Broadcom bcm43xx broken with 2.6.20.8 kernel

[Thom Pischke]

Binary package hint: bcm43xx-fwcutter

Switched from Edgy to Feisty at Herd 3. All went well. Apply a slew of updates every few days, mostly with no trouble.

The last kernel update from 2.6.20.6 -> 2.6.20.8 breaks my wireless card though. Booting on 2.6.20.6 fixes the problem.

Just from watching the boot progress, it's clear that there's a problem with bcm43xx-fwcutter. During boot, it complains that the firmware in my wireless card is too old and must be upgraded. This seems a bit fishy since this problem is brought on by switching kernels, not from an upgrade in bcm43xx-fwcutter.

If this problem doesn't get fixed automatically in the next few days/weeks of patches, I'll see if I can gather some more specifics to attach to this issue. At this point, hoping it's just something trivial, and that I don't actually have to upgrade my firmware.

ProblemType: Bug
Date: Wed Feb 14 14:34:54 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.04
Uname: Linux zd7000 2.6.20-6-386 #2 Wed Jan 31 20:48:57 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

[R Morrison (rmorrisonva)]

yup this happens to me as well, i did actually attempt to cut some firmware out that was >4.x but bcm43xx-fwcutter rejected the .sys files i tried. Why does the kernel update demand that seeing as there are no easily available 4.x series firmware files out there to play with. since we cant get the new firmware to extract and the old firmware doesnt work until this is fixed i wager to say most bcm43xx driver users will be SOL unless like me thay have a wired connection.

[R Morrison (rmorrisonva)]

i want to confirm this bug but i am unable... new to launchpad so perhaps im missing something... have done it on other bugs before...

[BHowell (mute-howell-ersatz)]

I can confirm the same bug here. Anyone know of any valid 4.x amd64 firmware source out there?

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

some potentially related info, with different specifics

http://lists.infradead.org/pipermail/fedora-ppc/2006-March/000805.html

I see an error very similar to this error in the above link:
*****: Sorry, it's not posible to extract "bcm43xx_microcode11.fw".
*****: Extracting firmware from an old driver is bad. Choose a more recent one.

[Mike Dahlgren (dahlgren)]

I have the same issue. The message states that it will not work with older versions of the firmware (pre 4.0 version) however I updated my firmware and can confirm that I have 4.1 installed and still no luck.

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

By the way, I have a BCM4306 rev 02.

[darren (darrenm)]

Same here. I have the BCM4319 happily using the firmware that bcm43xx-fwcutter downloads for me from the net until 2.6.20-8

[Mike Dahlgren (dahlgren)]

It looks like Ubuntu switched from the regular bcm43xx driver to the DeviceScape driver in the last release. This breaks compatibility for us who have older versions of the cards.

https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/bcm43xx-dev/2007-February/004005.html

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

Hmm, dropping support for a wireless card in a laptop barely three years old seems a bit rash. Especially considering that this support has only been around for a year or so...

So is there no hope for a BCM4306, even with updated firmware?

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

Ugo, could you explain how you upgraded your firmware? 10 minutes searching the net hasn't turned up anything helpful yet. Nothing on the broadcom site, not can I find any other howto pages for upgrading to V4 firmware.

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

More info here: http://<email address hidden>/msg03039.html

Seems to imply that it should be possible to install support for V3 and V4 firmware in parallel, but doesn't look like a job for the end user. Probably something like this could be done in the distro though.

[darren (darrenm)]

The current bcm43xx-fwcutter in the repos is 1:005 which pulls down the V3 firmware:

12:57:40 (83.85 KB/s) - `wl_apsta.o' saved [652866/652866]

  filename : wl_apsta.o
  version : 3.130.20.0

I don't know if the 1:006 fwcutter pulls any newer firmware down?

[R Morrison (rmorrisonva)]

Thom is right dropping support of older cards in order to support new ones is stupid for a couple of reasons:
1. The people most impacted will of course be current users with cards that have older firmware... suddenly Ubuntu will no longer natively support their bcm43xx chipset w/ old firmware leaving those of us who have been using said driver succesfully high and dry.
2. The people who might benefit (people with newer cards) won't realize the benefits as much as we the older-card owners will feel the pain.
 Please fix this issue, it's bad policy to remove support for hardware that is by no means antiquated, and that as this bug shows many loyal Ubuntu users and testers have said "older" hardware. If you ccant support both new and old firmware, dont break support with the old its not nice :-)
- Richard

[darren (darrenm)]

I actually have the BCM4318 card. I've tried the v4 firmware provided with the Windows drivers for this card and it doesn't give any network access and hard locks the machine, same as any other V4 firmware I try.

