Macbook 8,1 WLAN not supported

[Jussi Pakkanen]

The newest Macbooks have Broadcom wireless cards that don't seem to be supported at all.

The card name is BCM4331.

[Jussi Pakkanen (jpakkane)]

Here's an email thread discussing the state:

http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.wireless.general/66377

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Looks like upstream is actively working to get support for this chipset added to the brcmsmac driver. It's highly unlikely this will hit upstream v3.0 though. It may not even land in time for Oneiric's kernel freeze. If and when support is available, we could likely investigate supporting this through linux-backports-modules-3.0.0.

[Kensay (kensay-kavi)]

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4331 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 02)
03:00.0 0280: 14e4:4331 (rev 02)
 Subsystem: 14e4:4331
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
 Memory at b0600000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge
 Kernel modules: bcma

But I still do not see my WiFi in network devices.

What's wrong?

[Jussi Pakkanen (jpakkane)]

In precise as of today, this driver works and I can use the chip.

You have to manually extract the firmware file, though. The instructions are here: http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/brcm80211

[Jussi Pakkanen (jpakkane)]

Sorry, that link was wrong. It should be this.

http://homepage.uibk.ac.at/~c705283/archives/2011/09/04/linux_support_for_broadcom_4331_wireless_chip_macbook_pro_81/index.html

[Ed Novak (ejnovak)]

You can get this to work in 12.04 or 11.10 by following this guide:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBookPro8-2/Oneiric
under the wireless section. Careful on the typo in the PPA! It should be: mpoddroid (with two d's)

You can get this working in 12.10 if you use the 12.04 PPA. You can do this by following the guide posted above and then editing the file in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ and replacing all the instances of "quantal" with "precise" then there is some small issue with the device being managed. You need to edit /etc/network/interfaces and restart network manager I believe. Not really sure about that part.

For Developers:
The chipset should be supported by the b43 driver in kernels after 3.2.0 (I believe). However, in Ubuntu 12.10 and all previous versions the package firmware-b43-installer refuses to install because this chipset 14e4:4331 is not listed in the chipsets that the package thinks it should support. The above guide resolves this issue. The package firmware-b43-installer should allow installation of itself for this chipset.

[hewfish (hewfish)]

http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php

[penalvch (penalvch)]

Jussi Pakkanen, this bug was reported a while ago and there hasn't been any activity in it recently. We were wondering if this is still an issue? If so, could you please test for this with the latest development release of Ubuntu? ISO images are available from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ .

If it remains an issue, could you please run the following command in the development release from a Terminal (Applications->Accessories->Terminal), as it will automatically gather and attach updated debug information to this report:

apport-collect -p linux <replace-with-bug-number>

Also, could you please test the latest upstream kernel available (not the daily folder) following https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelMainlineBuilds ? It will allow additional upstream developers to examine the issue. Once you've tested the upstream kernel, please comment on which kernel version specifically you tested. If this bug is fixed in the mainline kernel, please add the following tags:
kernel-fixed-upstream
kernel-fixed-upstream-VERSION-NUMBER

where VERSION-NUMBER is the version number of the kernel you tested. For example:
kernel-fixed-upstream-v3.13-rc1

This can be done by clicking on the yellow circle with a black pencil icon next to the word Tags located at the bottom of the bug description. As well, please remove the tag:
needs-upstream-testing

If the mainline kernel does not fix this bug, please add the following tags:
kernel-bug-exists-upstream
kernel-bug-exists-upstream-VERSION-NUMBER

As well, please remove the tag:
needs-upstream-testing

Once testing of the upstream kernel is complete, please mark this bug's Status as Confirmed. Please let us know your results. Thank you for your understanding.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]