The wireless card in my Samsung laptop is identified as a Broadcom BCM43225 802.11b/g/n: Vendor ID: â0x14e4 Device ID: â0x4357 Sub vendor ID: â0x185f Sub device ID: â0x04db Mageia 1 automatically choose the brcm80211 driver for this card. This worked without any problems. Mageia 2 wants to use the Broadcom wl driver, and falls back to the b43 driver when the wl driver is not available. The b43 driver has never worked with my card in any of the alpha or beta releases. On installation it fills up /var/log/messages with continual messages that the necessary firmware files can't be found: kernel: b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43/ucode16_mimo.fw" not found kernel: b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43-open/ucode16_mimo.fw" not found Using b43-fwcutter to generate these files quietens it down, but it still won't associate with my AP (I did once get a connection, but could never repeat it). The wl driver worked in alpha 2, except that it wouldn't associate with a hidden SSID (which is a feature I need). In alpha 3 it would continually disconnect/reconnect (bug 4206). In beta 2 it won't associate with my access point at all. By blacklisting both the wl and the b43 drivers, and installing the kernel-nonfree-firmware package, I have got the system to use the brcmsmac driver. This works perfectly, provided I disable NetworkManager. The continuing irritant is that when I run any of the drakx-net tools, they try to install the wl driver and break my setup. drakroam doesn't even ask before doing this.
CC: (none) => lists.jjorgeAssignee: bugsquad => mageia
Thank you for the report. Can you please provide more details about the wireless card so we can add it in our pci.ids file? I have a very similar hardware, that works nicely with b43 driver now, while it did not with MAgeia 1, so it is not simple to associate a driver with Broadcom hardware. (vendor:14e4 device:4353 subv:103c subd:1510) (rev: 01)
Thank you José. Here is the relevant output from 'lspci -nnv'. 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43225 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4357] (rev 01) Subsystem: Wistron NeWeb Corp. Device [185f:04db] Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16 Memory at c0600000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3 Capabilities: [58] Vendor Specific Information: Len=78 <?> Capabilities: [48] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit+ Capabilities: [d0] Express Endpoint, MSI 00 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting Capabilities: [13c] Virtual Channel Capabilities: [160] Device Serial Number 00-00-b1-ff-ff-28-00-1b Capabilities: [16c] Power Budgeting <?> Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge Kernel modules: bcma Let me know if there is any more information you need.
CC: (none) => marja11Blocks: (none) => 5015
I'm not sure we should change the default driver : wl works on my system, and bug 3398 shows that brcmsmac is still a buggy driver on some configurations. As example, on my BCM43224 the LED is always off, while it behaves normally with b43 and wl drivers...
You can workaround drakxtools selection editing this file : /usr/share/ldetect-lst/pcitable.d/90default.lst.gz
brcmsmac was disabled by default in the 3.2 kernel (due to conflicts with other drivers), but has been brought back in the 3.3 kernel, so old bugs may no longer be present. But you are probably right not to change the default until there is more evidence that the brcmsmac driver has become stable. Thanks for the tip about working round the drakxtools selection.
There is for now a mess in Broadcom WiFi * b43 driver is the first which was written, needs unredistributable firmware files * wl is proprietary, and supports only recent hardware * brcmsmac and brcmfmac was written by Broadcom employees in open-source, and supports only recent hardware So for now, let's keep the wl defaulted.
Status: NEW => RESOLVEDResolution: (none) => FIXED
It is for sure a mess! One thing that concerns me is that we get lots of message in the forum from users who can't get their WiFi to work. Teaching inexperienced/non-technical users how to change the default driver takes time (and sometimes they just give up and go looking for another distribution). I was wondering if there was a way to add this ability to MCC. Maybe in harddrake, as well as having a button to run the config tool for a device, have another button that allows the user to select a different driver module. Does this sound like a good idea? I would be willing to have a go at coding it, if there is an agreement that it would be useful.
Of course such a work is welcome. I feel the best is to do like for Graphical drivers : - a proprietary version exists, do you want to use it?