[DONE] Broadcom 4322 and Mageia 6

[DONE] Broadcom 4322 and Mageia 6

Postby superclerk637 » Mar 24th, '18, 12:27

I am a long-time Mandriva/Mageia user (since Mandrake 8.0), and I am having problems with wireless. I am using Mageia 6 (the Radeon 6670, 6770, 7770 etc. video was unusable for some years until MGA 6, nice fix!). I have a generic Broadcom PCI-e (x1) wireless card. The vendor code is 14e4:432b. I'm very smart, but after staring at tutorial web pages for some hours now, it is clear I can't solve the problem myself (stuff like "SSB driver", "WL", etc. that is never explained anywhere does not help). I installed Mageia 6 and all updates up to March 24, 2018.

EDIT: I believe I have enough "Nonfree", "Updates", "Tainted" etc. media sources enabled; the correct software should show up in a search (in MCC) if more packages are needed.

Here's my hardware:

Asrock 970A-G/3.1 motherboard (AMD 950 north bridge, 850 south bridge)
16 GB RAM, AMD 8-core 8150 chip, no overclocks
Gigabyte PCI-E 6770 video, completely passive cooled (fins like a motorcycle!)
OCZ Mod-X-Stream Pro 600 Watt PSU
Realtek 8111GR wired LAN (10/100/1000)
Generic Broadcom 4322 PCI-e wireless (14e4:432b)
One SSD for Win7
A second SSD for Linux

When I boot Mageia and go to Mandriva Control Center --> Set up a New Wireless Interface, I get two choices. The "Broadcom Limited BCM4322" or the "Ndiswrapper". Of course I choose "Broadcom Limited BCM4322" and get the message "Unable to find network interface for selected device (using ssb driver)".

"Uname -a" suggests I'm using kernel 4.14.25-desktop-1.mga6

Here are some of the "interesting" lines from lspci:

04:00.0 Network Controller: Broadcom Limited BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless Lan Controller (rev 01)
06:00.0 Ethernet Controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 11) [that would be my wired LAN interface]

Here are the "insteresting" lines I found from the lsmod command (b43, or anything that relies on b43):

Code: Select all
b43                   442368
bcma                   57344
mac80211              663552
cfg80211              577536
rfkill                 24576
rng_core               16384
ssb                    69632
mmc_core              139264


Interesting, when the computer booted, it complained that ucode16_mimo.fw was not found in /lib/firmware, and it was also not found in /lib/firmware/b43-open. When I used fwcutter to install this file in both places and set permissions, owner and group (-rw-r--r--, root/root) the computer now complained that there were TWO files it could not find -- ucode16_mimo.fw AND n0initvals16.fw. Even after BOTH files were placed in both places and permissions, owner and group are correct [and the machine rebooted], it complained these files were missing. And I still got the "Unable to find network interface for selected device (using ssb driver)" message in MCC.

(The ucode16_mimo.fw file is 39,296 bytes, and n0initvals16.fw is 2,738 bytes, if anyone is wondering.)

EDIT: Interesting, ifconfig lists en6ps0 (the wired interface) and the loopback interface, but does not list the wlan0 or whatever the wireless interface would be called.

This page https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#Supported_devices suggests the "alternative" is the "wl" driver for my PCI ID, but what is the primary one? Are there extra modules, drivers, interfaces or kernel code competing for the hardware as things are now? Do I still have *_not_* *_enough_* modules, drivers, etc. installed?

I have a number of "b43" or "broadcom" or "ssb" packages installed. When I clicked to install "broadcom-wl-common", MCC complained that some packages needed to be removed for others to be upgraded - there were conflicts. When I clicked to install "dkms-broadcom-wl", many more packages need to be installed. So I declined both. Clearly when I am "just guessing" and "throwing packages at the problem", I am going to turn my Mageia install into something that is so messed up it would be better off to nuke it and start from scratch. I hope I have not reached that point already.

This is very confusing. Please let me know what else I need to post so we can understand what is going on here and how to fix it.

(Also, can we get a listing of subsystems commonly used for wireless, not just for Broadcom, in one reference wiki? And how each works, and how to troubleshoot or blacklist each? This would be good for the linux sound subsystem too, but let's get one problem solved at a time.)

Thanks in advance!
Last edited by superclerk637 on May 15th, '18, 10:39, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Broadcom 4322 and Mageia 6

Postby doktor5000 » Mar 24th, '18, 17:19

superclerk637 wrote:This page https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#Supported_devices suggests the "alternative" is the "wl" driver for my PCI ID, but what is the primary one?

Well, you're referring to the documentation page for the b43 driver, so from the point of view from that page itself clearly b43 is the primary driver, no?

superclerk637 wrote:Are there extra modules, drivers, interfaces or kernel code competing for the hardware as things are now? Do I still have *_not_* *_enough_* modules, drivers, etc. installed?

In general you always need the driver and usually also additional firmware, which is what the driver/kernel tries to load automatically, if it is present and it also tells you if it expects some firmware file and if it's missing it, like you already figured out.


superclerk637 wrote:(Also, can we get a listing of subsystems commonly used for wireless, not just for Broadcom, in one reference wiki? And how each works, and how to troubleshoot or blacklist each? This would be good for the linux sound subsystem too, but let's get one problem solved at a time.)

