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The new(ish) Broadcom STA drivers

Technology
As much for my reference as anything, I'd like to make a note about the new Linux Broadcom drivers for wireless chipsets. It all went wrong for me when I upgraded kernels. Thankfully, I can still hook up via my phone.

Firstly, the README is very useful...

Secondly, this is the important bit:


On the target machine, and cd'ed to the directory that contains the Makefile (fragment)

4. Cleanup (optional): make -C /lib/modules/<2.6.xx.xx>/build M=`pwd` clean
5. Build the LKM, i.e. wl.ko: make -C /lib/modules/<2.6.xx.xx>/build M=`pwd`

You should now have a LKM, wl.ko inside this directory.

On this or a machine with the same kernel version, install the driver.

1. Validate you don't have loaded (or built into the kernel) the Linux community provided
driver for Broadcom hardware. This exists in two forms: either "bcm43xx" or a split form
of "b43" plus "b43legacy". If these modules were loaded you would either
a) rmmod bcm43xx or
b) rmmod b43; rmmod b43legacy
1a. Validate you don't have a older wl.ko driver loaded from previous install.
If the module exist, remove it and replace with new driver:
a) rmmod wl.ko
2. Replacing existing driver with wl.ko just build in step 5 above.
(most likely path to find wl.ko is: /lib/modules//kernel/driver/net/wireless
or /lib/modules//kernel.net/update/)
3. depmod
4. modprobe wl


It's also worth noting that I'm blacklisting a few things to stop them getting in the way. In my /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf, intrepid observer will see:


# replaced by b44 and ssb.
blacklist ndiswrapper
blacklist b43
blacklist b43_legacy
blacklist bcm43xx



Off you go, folks.
Posted by James Valentine in Technology Comments: (0) Trackbacks: (0)
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