Broadcom STA driver not working on 2.6.31-14-generic kernel

[Jeroen T. Vermeulen]

On a June 2009 MacBook Pro, wifi does not work with a 2.6.31-14-generic kernel. It does work with 2.6.31-13-generic.

I tried "apt-get install --reinstall bcmwl-kernel-source" again (IIRC this solved problems getting wifi to work in the first place), but to no avail.

The lspci entry is: 04:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)

/var/log/messages shows this, which is similar to what's reported in bug 395630:

wl: module license 'MIXED/Proprietary' taints kernel.
Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
wl: disagrees about version of symbol lib80211_get_crypto_ops
wl: Unknown symbol lib80211_get_crypto_ops

I do not see this in dmesg output after booting 2.6.31-13 (where wifi does work). I'm reporting this problem separately because bug 395630 was against an older kernel, whereas my problem first appeared with 2.6.31-14. Also, the older report did not have the "wl: disagrees about version" message.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Nov 18 14:49:55 2009
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
NonfreeKernelModules: wl nvidia
Package: bcmwl-kernel-source 5.10.91.9+bdcom-0ubuntu4
ProcEnviron:
 LC_TIME=en_DK.UTF-8
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-13.45-generic
SourcePackage: bcmwl
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-13-generic i686

[Radu Cristian Fotescu (beranger)]

I can confirm this: the report is 100% accurate: 2.6.31-14 broke it, 2.6.31-13 works.

[Radu Cristian Fotescu (beranger)]

bcmwl started working again with 2.6.31-15-generic.

[Jeroen T. Vermeulen (jtv)]

Not for me. Still broken. :-(

[Jeroen T. Vermeulen (jtv)]

The trick of uninstalling the backports modules and then re-installing bcmwl-kernel-source now works for me. Yay!