Observations of the BCM4318

[tandrews16]

After admitting defeat at trying to get a Realtek-based USB dongle to work properly with 32-bit Mageia 2, I bought a Dell 0CU690 PCI card on eBay. Essentially a re-branded Asus WL 138G V2, it uses the BCM4318 chip, which I had used successfully with Mageia 2 on another computer.

The computer I'm using, a Dell Dimension E310, currently has two installs of Mageia 2 on it, one on each hard drive. With one of them, I used b43-fwcutter and the reverse-engineered b43 driver, as outlined on http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43. This worked excellently, showing a consistent "link level" of 100.

I tried something else on the other install, the Mageia b43-openfwwf package and the open-source driver included in the kernel. This one worked too, but not quite as well as the first one, showing a link level that varied from 84-88. Back to the other install, and the link level is back to 100 again.

I'll leave it to more experienced users than me to draw conclusions from this, but for my part I'll continue to use the b43 driver.

[superjoeuser]

I've had no luck at all with the Mageia packages. And what's worse is that the old driver is replaced on the latest updates killing all wireless function. This has happened on 2 different computers (Dell and Gateway laptops). After several hours of experimentation, I am able to fix the problem quickly when it happens but it's annoying. Also, I'm not sure what packages are doing this so I'm only going to be guessing which update packages to uncheck before clicking install.


Should I or someone else file a bug report? Has one been filed? I ask only because nothing recent is coming up on this problem. I thought for sure this would have shown up in recent posts but I haven't seen anything. Several friends that use Mageia 2 have this wireless chip and have called me in a panic so it's taken a fair amount of my time to rescue everyone.

[tandrews16]

So far, I've applied the most recent updates to the two machines we have that use the b43 driver, the Dell described above, and a custom-built desktop using a Biostar motherboard and Athlon XP CPU. No problems with either, though I haven't really used them very much yet. I haven't updated the system using the b43-openfwwf driver yet, so I can't report on that.

My experience in this area is extremely limited. I'm a fumbler who stumbles around until he falls over something that works, learning bits and pieces along the way - just enough to get me into trouble from time to time. You need to get the attention of someone who knows more than I do, with more specific information on your particular situation than you've given here. I suggest you start a new thread, with those specifics. It may be that a bug report is indicated. Or it may be just something simple that you missed.

[superjoeuser]

I figured I'd start here and see what happens. I'm like you. I've been using Mandriva/Mageia for several years and have installed on lots of different hardware (lot's of friends use it because of me) so have dealt with this broadcom issue on more than one occasion. But the weird thing is that the wireless works from the live CD and the install keeps working then as soon as the updates happen, it's dead and I have to go through the ritual of getting the b43 driver working again. So far, it's been 2 computers.

[tandrews16]

All my installs have been from the DVD, and of course that means no proprietary drivers or firmware. I've only tried a Mandriva/Mageia live cd once, and then not with the wireless card. I know the live cd has proprietary drivers, but I'm not sure what driver might have been installed by it. Are you sure the b43 driver was used? There's also a proprietary Broadcom wl driver, and the b43-openfwwf driver I mentioned before. From what I've read, each one has had problems with certain Broadcom 43xx chips, and it's not a good idea to have more than one installed at the same time.

A stab in the dark, while wearing a blindfold... Is dkms installed? Not having that installed is often the cause of drivers not working after a kernel update. I have dkms and dkms-minimal on both of my bcm4318-using computers. I don't have dkms-broadcom-wl installed - that's the above-mentioned proprietary driver.

Again, I'm fumbling. Not someone whose advice should be trusted implicitly.

[superjoeuser]

Well here's something interesting. I decided to install Mageia 3 beta on the Dell to 1) see if the problem is the same as with version 2 and 2) check out the changes between M2 and M3. Like M2, the wireless worked out of the box but unlike M2, the wireless continued working after I updated and rebooted. So, the problem appears to be with M2.

[superjoeuser]

When I booted this morning, there were more updates available which I did and wireless is still going strong. So the problem lies definitely with Mageia 2 and so far is not present in version 3.