Major regression on Precise....(Fail to install and broke ALL the network)

[Maxime Haselbauer]

This package poped up saturday on my Kubuntu 12.04 32bit as package to be updated...

My cable networking worked very fine.
Once I restarted the network, the networkmanager says "no interface" neither wlan nor ethernet.....
The package stand as half installed....

more /var/log/dpkg.log | grep "\ half-installed\ ":
2013-01-26 09:42:17 status half-installed bcmwl-kernel-source 5.100.82.38+bdcom-0ubuntu6

apt-cache policy bcmwl-kernel-source
  Installiert 6.20.155.1+bdcom-0ubuntu0.0.1
  Kandidat 6.20.155.1+bdcom-0ubuntu0.0.1
  Versionstabelle:
 *** 6.20.155.1+bdcom-0ubuntu0.0.1
                   500 http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise-updates/restricted i386 Packages
                   100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
        5.100.82.38+bdcom-0ubuntu6 0
                   500 http://fr.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ precise/restricted i386 Packages

Anyone that has a fast workaround is welcome...

PS: is there a way in ubuntu to squeeze update for a given package /hardware?
So that once I fixed it/ re-install my computer, coz its likely where it gonna end, I never ever ever ever receive some "update" anymore for this stuff?

Cheers

[Bernardo Reino (reinob)]

Could you open a terminal and type (as root):

# apt-get --reinstall install bcmwl-kernel-source

and post here the exact output?

I'm using that exact same package with precise 12.04 (kubuntu 64-bit, but with kernel 3.5), and it worked fine!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Csipak Attila (corphicks)]

I encountered the same bug on Ubuntu 12.04, see details in duplicate Bug #1109790.

I tried downgrading bcmwl-kernel-source to the previous version via synaptic, but the process didn't finish (updateing initramfs was the last output line I guess). After about ~20 minutes, I restarted the machine, now Synaptic starts with a warning message (sorry, I didn't record it, it was about some broken cache I guess), then exited.

On the second reboot, I could start Synaptic without any problems and succeeded in completely removing bcmwl-kernel-source package. Now eth0 works again and since the Broadcom wifi controller didn't really work in the last 2 years I don't miss the driver too much.

In a couple of days I'm going to experiment with this a bit more, please feel free to suggest ideas on how to debug further.

[Lucas Pottersky (lucaspottersky)]

I updated today my Ubuntu 12.04 and the wireless stopped working. Will try to apt-get reinstall...

Here's some log from jockey.log, don't know if it's useful:

DEBUG: Instantiated Handler subclass __builtin__.BroadcomWLHandler from name BroadcomWLHandler
DEBUG: Broadcom STA wireless driver availability undetermined, adding to pool
DEBUG: BroadcomWLHandler enabled(): kmod enabled, bcm43xx: blacklisted, b43: blacklisted, b43legacy: blacklisted

[Lucas Pottersky (lucaspottersky)]

@Bernardo Reino (reinob): Here's the output. Reinstalling didn't work.

apt-get --reinstall install bcmwl-kernel-source
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
  linux-headers-3.2.0-32 ruby-log4r virtualbox ruby-json rubygems ruby-i18n ruby-net-scp virtualbox-dkms ruby-net-ssh
  linux-headers-3.2.0-32-generic ruby-childprocess libdrm-nouveau1a:i386 virtualbox-qt ruby-ffi ruby-erubis libgsoap1 ruby-archive-tar-minitar
  libllvm3.0 libllvm3.0:i386
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1 reinstalled, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/1,344 kB of archives.
After this operation, 0 B of additional disk space will be used.
(Reading database ... 314976 files and directories currently installed.)
Preparing to replace bcmwl-kernel-source 6.20.155.1+bdcom-0ubuntu0.0.1 (using .../bcmwl-kernel-source_6.20.155.1+bdcom-0ubuntu0.0.1_amd64.deb) ...
Removing all DKMS Modules
Done.
Unpacking replacement bcmwl-kernel-source ...
Setting up bcmwl-kernel-source (6.20.155.1+bdcom-0ubuntu0.0.1) ...
Loading new bcmwl-6.20.155.1+bdcom DKMS files...
Building only for 3.2.0-36-generic
Building for architecture x86_64
Building initial module for 3.2.0-36-generic
Done.

wl:
Running module version sanity check.
 - Original module
   - No original module exists within this kernel
 - Installation
   - Installing to /lib/modules/3.2.0-36-generic/updates/dkms/

depmod....

DKMS: install completed.
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-36-generic

[Bernardo Reino (reinob)]

@Lucas Pottersky (lucaspottersky),

From what I can see the (re)installation of the new dkms module worked fine (contrary to the initial bug report by @Maxime Haselbauer).

Can you open a terminal and run, as root:

# modprobe wl

Assuming that this fails (i.e. you still have no WLAN), check the last few lines in the output of running "dmesg". This will show why the module failed to load.

The wl module has a slight conflict with the compat-wireless package (are you using it?). I have a broadcom BCM4314 WLAN chip *and* an Atheros AR8161 Ethernet chip (Lenovo Ideapad N581). The former requires the WL module while the latter requires the ALX module, which (as of now) is part of the compat-wireless package. The compat-wireless package includes a version of cfg80211 that is incompatible with the WL module.

I solved the conflict by manually fixing the module dependencies and then running "depmod -a". Unfortunately I cannot explain (at least) now, exactly what I did.

It would be nice if we had a self-contained bcmwl package with no dependencies on anything (if at all possible), or at least a separate package for the ALX module that wouldn't include the whole compat-wireless mess.

According to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bcmwl/+bug/923809/comments/27 there will be a separate ALX package, which sounds good to me.

[Lucas Pottersky (lucaspottersky)]

Bernardo Reino (reinob): i believe I manually installed compat-wireless someday. How can I check? I remember downloading it...

Anyways, in order to get my wireless back I installed the new "brcmsmac" driver, as outlined here http://askubuntu.com/questions/247993/cant-connect-to-any-wireless-connection-after-updating

After that, the wifi started working again. While having full connectivity I decided to rollback "bcmwl-kernel-source" package from 6.20.155.1 to 5.100.82.38 via Synaptic.

[Csipak Attila (corphicks)]

I checked if compat-wireless is installed, and I think it's not. (A quock search for "compat-wireless" in synaptic produced a bunch of linux-backports-modules-cw-* packages, none of which is installed.)

I started experimenting again with bcmwl (see comment #3). I tried to install it again (6.20.155.1+bdcom-0ubuntu0.0.1), but Ubuntu froze while configuring the install. Also shortly after rebooting aptdaemon tried to finish the unsuccessful installation, and Ubuntu froze again, so now I will have to uninstall the package before aptdaemon can mess up my session again. I struggled a bit to uninstall the package, the thing that finally worked was to boot into an earlier kernel version and try uninstalling from console via apt-get.

...

After reading through https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx and a bit of experimenting, I finnally managed to install the linux-firmware-nonfree package, and now the wifi funcionality is back. (The chipset is BCM4311, PCI id is 14e4:4311.)

[Maxime Haselbauer (maxime-haselbauer)]

Typical linux bugs.
3 years, still no fix nothing

But guess what, while I did forgot about this bug by forcing the previous version of the driver, i faced it back today by installing Kubuntu 16.10 where you of course ship the latest, buggy, unfix driver ....

What is the purpose of submitting bug report under those conditions ?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????