LinuxQuestions.org - [SOLVED] Slackware 14 and the infamous BCM4313

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Slackware 14 and the infamous BCM4313

Hello fellow slackers, I need your assistance. I've installed Slackware 14 (32-bit) and the broadcom driver provided by SlackBuild.org but I cannot get my dell laptop vostro 3300 to active my wireless port eth1. I had no problem with this when I was using Slackware 13.37. On my first attempt, I blacklisted the b43legacy items as indicated by Slackbuild and compiled and installed the broadcom-sta driver. After reboot, my "iwconfig" showed no eth1 device. I then compiled the fwcutter, firmware and legacy items and undid my blacklist and reinstalled broadcom-sta and still got no eth1. I did a little bit of research and according to http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43 my BCM4313 is not supported by fwcutter. I unstalled fwcutter, firmware and legacy, re-implemented the blacklist and re-compliled broadcom and re-installed and still got no eth1. I played around with loading different kernels (generic, huge) but still wasn't able to get eth1 to come up. This laptop is dual-booting Xubuntu 12.04 and wireless is working flawless on that distro so I don't think it would be hardware related. I waited so long for Slackware 14 to be released and now I can't get over the wifi hump, any help would be appreciated. The following is my laptop status.

root@naaltsoos:~# lsmod
Module Size Used by
snd_seq_dummy 1119 0
snd_seq_oss 24956 0
snd_seq_midi_event 4568 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 41599 5 snd_seq_midi_event,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_dummy
snd_seq_device 4276 3 snd_seq,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_dummy
snd_pcm_oss 33254 0
snd_mixer_oss 12984 1 snd_pcm_oss
ipv6 238549 18
cpufreq_ondemand 5272 4
speedstep_lib 2567 0
acpi_cpufreq 4977 1
mperf 923 1 acpi_cpufreq
freq_table 2103 2 acpi_cpufreq,cpufreq_ondemand
lp 7119 0
ppdev 4710 0
parport_pc 16755 0
parport 26159 3 parport_pc,ppdev,lp
fuse 58282 3
btusb 10108 0
bluetooth 132835 1 btusb
usbhid 31118 0
hid 65824 1 usbhid
joydev 7668 0
uvcvideo 55700 0
videodev 66999 1 uvcvideo
ums_realtek 6148 0
uas 6464 0
dell_wmi 1209 0
sparse_keymap 2492 1 dell_wmi
snd_hda_codec_idt 47698 1
dell_laptop 9392 0
brcmsmac 508474 0
dcdbas 4308 1 dell_laptop
i915 372988 8
cordic 805 1 brcmsmac
crc8 796 1 brcmsmac
brcmutil 2847 1 brcmsmac
drm_kms_helper 22825 1 i915
mac80211 202703 1 brcmsmac
snd_hda_intel 19503 4
drm 151850 4 drm_kms_helper,i915
snd_hda_codec 70505 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_idt
psmouse 54408 0
i2c_algo_bit 4543 1 i915
snd_hwdep 4802 1 snd_hda_codec
serio_raw 3349 0
evdev 7314 11
snd_pcm 59013 4 snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
cfg80211 145277 2 mac80211,brcmsmac
i2c_i801 6952 0
snd_page_alloc 5925 2 snd_pcm,snd_hda_intel
intel_agp 8712 1 i915
i2c_core 16454 6 i2c_i801,i2c_algo_bit,drm,drm_kms_helper,i915,videodev
snd_timer 14798 3 snd_pcm,snd_seq
intel_ips 10370 0
rfkill 12432 4 cfg80211,dell_laptop,bluetooth
intel_gtt 11571 3 intel_agp,i915
r8169 42347 0
snd 43657 17 snd_timer,snd_pcm,snd_hwdep,snd_hda_codec,snd_hda_intel,snd_hda_codec_idt,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm_oss, snd_seq_device,snd_seq,snd_seq_oss
mei 27885 0
soundcore 4570 1 snd
agpgart 22087 3 intel_gtt,intel_agp,drm
mii 3335 1 r8169
wmi 7255 1 dell_wmi
thermal 6587 0
battery 9119 0
video 9938 1 i915
processor 23020 1 acpi_cpufreq
thermal_sys 12122 3 processor,video,thermal
ac 2563 0
button 3665 1 i915
hwmon 1033 1 thermal_sys
loop 14650 0
root@naaltsoos:~# uname -a
Linux naaltsoos 3.2.29-smp #2 SMP Mon Sep 17 13:16:43 CDT 2012 i686 Intel(R) Core(TM) i3 CPU M 370 @ 2.40GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
root@naaltsoos:~# lspci -nnk|grep -A3 Net
12:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4727] (rev 01)
Subsystem: Dell Inspiron M5010 / XPS 8300 [1028:0010]
Kernel driver in use: brcmsmac
13:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller [10ec:8168] (rev 03)
root@naaltsoos:~#

wolfslacker,
Here are some good reference URL's for your Broadcom [14e4:4727]
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/brcm80211
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers

If you just want the Firmware, you can download it from this URL:
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kerne...x-firmware.git
Download, and Extract. You will be copying these files according to the above URL's instructions.