[R Morrison (rmorrisonva)]

im finding ndiswrapper + the 64bit driver linked to at linuxuant to be my
best alternative. im disappointed i cant use the better native bcm43xx
driver.

On 2/16/07, darren <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> I actually have the BCM4318 card. I've tried the v4 firmware provided
> with the Windows drivers for this card and it doesn't give any network
> access and hard locks the machine, same as any other V4 firmware I try.
>
> --
> Broadcom bcm43xx broken with 2.6.20.8 kernel
> https://launchpad.net/bugs/85099
>

--
"There is no free lunch." -Milton Friedman

[jrb114 (j-r-blake)]

I've had a similar experience. See

http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=2166540&posted=1#post2166540

I'm using a WPA encrypted network, and when I used the version 4 firmware under network manager, the machine locks up and needs a hard reset. However, when I *don't* use NM and configure wpa_supplicant by hand, it works ok.

Attached is the part of /var/log/syslog when NM and bcm43xx are getting upset. You can see it attempts to associate with an AP with MAC address 00:00:00:00:00. Which doesn't make any sense.

[R Morrison (rmorrisonva)]

"oh by the way".. i was incorrect.. ndiswrapper with generic amd64 inf's is not an alternative at least for me if you want working encrrption and a reliable connection... i'd really like to see either a revert i n the next kernel to the old-firmware-supporting driver, or create symmetric options ie. one module for bcm43xx-legacy and then the new bcm43xx. Wiping out support especially when users are relying on it is not the way to win and keep users. Hopefully someone on the team will give us an update soon.
-Richard

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

I'm hoping the package maintainer or some other Ubuntu representative weighs in on this soon. I'm also not looking forward to reverting to the inferior Ndiswrapper alternative. I was hoping support for my wireless card would get -better- with each coming ubuntu release, not dropped entirely.

But hey, I guess this bug report has only been around for a few days. Canonical still has two months until official release to get this sorted out. I'm confident they'll find a solution that won't leave enthusiastic Ubuntu advocates feeling left behind.

[pidgas (pidgas)]

I have a Broadcom 4318 wireless adapter in a laptop about 1 1/2 years old (Model HP L2005CU). I was successfully using Network Manager and ndiswrapper to connect wirelessly with Edgy.

When I switched to Feisty, I ran with ndiswrapper but was unable to connect to unencrypted networks (connected fine to WEP and WPA encrypted networks). Switched to the bcm43xx driver, but continued to have the same problem.

NOW, updating to 2.6.20-8 generic kernel I cannot connect to anything and get this same "YOUR FIRMWARE IS TOO OLD" error regarding version 4.x firmware. Of course, finding that firmware version has proven difficult and apparently locks up the kernel if you find it.

Oh well...development version blues. I just have a problem with labeling this bug of "medium" importance. Connectivity is fundamental to computing these days and LOTS of people are stuck with these "old" Broadcom adapters.

[Golgoth (g0lg0th)]

I just wanted to confirm this bug.

Why is it only medium status?!

If you don't have web access just because of a driver problem, it's a shame...

[Golgoth (g0lg0th)]

Just to put some extra info:

Here is a iwconfig with the 2.6.20-6 generic kernel:

golgoth@tatooine:~$ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"Golgoth" Nickname:"Broadcom 4306"
          Mode:Managed Frequency=2.452 GHz Access Point: 00:0F:66:24:F6:6B
          Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power=16 dBm
          RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
          Link Quality=91/100 Signal level=-37 dBm Noise level=-68 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

But where it is strange is here with the 2.6.20-8 generic kernel:

golgoth@tatooine:~$ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wmaster0 IEEE 802.11g Frequency:2.412 GHz
          RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2346 B

eth1 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:""
          Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
          RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2346 B
          Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

What is this wmaster0 ?!

[Joel Cunningham (uber-leoj)]

I have a broadcom 4309 and with 3.x firmware under the 2.6.20.8 kernel, my wireless interface shows up under iwconfig, but if I try and set anything like the SSID, if get a bunch of errors.

With a 4.x Windows drivers, it appears like it's going to work, ie APs show up under network manager, but the status of those APs is unknown. I can't connect to any of them and ultimately the laptop does a hard lock.

My question is what is at fault for not handling the 4.x firmware? Is it just bcm43xx-fwcutter or is there something in the kernel that needs changing also?

