FS#27844 - linux-3.2-1 missing Broadcom wireless drivers
Attached to Project:
Arch Linux
Opened by Zeqadious (Zeqadious) - Thursday, 05 January 2012, 21:52 GMT
Last edited by Tobias Powalowski (tpowa) - Thursday, 12 January 2012, 15:09 GMT
Opened by Zeqadious (Zeqadious) - Thursday, 05 January 2012, 21:52 GMT
Last edited by Tobias Powalowski (tpowa) - Thursday, 12 January 2012, 15:09 GMT
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Details
Description:
The latest testing linux kernel (3.2-1) is missing the wireless drivers found previously in brcmsmac and brcmfmac modules. as per commit 5b435de0d786869c95d1962121af0d7df2542009 the drivers have been moved and the config needs tweakage to get them back: http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=commit;h=5b435de0d786869c95d1962121af0d7df2542009 "Add the brcm80211 tree to drivers/net/wireless, and disable the version that's in drivers/staging. This version includes the sources currently in staging, plus any changes that have been sent out for review. Sources in staging will be deleted in a followup patch." |
This task depends upon
Closed by Tobias Powalowski (tpowa)
Thursday, 12 January 2012, 15:09 GMT
Reason for closing: Fixed
Additional comments about closing: added changes to trunk, next rebuild will fix it.
Thursday, 12 January 2012, 15:09 GMT
Reason for closing: Fixed
Additional comments about closing: added changes to trunk, next rebuild will fix it.
I am told that this conflict will be fixed in 3.3 - but that doesn't help us right now.
I am wondering if this is a real build time conflict or if it is jst about the fact that both drivers claim to support the same hardware? The latter should be solvable b some blacklisting by the user. Actually that wouldn't be the first conflict of that kind; there are similar problems with some ata or ethernet drivers.
Despite that, I have tried to force the compiling of the brcmsmac module. And the result of my attempt, ignoring all errors to find out about this issue, makes us clear what is wrong with bcma enabled (see, linux-3.2-brcmsmac-errors.txt).
Well, these are the steps in order to reproduce,
* Download BRCM80211 driver (http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git;a=snapshot;h=e0444488da24423164f30c5f60aa9aec5ee594e3;sf=tgz).
* Decompress it (and verify linux-headers installation).
* Apply the compiling patch into brcmsmac subdirectory (brcmsmac-compiling.patch).
* Try to compile brcmsmac as any program written in C.
All this stuff points to one inevitable conclusion, this is a matter for kernel hackers and developers which will possibly be solved in the next version (3.3); so an alternative compiling is needed to deal with that problem, unless someone finds a patch to fix it on Linux 3.2.
brcmsmac-compiling.patch (0.7 KiB)
Also Roland Vossen, one of the primary Broadcom wireless devs, also visits the Arch forums occasionally. We could send him an email (rvossen [at] broadcom [dot] com) if everything else fails.
I played around with it and got it compiling, but it seems like i messed something up, as I get "Error: could not insert module brcmsmac.ko: Unknown symbol in module"...