Kernel driver in use: brcmsmac and your lsmod shows it is installed.

Check /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf just to verify what drivers are blacklisted.

The following ROOT commands:

Code:

ifconfig

iwconfig

will tell you what the Wifi Interface is detected as.

Once all that information is correct, this URL will help you get it going:
http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/...ckware:network

Larry

The BCM4313 is NOT supported by the B43 driver, it's supported by the brcm80211 driver.

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/brcm80211

You will need the firmware from here:

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kerne...x-firmware.git

Copy brcm/bcm43xx-0.fw and brcm/bcm43xx_hdr-0.fw to /lib/firmware/brcm (or wherever firmware is normally installed on your system).

and you may have to reconfigure your kernel as such:

Code:

Location: -> Device Drivers



    -> Network device support



        -> Wireless LAN



            -> <M> Broadcom IEEE802.11n PCIe SoftMAC WLAN driver



            -> <M> Broadcom IEEE802.11n embedded FullMAC WLAN driver



                ->[*] SDIO bus interface support for FullMAC driver



                ->[*] USB bus interface support for FullMAC driver

Code:

Location: -> Device Drivers



    -> Broadcom specific AMBA



        -> <M> BCMA support



            ->[*] Support for BCMA on PCI-host bus

and then rebuild the kernel and modules. Your driver modules will be either:

brcmsmac - For PCIe/MiniPCI cards

or

brcmfmac - For motherboard embedded controllers.

Thanks lkraemer, from what I gather, brcm80211 will support the BCM4313 device so I would need to replace the original brcmsmac that came with Slackware 14 install. Prior to installing brcm80211, I would need to update my firmware files (brcm/bcm43xx-0.fw and brcm/bcm43xx_hdr-0.fw) which I did. Now the confusing part, for downloading the brcm80211 driver, I was directed to http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Download/stable/ and from there I downloaded the "compat-wireless-3.2.5-1.tar.bz2" file which seemed to match my slackware kernel. I followed the unpacking, building and installing direction from the url but the install hit an error(1). I also got numerous "invalid option -- 'l'" messages during the build. So in the end, I'm still unable to activate my eth1 wireless device.

I'm surprise I'm having a difficult time with this and I can hardly find anyone else who is plague with this same problem. It leads me to believe that maybe I overlooked something simple.

Your wireless card should be wlan0, not eth1.

Hi!

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...43-4175414370/

After Patrick started compiling the kernel with the CONFIG_BRCMSMAC option my BCM4313 works out of box.

From lspci:

12:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)

Just check your rules for udev because your card may be listed as "eth1", not "wlan0".

To change that, you can add:
SUBSYSTEM=="net", ACTION=="add", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="<mac-address>", ATTR{dev_id}=="0x0", ATTR{type}=="1", KERNEL=="wlan*", NAME="wlan0"

to /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules

The udev problem should be fixed by now.

Thanks all, I guess I was over-complicating things. I re-installed Slackware 14 and treated wlan0 as eth1. To be more specific, I did the following.
1) # iwconfig wlan0 up
2) I ran the wpa_passphrase to get my pre-share key.
3) I then entered my ssid and psk into /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
4) I next ran # wpa_supplicant -B -Dwext -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
5) dhcpcd wlan0
and I was happily greeted with a broadcast lease. The pro to using wlan0 is that I didn't have to install a broadcom driver, which probably made things more complicated. The con is that in the past, I use to use the command "# iwlist eth1 scan" to scan for available broadcasts. The same command doesn't work with wlan0. Is there an equivilent command to get wlan0 to scan the airwaves?

Slow boot in re-enabling gpu turbo...

There is something else I should mention in case anyone else is having a similar issue during boot. I would get a "i915 driver attached, reenabling gpu turbo" message followed by a 10 second pause and then a message saying "worker [1547] timeout, kill it". After a little bit of research, I found a remedy to this problem.

1) Insert the following in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
blacklist b43
blacklist brcmsmac
2) Insert the following in /etc/rc.d/rc.local
modprobe b43
modprobe brcmsmac