[darren (darrenm)]

No connectivity and hard locks are exactly what everyone is getting with the v4 firmware. bit of a show stopper this one, not sure if medium if the correct importance...

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

Adding link to a page with driver downloads, seems appropriate to this issue:

http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/bcm43xx

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

Booted on 2.6.20.8 and attempted to install v4 firmware. bcm43xx complained saying that the driver was either invalid or unsupported

checked dmesg output which loudly insisted that my firmware is too old and that i must upgrade to version 4.x.

But it seems my wireless card does not support v4 firmware at all, it cannot be installed.

According to this link posted by Ugo, https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/bcm43xx-dev/2007-February/004005.html, my wireless card is will not accept the V4 firmware - it's too old. I have a BCM4306 rev 02.

Apparently at least rev 05 is needed:

"> There is a revision number which is the key for v4 suppport. You'll need
> at least revision number 0x4 there for d80211 support. The older
> revisions 0x2 and 0x3 have to use the softmac stack."

So, if I understand this all correctly, it seems the only solution that could possibly work for my card is to restore support for the version 3 drivers in bcm43xx.

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

Edit above: Apparently at least rev *04* is needed:

[Dennis Dirdjaja (dcd-ditsch)]

Confirm on iBook G4, Apple Extreme. I think this way, almost all Apple laptops are affected by this bug.

[Jorge Suárez de Lis (ys)]

Same here.

I've just updated to Feisty. I have a rev03 card bought one year ago, and I can't use it.

[ 899.730877] bcm43xx: YOUR FIRMWARE IS TOO OLD. Firmware from binary drivers older than version 4.x is unsupported. You must upgrade your firmware files.

I won't install an v4 firmware, it's not supported by my card.

Let's see if I can install 2.6.20.6...

[magilus (magilus)]

In fact, this is no bug in bcm43xx-fwcutter and support has not been dropped for older cards.

The new bcm43xx driver, which went to Feisty, requires a 4.x firmware version.

In order to get one, download the latest bcm43xx-fwcutter from http://developer.berlios.de/project/showfiles.php?group_id=4547 and look at the README. At the bottom, there is a link to a 4.x firmware. Get it and compile the bcm43xx-fwcutter version that you just got (the one in Ubuntu is too old) running make. Then extract the firmware via ./bcm43xx-fwcutter FWFILE and copy the .fw files to /lib/firmware. Reload the bcm43xx module (sudo rmmod bcm43xx && sudo modprobe bcm43xx) and everything should work fine then.

I'll try to get an exception in order to make the recent fwcutter version available in Feisty.

[magilus (magilus)]

Wait, I could have got something wrong.. Investigating..

[magilus (magilus)]

If some bcm43xx devices are not working anymore after a Feisty upgrade, although doing the procedure above, please file a bug against linux-source-2.6.20.

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

Hi Martin, you've missed two key points:

 1. Some 'older' cards, older meaning older than 1 year in some cases, do not and will never accept v4 firmware. Thus for such cards, like my BMC4306 rev 02, the current version of bcm43xx will never work, since it requires v4 firmware which my hardware cannot accept.

 2. Even those who DO have v4 firmware are experiencing serious problems with system lockups and poor connectivity.

To me, both of these points speak to the necessity of restoring support for version 3 firmware via the softmac stack, in parallel with the new v4 support if necessary.

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

To clarify my last point, you're right that this is not a bug in bcm43xx-fwcutter. The 'bug' is in the kernel itself which contains support only for v4 firmware, thus dropping support for the many people who have older broadcom cards.

If you want to reclassify this bug to the kernel, that's fine. I'm just hoping it get fixed before release. Otherwise I have to start investigating if I can replace the wireless card in my laptop. Yuck.

[R Morrison (rmorrisonva)]

i filed such a bug days ago :-) one step ahead of ya.
- Richard

On 2/19/07, Martin Jürgens <email address hidden> wrote:
>
> If some bcm43xx devices are not working anymore after a Feisty upgrade,
> although doing the procedure above, please file a bug against linux-
> source-2.6.20.
>
> --
> Broadcom bcm43xx broken with 2.6.20.8 kernel
> https://launchpad.net/bugs/85099
>

--
"There is no free lunch." -Milton Friedman

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

By the way, why not include the latest bcm43xx-fwcutter in ubuntu, if the current one is too old?

[magilus (magilus)]

Thom, thanks for the clarification. This is a bad behavior then.

