Arch Linux

You have to disable BCMA to get brcmsmac. Read this: http://www.h-online.com/open/features/Kernel-Log-Coming-in-3-2-Part-1-Networking-1379085.html

Pointless comment, sorry for the noise

A fix would be really appreciated. I'm stuck with no WiFi and can't downgrade because i need fixes for i915.

I am back to wl driver until this is resolved. I heard the broadcom opensource driver has been moved from staging to net subsytem. http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux.git;a=tree;f=drivers/net/wireless/brcm80211;h=4dda758f2a794063f81f5b118bd15bd98c46078f;hb=HEAD

3.2-2 seems to reintroduce brcmfmac (sdio) but not brcmsmac (pci) module

I can confirm that my wireless still does not work: BCM4313

I am unsure if it is better to disable BCMA (the b43 driver uses it for some devices) so we can enable BRCMSMAC, or leave BCMA enabled and thus BRCMSMAC disabled. The whole situation is confusing.

I am told that this conflict will be fixed in 3.3 - but that doesn't help us right now.

Thomas, if it helps: it's probably easier for people relying on bcma to stick with the old kernel for a while. There is a number of laptops that can't run linux without patches that have landed in 3.2, including some of the newer Macbooks. So incorporating brcmsmac now would make sure that at least everybody can run Arch until 3.3 is here, or until a better fix for running both bcma and brcmsmac is found.

Well, it wouldn't be great for both user groups to keep the 3.1 kernel till this is fixed in 3.3 or later.

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.

Kbuild prevents enabling both at the same time, even as modules.

As far as I know, the brcmsmac module does not compile along with bcma enabled at once, given that the Broadcom IEEE802.11n PCIe SoftMAC WLAN driver is currently unable to use the bcma code.

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.

Do we know which cards currently require bcma and can't run on b43 or brcmsmac alone? I couldn't find reliable information on that, but what i did find is that bcma enables b43 support for certain cards that are also supported by brcmsmac. So if that is the case, disabling bcma wouldn't leave anyone behind.

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.

FYI: i have emailed Roland Vossen for clarification, will report back here if / when he replies.

I may be wrong, but i think we need this patch: http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.linux.kernel.wireless.general/82199
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"...

The compat-wireless module can be used in the meantime. Unfortunately kmod (currently in testing) is broken.

The next build will disable BCMA and enable brcmsmac instead. We will definitely not backport the 3.3 work to make them happy together.