Broadcom drivers unusable on Dell Mini 10v

[chicken159]

I'm filing this since nobody seems to be taking the issue seriously that the Dell Mini 10v, one of the few machines to be shipped with Ubuntu, is entirely unusable with either the b43 or STA drivers. The solution to the b43 incompatibility (DMA errors) - yes known bug, but no solution for the 10v - is NOT to install the STA driver - that is equally useless since it connects, but is excruciatingly slow and only works at all in short bursts. Check the forums - there's a series of people with this issue. I'm now using a dongle or a wired connection...although I have installed another OS and am using that from now on. This is a total show-stopper.

[Ian Fleming (iflema-deactivatedaccount)]

Hey chicken....

currently the BCM4322 is unsupported by the open source b43 driver. The proprietary STA/Hybrid is the one.

Can you confirm you chipset please, in a terminal type lspci -vvnn | grep 14e4 .

I have a mini 10v myself and driver is good, some months ago it had some issues holding a connection but this is no longer the case. Is you system completely updated?

[chicken159 (services)]

Hi,
To confirm the chipset:

09:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5755M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express [14e4:1673] (rev 02)
0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11a/b/g [14e4:4312] (rev 01)

I am aware the b43 driver is not currently usable; my problem and that of a number of others, is that the STA driver provides a flaky-at-best, VERY slow connection. Whether this is just the driver, or something somewhere else in the stack, I have not been able to tell - but the symptoms are:
1. On the STA driver
When using firefox: any page starts loading, but slowly, then usually hangs 'waiting for www...'. Soemtimes a click on reload works. Sometimes opening another tab and trying a different site works. Mostly though it doesn't and the loading page just hangs.

Update manager exhibits the same - starts to download but stops, waits and times out.

2. Using any other form of networking - 3G dongle / wired / USB wireless dongle - networking is fine.

3. Running Snow-Leopard on the same machine is just fine so suspect that rules out hardware issues.

This is normally on my home network with WPA, but also exhibited on un-secured networks at work and in hotels.

I am running a clean install of bog-standard 10.04 desktop. (About the 3rd wipe and reinstall I've done trying to fix/solve this).

Any chance that b43 will support this anytime soon? (without going down the newer kernel route?).

Any suggestions welcome!

[Ian Fleming (iflema-deactivatedaccount)]

Hey...

Whats bog-standard? iI got the standard part...... = )

It appears only 2.4GHz 802.11g is supported by b43driver on bcm4312, you card can handle 802.11a and 802.11b aswell but not with b43 [1].

Should be fully supported soon, youd think so, maybe when 2.6.33 is released.....

b43/STA hybrid should be ok???? and provide full functionality.

My miniV is getting on now its got bcm4322. I have no idea who/why the models are chosen/different.....

I agree its a show starter/show stopper.

Maybe look into possible conflicts between you broadcom ethernet and wireless cards involving ssb, I think i read something somewhere that was along those lines..... from what i remember there was a work around?????

[1] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

[Ian Fleming (iflema-deactivatedaccount)]

forget that the ssb thing, that was a bluetooth issue with STA.

Maybe try ubuntu moblin remix, it helped during the period the sta driver was giving me grief, which is no longer the case.

Go figure......

Good luck.

Oh yeah what version of ubuntu are you using. Have you tried to boot a live[1] lucid 10.04? results?

[1] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx

[Ian Fleming (iflema-deactivatedaccount)]

bog-standard...... ugh!!!!!

[chicken159 (services)]

HI,

Haha - ok so maybe the bog was superfluous!

Re. b43 (though I don't want to divert onto that issue here) - the combination of bcm4312, 2.6.32 and the Dell Mini 10v does not work at all - something to do with low power architecture. I'm led to believe it works with 2.6.33 and did start down the route of getting the new kernel...until I broke something and gave up. The workaround suggested to disable DMA also does not seem to work with this setup. So we're stuck on STA.

As to STA - there really is a problem, and I've been rather chaotically trawling forums and trying solutions for a couple of months. I'm afraid I've reached the end of my technical knowledge here, and for productivity purposes the time available means its easier for me to just carry a second wireless dongle and forget about it.

But I do keep seeing other people with the same problem and no solution....its like wandering around in the fog of broadcom related frustrations bumping into other lost people! Just struck me as pretty bad to have a non-functional netbook that I bought with Ubuntu pre-installed....albeit a hobbled Dell version that I immediately replaced. I'll see where I get following your suggestions...

Cheers

[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

Hi chicken159,

Please be sure to confirm this issue exists with the latest development release of Ubuntu. ISO CD images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ . If the issue remains, please run the following command from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal). It will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report.

apport-collect -p linux 583564

Also, if you could test the latest upstream kernel available that would be great. It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds . Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please remove the 'needs-upstream-testing' tag. This can be done by clicking on the yellow pencil icon next to the tag located at the bottom of the bug description and deleting the 'needs-upstream-testing' text. Please let us know your results.

Thanks in advance.

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[Jeremy Foshee (jeremyfoshee)]

This bug report was marked as Incomplete and has not had any updated comments for quite some time. As a result this bug is being closed. Please reopen if this is still an issue in the current Ubuntu development release http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ . Also, please be sure to provide any requested information that may have been missing. To reopen the bug, click on the current status under the Status column and change the status back to "New". Thanks.

[This is an automated message. Apologies if it has reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]