As the universe freeze already happened, new package versions need an exception in order to go to Universe. I currently try to get one in bug 84917 in order to have the latest and greatest version of bcm43xx-fwcutter in Universe.

I'd like to assign this bug to the kernel also, since there are many pieces of information in here.

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

Just to be sure, I tried installing v4 firmware as per the instructions above. It was a mini-disaster. First, for the firmware which would seem to apply to my card, listed under bcmwl5.sys, both the links listed in the readme seem to be broken:

4.10.40.0 http://rapidshare.de/files/11458737/Broadcom_4.10.40.0_Drivers.cab.html
4.10.40.1 http://images.lunarpages.com/12002219.cab

The first url fetches something with a 2.7Kb size with an invalid MD5 checksum:

$ wget http://rapidshare.de/files/11458737/Broadcom_4.10.40.0_Drivers.cab.html
15:23:38 (776.16 KB/s) - `Broadcom_4.10.40.0_Drivers.cab.html' saved [2748/2748]

$ ./bcm43xx-fwcutter Broadcom_4.10.40.0_Drivers.cab.html
Sorry, the input file is either wrong or not supported by bcm43xx-fwcutter.
This file has an unknown MD5sum 780716436b475d93b9032c5b1549b1f7.

The second url is completely invalid:
$ wget http://images.lunarpages.com/12002219.cab
--15:26:05-- http://images.lunarpages.com/12002219.cab
           => `12002219.cab'
Resolving images.lunarpages.com... failed: Name or service not known.

Not to be deterred, I tried the wl_apsta.o driver:

$ wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.80.53.0.tar.bz2

Then I ran the fwcutter and copied to /lib/firmware and booted on the 2.6.20.8 kernel. Disaster. The wireless light on my laptop activated bringing hope, but the whole system locked up when I actually tried to connect to a network. Checking dmesg output revealed the folllowing:

[ 76.061108] bcm43xx: Firmware: no support for microcode extracted from version 4.x binary drivers.

So I recut the firmware from the original windows driver, deleted the firmware in /lib/firmware, recopied the original firmware, rebooted on 2.6.20.6, and was able to use my wireless card once again, to my relief.

[Daniel G. Taylor (danielgtaylor)]

Bug confirmed on an iBook G4. Old firmware does not work with new kernel and new firmware hard locks the machine.

[R Morrison (rmorrisonva)]

this seems to be a much broader problem than bcm43xx-fwcutter... it looks like its a problem with this new non-softmac driver in kernel. it'd be a pity to see Fiesty go to final with tricky or no broadcom wifi support for a vast number of users, especially mobile users.

[R Morrison (rmorrisonva)]

According to Thom the recommendation:In fact, this is no bug in bcm43xx-fwcutter and support has not been dropped for older cards. The new bcm43xx driver, which went to Feisty, requires a 4.x firmware version. In order to get one, download the latest bcm43xx-fwcutter from http://developer.berlios.de/project/showfiles.php?group_id=4547 and look at the README. At the bottom, there is a link to a 4.x firmware. Get it and compile the bcm43xx-fwcutter version that you just got (the one in Ubuntu is too old) running make. Then extract the firmware via ./bcm43xx-fwcutter FWFILE and copy the .fw files to /lib/firmware. Reload the bcm43xx module (sudo rmmod bcm43xx && sudo modprobe bcm43xx) and everything should work fine then. I'll try to get an exception in order to make the recent fwcutter version available in Feisty.
Doesn't seem to fix the issue, back to the drawing board?

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

Actually, I think it's ok to set status to 'Rejected' for the bcm43xx-fwcutter package.

This bug is now also registered against linux-source-2.6.20, where I believe the fix would have to be implemented.

My suggestion is that the kernel should be modified to include two parallel versions of bcm43xx. One version would use the softmac stack, the other would use the new devicescape stack.

There's even a howto for this on the bcm43xx home page: https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/bcm43xx-dev/2006-April/001662.html

The kernel could attempt to cut and use V4 firmware and devicescape stack, and if that fails, cut and use version 3 firmware and softmac stack instead.

[darren (darrenm)]

Just to confirm:

It seems like everyone has exactly the same problem,

V3 firmware won't work in the new devicescape driver.
V4 firmware would work fine if it wasn't for the bug in the 2.6.20-8 build kernel which shows:

wmaster0 IEEE 802.11g Frequency:2.412 GHz
          RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2346 B

as an extra device.

This issue affects anyone using the bcm43xx driver in Feisty using the 2.6.20-8 build kernel.

