ethernet chips. I don't see b43 in your earlier lsmod but it would be a good idea to look in your lspci output and see what your wired ethernet chipset is.

I think Linux Mint is derived from Ubuntu as it claims to be able to use Ubuntu's repositories. I'm not sure that any of the other *buntus are going to be significantly different from Ubuntu. They usually just change the default GUI and use pretty much everything else from Ubuntu. Of course Ubuntu itself is derived from Debian.

This is list in my /etc/modules file.
lp
rtc
wl

This is the output of an lsmod search for ssb.

daniel@daniel-laptop:/$ lsmod | grep "ssb"
ssb 40944 0

I found the ssb driver module by the way, it is located in /kernel/drivers/ssb, and the only file in the ssb directory was ssb.ko.

I will try blacklisting it and see what happens...

I'll also do an lsmod search for b43 and do an lspci and find the wired ethernet.

Ethernet controller is:
Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller (rev 13)

Added ssb to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf & it still ran on startup... Tried ssb.ko as well, same result. I typed, in the file,
blacklist ssb

and it still ran on start, I checked with an lsmod.

Cripes. OK, I'm not sure that blacklist.conf is the right file. From what I've been reading, blacklist is the name that should be used. However, I'm not an Ubuntu user so I may be wrong about that. Still, it doesn't hurt to try creating a blacklist file with the same contents as blacklist.conf and see if it works.

I don't think that is the syntax. At least on Slackware, you just list the module name, so if you just had ssb on a line by itself, that might work.


That said, maybe we attack this from a different direction. You could add the needed commands to your /etc/rc.local file, which should run at the end of the boot cycle. So if you had something like:

That hopefully would removed ssb and load wl.


Hopefully that is good news. I think ssb is used pretty exclusively by Broadcom's junk.

I'm not sure about syntax for blacklist. The other modules that were blacklisted used the syntax that I did, but maybe it's different in slackware. Either way, it didn't work though. What did work is adding modprobe -r ssb to the /etc/rc.local file, and ssb didn't load anymore. However, my wireless still is not working... sigh. Maybe reinstalling the broadcom driver will do the trick, now that ssb isn't running to interfere. I'll try that when I get home.

Tried reinstalling the broadcom driver, no dice. I have no idea whats wrong. Maybe I should try another distro.

Yeah, there is definitely something off about this install. Like I said, I've heard people say good things about Mint, and that is closely related to Ubuntu. You also might try an older version of Ubuntu. If this issue is due to an incompatibility between the kernel in 9.1 and the wl driver, an older version might help. If you want to swim in much deeper waters, I've had almost no problems running Slackware on Dell hardware.

Ok sounds good. I'll try Mint, see how that works out. Thanks for all your help though. If nothing else, I've gotten a better feel for linux through all this.

I have same laptop same prob with Ubuntu wireless, solved it thus - using wired connection of course.Go to Package Manager, reload twice, select bcwm kernel set to install - allow to install, disconnect wired connection. reboot and click on wireless icon ... get connection.
Has worked for me Dell Inspiron, Vista dual boot and each of Ubuntu 9.10, Ubuntu NBR 9.10, Mint 8 (based on Ubuntu 9.1).

As per this link:

http://www.ubuntumini.com/2009/11/br...in-karmic.html

If you do make the switch, I'd be interested in hearing how it turned out.

Wow. I googled till my fingers bled and never saw that. Thanks for the link!

Hi,

I've been using 'The Broadcom Firmware (tar.gz)' from 'Missing your Wireless Drivers?' for a Dell Inspiron.

'Slackware 13.0 RC2 X86_64 Broadcom bcm4312 problems' may help you to understand some issues. Sure it's for Slackware but you should be able to hint from the thread. Which kernel are you using? You may need to patch it for the 'STA' to work.