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Latest kernel has completely borked wifi

PostPosted: Jan 24th, '13, 12:44
by DiBosco
I had wifi working ok on 3.3.8, but the latest kernel update has completely borked everything up.

It just says i can't install wl and if I try to install from source (which is what I had to do with 3.3.8) it tells me /lib/modules/'uname-r' is missing (even though I have installed the kernel source.

Booting into the previous kernel it tells me it can't find the fecking network interface.

Anyone else found any of this happening and even more to the point know how it is solved please? Thanks.

I yearn for the trouble-free days of Mageia 1!

Re: Latest kernel has completely borked wifi

PostPosted: Jan 24th, '13, 12:53
by wobo
This is exact the issue I am having while testing MGA3Beta1 and after that. Going back from testing this I re-installed MGA2, installed all updates and my wifi was gone! Main message: it insists on broadcom-wl but it can't install it. Even patching wireless.pm and removing the need for wl so it could take the free driver does not resolve the problem. tmb is working on it, at least for the MGA3 Beta tests.

I'd open a bug report for MGA2 and kernel

Re: Latest kernel has completely borked wifi

PostPosted: Mar 5th, '13, 01:57
by OS1
Me too. Doesn't seem to work on Ubuntu either. Odd thing is that with 3.8.0 I can connect using Wifi but it says it's configured as an Intel device for wlan0

Re: Latest kernel has completely borked wifi

PostPosted: Mar 5th, '13, 02:13
by DiBosco
Works fine on Open SuSE12.2. I have secondary dual boot laptop that also, sadly, has a Broadcom driver. Just this weekend I installed all the updates and, guess what, it's gone ****-up too. As SuSE works really well I will be changing to that there too. Still using Mageia on the desktop, but there's clearly a major ****-up with Broadcom going on here.

Re: Latest kernel has completely borked wifi

PostPosted: Mar 5th, '13, 10:48
by OS1
On my other disk I have a fully updated MGA 2 which is now reporting itself as MGA 3 (same laptop different physical disks). It is using 3.8.0 and both the wifi works, but is reported as using an Intel device as I mentioned above, and the nVidia driver has displaced the Nouveau driver. I cannot replicate either of these two scenarios on a fresh install of MGA 3. Everything worked fine with MGA 2, wifi connected first time and drakx11 replaced Nouveau with nVidia without a hitch. After the last major upgrade, which is where I guess the system went up to MGA 3, neither worked. After investigating and repeatedly re-installing the nVidia drivers and trying modprobe for various wifi drivers it all just simply started working again! However, I cannot reproduce this on a fresh MGA 3 install.

Using the MGA 2 -> 3 disk the Broadcom device is still shown but cannot be setup as it says it can't find broadcom-wl. On both setups I manually installed dkms-broadcom-wl but this didn't help. I did notice that there are a couple of blacklist files for Broadcom so it's possible that all the Broadcom devices are blacklisted! However, given the current hashup with the nVidia and Nouveau modules, I'm not convinced that these blacklist files are even used.

Re: Latest kernel has completely borked wifi

PostPosted: Mar 5th, '13, 10:58
by DiBosco
I spent four days on this on the laptop I'm now typing from, going round and round in circles, even with a bug report no-one could fix it. Indeed, no-one seems that bothered about it.

Re: Latest kernel has completely borked wifi

PostPosted: Mar 5th, '13, 21:02
by doktor5000
You are realizing that you are discussing about completely different wifi adapters from different vendors, different drivers & firmwares?
Basically totally different starting points, and the problems may seem the same, but are probably totally different?
Just saying ....

@OS1: Please don't blindly reply to some thread, which is already a bit older, only because of the problems sounds related.
This is already the second time, the other was the nouveau issue. Please stop that.

Re: Latest kernel has completely borked wifi

PostPosted: Mar 5th, '13, 23:56
by OS1
That's ok I was only seeing if anyone had found a solution. I have now and it's all working. The mistake was leave the remove "unused" drivers option checked during install. This appears to comprehensively blacklist all sorts of things. By doing an install and unchecking this option the Wifi now works just fine.

Re: Latest kernel has completely borked wifi

PostPosted: Mar 6th, '13, 00:27
by doktor5000
Already documented in Errata as:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Mageia_2_Err ... .2Flocales

I've added a link to this thread there. Still that's a totally different problem to the ones reported by DiBosco and wobo, who both use the Broadcom drivers, FWIW.

Re: Latest kernel has completely borked wifi

PostPosted: Mar 6th, '13, 01:28
by OS1
My wifi card is a Broadcom, I only said when configuring it it "appears" as an Intel device, which it isn't in reality.

Re: Latest kernel has completely borked wifi

PostPosted: Mar 6th, '13, 02:43
by DiBosco
The most important point here is that something in Mageia 2 onwards is completely borking the whole system for Broadcom users.