Modules not loading even though they're present in filesystem

Question

Last night I did a pacman -Syu on my laptop. It went well, no errors.
This morning I boot up my laptop and now some modules aren't being loaded at boot, nor are they loading with modprobe (even with an argument to the full path of the module).
packages upgraded:
asciidoc
coreutils (8.17-1 -> 8.17-3)
elfutils (0.153-1 -> 0.154-1)
firefox
glibmm
gpm
grep
imagemagick
kbd
libpulse
linux (3.4.4-3 -> 3.4.5-1)
linux-headers
lirc-utils
pyqt-common
pyqt
python2-pyqt
skype
thunderbird
virtualbox-modules
vlc
wine
xmlrpc-c
Kernel version:
3.4.5-1-ARCH
/var/log/boot:
Loading User-specified Modules
ERROR: could not insert 'b43': Invalid argument
ERROR: could not insert 'usbnet': Invalid argument
Oddly enough, my eth0 device also isn't showing up (in ifconfig -a or in ls /sys/class/net) either.
lspci -v:
08:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev02)
Subsystem: Dell Device 022a
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 10
Memory at c0300000 (32-bit, non-prefectchable) [size=8K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
modprobe:
modprobe b43
ERROR: could not insert 'b43': Invalid argument
modprobe -d /usr/lib/modules/3.4.5-1-ARCH/extramodules/drivers/net/wireless/b43/ b43
The second call to modprobe doesn't output any errors, but my wireless interface still won't come up and the module isn't listed in lsmod.
Reinstalling linux, linux-headers, and mkinitcpio and then regenerating the initramfs didn't help either.
I have a usb dongle for wireless as well (TP-Link TL-WN722N) that uses ath9k, but modprobe doesn't want to load ath9k either. I have compat drivers from the AUR installed, but I can't see why that would bork eth0.
edit:
Well just tried to modprobe b44 and that errors out as well, I thought that might be the reason ethernet wasn't working and I think I may be on the right track.
I'm used to problems with this crappy wireless card but I've never had eth0 bork on me on this particular machine. I'm a bit stumped and I'm sure I've missed something.
Anyone have an idea?
edit:
Well, for now I just downgraded the kernel and that's gotten me back ethernet. It looks like a new kernel is in the repos now, so I'm going to try another pacman -Syu. If that fixes it I'm betting it was a packaging issue.
Last edited by airencracken (2012-07-21 19:14:51)

Answer 1

Zancarius wrote:
Sounds to me like the firmware for whatever reason isn't being installed in the appropriate location.
I checked out the PKGBUILD for b43-firmware (which I'm assuming is what you installed), and it appears to be using b43-fwcutter presumably to snag the appropriate files and place them in /usr/lib/firmware:
# Application
b43-fwcutter -w ""${pkgdir}"/usr/lib/firmware/" linux/wl_apsta.o
Does the PKGBUILD generate any errors? Did you check /usr/lib/firmware for the firmware for your wireless? Worst case, you could probably try running b43-fwcutter manually and see what it does. Maybe it has some verbose/debug option you could use, too.
The firmware is installed to the correct directory and the PKGBUILD doesn't generate any errors. I've tried b43-fwcutter manually as well to no avail. Even if that were the case though it doesn't explain why the new kernel also rejects the usbnet, ath9k, and b44 modules. Basically I'm stuck on this old(ish) kernel until this is fixed if I want any sort of network connectivity.
Xyne wrote:This is a long shot, but if you have a separate boot partition, check that it is actually mounted. If not, backup/remove the contents /boot, mount the partition and rebuild the kernel image
I do not have a separate boot partition on this machine. And the mtime of the initramfs images is certainly current.
Last edited by airencracken (2012-07-22 17:41:56)