Well, we've tried to describe it at https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Setup_wireless_networking
Bascially what you need is the driver, firmware, and afterwards wpa_supplicant which handles encryption usually. That's about it.


Please provide the output of the following commands:

Code: Select all
lspcidrake -v | grep -iE "wlan|wifi|wireless|net"
ps -ef | grep -v grep | grep -iE "net|wpa"
rpm -qa|sort|grep -iE "kernel|firmware"


and, as root:
Code: Select all
ifconfig -a
rfkill list all
systemctl status network.service -a
journalctl -ab | grep -iE "fw|firmware|iwl|wifi|wire|80211"


Although from a quick search, not many people seem to have that particular chipset you have. Only other occurence here in the forum I found is viewtopic.php?p=59516#p59516 which contains some information on how to change to the b43 driver.
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Re: Broadcom 4322 and Mageia 6

Postby superclerk637 » Mar 25th, '18, 00:52

As root:

lspcidrake -v | grep -iE wireless:
Code: Select all
ssb             : Broadcom Limited|BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless Lan Controller [NETWORK_OTHER] (vendor:14e4 device:432b subv:103c subd:1510) (rev: 01)


ps -ef | grep -v grep | grep -iE "net|wpa" gave us this:

Code: Select all
root        48     2  0 16:40 ?        00:00:00 [netns]
systemd+   874     1  0 16:40 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/systemd/systemd-networkd
root       901     1  0 16:40 ?        00:00:00 /usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -u -P /run/wpa_supplicant.pid -f /var/log/wpa_supplicant.log -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
mike      2016  1847  0 16:40 ?        00:00:02 /usr/bin.perl /usr/bin/net_applet


rpm -qa|sort|grep -iE "kernel|firmware" gave us this:

Code: Select all
bluez-firmware-1.2-13.mga6.nonfree
iwlwifi-firmware-20180211-1.mga6.nonfree
kernel-desktop-4.14.25-1.mga6-1-1.mga6
kernel-desktop-4.9.35-1.mga6-1-1.mga6
kernel-doc-4.14.25-1.mga6
kernel-firmware-20170531-1.mga6
kernel-firmware-nonfree-20180211-1.mga6.nonfree
radeon-firmware-20180118-1.mga6.nonfree
ralink-firmware-20180211-1.mga6.nonfree
rtlwifi-firmware-20180211-1.mga6.nonfree


ifconfig -a gave us this:

Code: Select all
enp6s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.1.109  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255
        inet6 fe80::7285:c2ff:fe5d:9e85  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether 70:85:c2:5d:9e:85  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 5512  bytes 6460885 (6.1 MiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 1000  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 14  bytes 978 (978.0 B)
        TX packets 14  bytes 978 (978.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0


"rfkill list all" gave nothing.
"systemctl status network.service -a" gave us:

Code: Select all
  network.service - LSB: Bring up/down networking
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc/d/init.d/network; generated; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: active (running) since Sat 2018-03-24 16:40:11 EDT, 21 min ago
     Docs: man:systemd-sysv-generator(8)
  Process: 1014 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.d/network start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
   CGroup: /system.slice/network.service
             1222 /sbin/ifplugd -I -b -i enp6s0
             1498 /sbin/dhclient -1 -q -lf /var/lib/dhclient/dhclient--enp6s0.lease -pf /var/run/dhclient-enp6s0.pid enp6s0

Mar 24 16:40:11 localhost ifplugd(enp6s0)[1222]: Using detection mode: SIOCETHTOOL
Mar 24 16:40:11 localhost ifplugd(enp6s0)[1222]: Initialization complete, link beat not detected.
Mar 24 16:40:11 localhost network[1014]: Bringing up interface enp6s0:  [  OK  ]
Mar 24 16:40:11 localhost systemd[1]: Started LSB: Bring up/down networking.
Mar 24 16:40:14 localhost ifplugd(enp6s0)[1222]: Link beat detected.
Mar 24 16:40:15 localhost ifplugd(enp6s0)[1222]: Executing '/etc/ifplugd/ifplugd.action enp6s0 up'.
Mar 24 16:40:16 localhost dhclient[1362]: DHCPREQUEST on enp6s0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
Mar 24 16:40:16 localhost dhclient[1362]: DHCPACK from 192.168.1.1
Mar 24 16:40:16 localhost ifplugd(enp6s0)[1222]: client: Determining IP information for enp6s0... done.
Mar 24 16:40:16 localhost ifplugd(enp6s0)[1222]: Program executed successfully.


And finally, "journalctl -ab | grep -iE firmware" gave us:

Code: Select all
Mar 24 16:40:06 localhost kernel: b43 ssb0:0: Direct firmware load for b43/ucode16_mimo.fw failed with error -2
Mar 24 16:40:06 localhost kernel: b43 ssb0:0: Direct firmware load for b43/ucode16_mimo.fw failed with error -2
Mar 24 16:40:06 localhost kernel: b43 ssb0:0: Direct firmware load for b43-open/n0bsinitvals16.fw failed with error -2
Mar 24 16:40:06 localhost kernel: b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43/ucode16_mimo.fw" not found
Mar 24 16:40:06 localhost kernel: b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43-open/n0bsinitvals16.fw" not found
Mar 24 16:40:06 localhost kernel: b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware and download the correct firmware for this driver version. Please carefully read all instructions on this website.


