Wireless BCM4312 with the 3.6, 3.7 and 3.8 kernel
As a follow up to , I’ve also tested the Broadcom hybrid driver with the 3.6, 3.7 and the soon to be released 3.8 kernels with success. There have been no major changes that should effect the operation of this driver.
To verify that everything is working as expected on the software side, when modprobe or insmod wl, you should get a similar dmesg output:
[ 307.560347] lib80211: common routines for IEEE802.11 drivers
[ 307.560353] lib80211_crypt: registered algorithm ‘NULL’
[ 307.564524] wl: module license ‘unspecified’ taints kernel.
[ 307.564529] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
Wireless BCM4312 with the 3.4 and 3.5 kernel
The hybrid driver from Broadcom is still a bit behind in terms of support for the latest kernels but there are workarounds. This particular issue also effects other kernel modules such as the out of tree Nvidia and ATI blobs that require the asm/system.h file in their includes.
I’ve had success with replacing it with asm/switch_to.h which seems to have fixed things for now. The cause for this can be found on the LKML.
Chipsets supported by “Broadcom’s IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n hybrid Linux® device driver” are: BCM4311, BCM4312, BCM4313, BCM4321, BCM4322, BCM43224, and BCM43225, BCM43227 and BCM43228.
Wireless BCM4312 3.2 kernel
Since there is an Ubuntu package ‘firmware-b43-lpphy-installer’ which is up to date and will work against the 3.0 kernel, my earlier posts are obsolete. If you are not running Ubuntu, then you will still need to reference my post.
The latest 3.2 Linux kernel however has a few ABI changes, most notably in the network stack which effects the Broadcom’s wl module. Most notably is: .ndo_set_multicast_list which was replaced with .ndo_set_rx_mode.
Wireless BCM4312 3.0 kernel
With the latest 3.0 kernel there is still no “out of the box” support for my BCM4312 wireless chipset. Nor is there any help from Ubuntu 11.04 leaving me to use Broadcoms hybrid driver with patch.
Chipsets supported by “Broadcom’s IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n hybrid Linux® device driver” are: BCM4311, BCM4312, BCM4313, BCM4321, BCM4322, BCM43224, and BCM43225, BCM43227 and BCM43228.
My specific chipset from lspci command:
Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)
Wireless BCM4312 on Ubuntu with 2.6.38 and 2.6.39 kernel
My Vostro 1510 comes with an on-board wireless miniPCI card but it does not work “out of the box” with Ubuntu, even with the latest 2.6.39 kernel. The only option that works for me is the binary hybrid blob driver provided by Broadcom, but even that is out of date. They need help in order to work with 2.6.36 and upwards and I have a patch for that.
Chipsets supported by “Broadcom’s IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n hybrid Linux® device driver” are: BCM4311, BCM4312, BCM4313, BCM4321, BCM4322, BCM43224, and BCM43225, BCM43227 and BCM43228.
The my exact chipset from lspci command:
Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)