Also the V4 firmware can't be extracted with the current repo version of bcm43xx-fwcutter, version 006 is required.

This seems to be what everyone is experiencing?

[magilus (magilus)]

Rejecting the bcm43xx-fwcutter task, as it (WLAN broken) is no bug in bcm43xx-fwcutter. For a newer release which can extract v4 firmwares, see bug 84917.

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

Darren's description seems accurate to me. I also see the wmaster0 interface when booting with 2.6.20.8, though I can't confirm that's what causes the v4 problems since I can't use v4 firmware.

bug 84917 should take care of the the bcm43xx-fwcutter problem.

Issues with bcm43xx and various firmware are in the kernel itself.

[Jorge Suárez de Lis (ys)]

Thom said:
> The kernel could attempt to cut and use V4 firmware and devicescape stack, and if that fails, cut and use version 3 firmware and softmac stack instead.

Thom, AFAIK V4 firmware should work with with BCM4306 rev04 and rev05. It would be great if it automatically uses V3 firmware for rev03 and rev02 devices.

How's the cutter supossed to know if loading V4 firmware fails? It doesn't hang the whole system?

[darren (darrenm)]

AFAIK the hard lock is only due to a kernel bug and not because of the firmware. If V4 firmware was unsupported it just wouldn't work rather than lock the whole system. Nothing should lock the system.

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

attempting v4 firmware loading won't hang the system, i believe. In my case, a hang only came when actually trying to connect to something. I believe the multiple error messages in dmesg occur before the hang, during boot, so it should be possible to detect these problems during card activation At least, that's how I imagine it. The question is, what then? Maybe something like this could be attempted during package configuration? Attempt to activate the card with v4 firmware and try falling back to v3 firmware if there is an error?

[Kevin Kubasik (kkubasik)]

I have the same problem, I blacklisted bcm43xx to prevent crashes until we have a solution.

[R Morrison (rmorrisonva)]

until this is fixed i have no wireless support w/ the new kernel 2.6.20.8 either through bcm43xx which doesnt work, AND ndiswrapper which no longer works. i havent blacklisted bcm43xx it doesnt crash my system, im waiitng for a rix before feisty goes final.

[Jorge Suárez de Lis (ys)]

@R Morrison: Try downloading ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 and useit to install the driver again. It worked for me.

[R Morrison (rmorrisonva)]

yS,
i have said package and have used it, still a no go on my firmware. thanks for your recomendation though :-)
- Richard

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

This bug seems to be similar to bug 85404 if not the same issue.

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

This issue has gone awful quiet...

I'm still booting with the 2.6.20.6 kernel as a workaround for this issue. Hope someone from the kernel team evaluates this problem soon and assigns an importance. I'm looking for assurance that this bug is on the radar screen for release. Otherwise I have to start shopping for a new wireless card.

[Thom Pischke (thom-pischke)]

Ah, yes, bug 85404 seems to be identical, and is in-progress. I guess that means we can expect a fix soon. Looks like Brian has already cross-referenced both issues via comment.

[magilus (magilus)]

I'll mark this one as a duplicate of bug 85404 then, as the other one is set to "In Progress" and is being worked on. I hope this removes some confusion.

[maddocks (ben-buckys)]

there are 2 drivers in the feisty kernel for the bcm43xx, one is based off the dscape drivers. So if you have an old card and wanna use version 3 firmware load the bcm43xx module and have the V3 firmware extracted to /lib/firmware/ If you wanna try the more buggy but wpa compatable bcm43xx driver then load bcm43xx-d80211 in kernel version 2.6.20-9 and older or bcm43xx-mac80211 in newer kernels. The dscape driver doesnt play nice with network manager, it cannot run above 11MB but wpa_supplicant works great with it and its a client master setup so you can be connected to an AP with one client and have another in monitor mode sniffing packets!

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Beginning with the Hardy Heron 8.04 development cycle, all open Ubuntu kernel bugs need to be reported against the "linux" kernel package. We are automatically migrating this bug to the new "linux" package. However, development has already began for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. It would be helpful if you could test the upcoming release and verify if this is still an issue - http://www.ubuntu.com/testing . If the issue still exists, please update this report by changing the Status of the "linux" task from "Incomplete" to "New". We appreciate your patience and understanding as we make this transition. Thanks!

[zertz (zertz)]

broadcom 4306 revision 02 is still broken in intrepid even in kernel 2.6.27-11 from the proposed repository. really awful