Hope this helps....and thank you!

I tried to blacklist the ssb driver like in that other thread. Then MCC only gave me one choice - the ndiswrapper solution. I am not sure that ndiswrapper is wise.
If all else fails, should I buy something based on RALINK RT3090 or RT5390 chips?

EDIT: I have a Realtek 8192 wifi card (I think it is 8192ce), but that may be even more troublesome than the Broadcom-based card.....
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Re: Broadcom 4322 and Mageia 6

Postby doktor5000 » Mar 25th, '18, 15:25

superclerk637 wrote:I tried to blacklist the ssb driver like in that other thread.

You tried how exactly? You would need to recheck what driver is then loaded after a reboot, maybe you need to blacklist some further modules too like brcmsmac and bcma


Apart from that, as I don't have any first-hand experience with a broadcom card I can only give the same hint as in the previously linked wiki page:

http://archive.openmandriva.org/wiki/en ... b43_driver
and http://linuxwireless.sipsolutions.net/e ... en_drivers
or maybe viewtopic.php?f=25&t=2329

Especially the second link. You currently need to blacklist at least the ssb driver, and then provide the proper firmware.
believe this comes in two flavours, either via the package b43-openfwwf for some open firmwares or by using b43-fwcutter and extracting the firmware from the broadcom driver tarball. Not sure if both provide the same after alll
See also the link to the forum thread here, might be useful.

If you don't it working with the b43 driver then you can still use the proprietary wl driver, which might even work better as he b43 driver supposedly only partially supports your chipset.
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Re: Broadcom 4322 and Mageia 6

Postby superclerk637 » Apr 21st, '18, 06:41

I thought I blacklisted correctly, based on that other thread. Perhaps I did not blacklist enough items.

I switched to the RALink RT3090 ("postage stamp" wifi module with a PCI-E adapter). No OS discs or drivers were needed. Windows 7 made me re-type my wifi password. Linux did not. Everything just worked with the RALink chip.

If I ever have time to work with the Broadcom wifi card again, I'll post about it so we can learn from it.

Thank you for all your help !
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Re: Broadcom 4322 and Mageia 6

Postby doktor5000 » Apr 21st, '18, 15:11

Please mark the thread accordingly by editing the topic of the first post and prefix it by [DONE], thanks
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Re: [DONE] Broadcom 4322 and Mageia 6

Postby benmc » Jun 1st, '18, 22:34

If you want to retry the Broadcom BCM4322 wifi device.

I have a laptop with a Broadcom BCM4311, and the ssb (default) driver does not work on it.

I need do the following after install (via plugin wifi or lan cable).

As per your first post
1/ remove the ssb package
2/ add the broadcom-common-wl package
3/ add the dkms-broadcom-wl package (and probably dkms-minimal as a dependency)
3/ add also kernel-your_kernel_type_here-devel-match_your_normal_kernel_#_here.mga6 and any dependencies like kernel-headers etc.

reboot and wait for the dkms module to build and install the wifi driver. there should be a notice popup during your boot-up.
after login, setup the wifi as per normal

best of luck
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Re: [DONE] Broadcom 4322 and Mageia 6

Postby doktor5000 » Jun 2nd, '18, 04:09

benmc wrote:2/ add the broadcom-common-wl package
3/ add the dkms-broadcom-wl package (and probably dkms-minimal as a dependency)
3/ add also kernel-your_kernel_type_here-devel-match_your_normal_kernel_#_here.mga6 and any dependencies like kernel-headers etc.

FWIW, those are all pulled in as dependencies of dkms-broadcom-wl ...
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Re: [DONE] Broadcom 4322 and Mageia 6

Postby barjac » Nov 30th, '21, 16:04

To keep this thread up to date...

I have just had the same issue in Mageia 8.

I replaced the original slow intel wi-fi card in an Acer laptop with a cheap dual-band Chinese clone from ebay which turned out to be a BCM4322.

The driver it tried to use was ssb which did not work. That led me eventually to this thread,

The fix in Mga8 was to remove the broadcom-ssb-config package and install the broadcom-wl-common package, note the name is not as shown in previous posts.
So:
# urpme broadcom-ssb-config
# urpmi broadcom-wl-common
# reboot

Then configure using MCC -> Network and Internet -> Network Center in the normal way.

Result is at least a four fold speed increase over the previous card :)
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Re: [DONE] Broadcom 4322 and Mageia 6

Postby doktor5000 » Nov 30th, '21, 18:00

Feel free to add this to https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Setup_wirele ... ic_drivers
I've tried to propose to have some kind of list of quirks in drakconf, where for certain devices some options or even alternative drivers need to be used for proper functionality.
Sadly that went nowhere, so only alternative for me was adding it to a documentation listing which provides some prominent examples.
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