[SOLVED] Broadcom wireless BCM4322 with b43 no connection (recently)

Question

Hi there,
recently (not sure when exactly, as my Notebook is mostly docked with ethernet LAN) my wireless stopped connecting to different routers. This came to my attention about 3 weeks ago.
My wireless card is a Broadcom, see
$ lspci -vnn | grep 14e4
0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:432b] (rev 01)
and used to run just fine using the b43 driver blacklisting the b43legacy. Now wireless stopped working, and I am not able to connect to networks either protected by WPA/2 or even WEP, somehow the authentication fails.
I am using NetworkManager with Gnome 3.4.2 and re-installed the b43-firmware from AUR today
$ uname -a
Linux Spiff 3.5.3-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Sun Aug 26 09:14:51 CEST 2012 x86_64 GNU/Linux
$ pacman -Qi networkmanager
Name : networkmanager
Version : 0.9.6.0-1
$ pacman -Qi b43-firmware
Name : b43-firmware
Version : 5.100.138-2
URL : http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
Depends On : linux>=3.2
Installed Size : 1052,00 KiB
Architecture : any
Build Date : Mi 12 Sep 2012 13:27:09 CEST
Install Date : Mi 12 Sep 2012 13:27:13 CEST
Install Reason : Explicitly installed
Description : Firmware for Broadcom B43 wireless networking chips
I switched from initscripts to systemd somewhere in July, but not sure if it is coincidence, as all modules still load fine, and I can see SSIDs as before.
$ dmesg | grep b43
[ 1672.938354] b43-phy1: Broadcom 4322 WLAN found (core revision 16)
[ 1673.004863] Registered led device: b43-phy1::tx
[ 1673.004881] Registered led device: b43-phy1::rx
[ 1673.004901] Registered led device: b43-phy1::radio
[ 1700.930077] b43-phy1: Loading firmware version 666.2 (2011-02-23 01:15:07)
$ lsmod | grep b43
b43 353762 0
ssb 49827 1 b43
pcmcia 35785 2 b43,ssb
bcma 25146 1 b43
mac80211 416391 1 b43
mmc_core 81526 4 b43,ssb,sdhci,sdhci_pci
cfg80211 173210 2 b43,mac80211
I started the NetworkManager from the console and attached the log (excerpt, see full debug log with link below)
NetworkManager[2572]: <info> Config: set interface ap_scan to 1
NetworkManager[2572]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> scanning
NetworkManager[2572]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: scanning -> authenticating
NetworkManager[2572]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: authenticating -> disconnected
NetworkManager[2572]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> scanning
NetworkManager[2572]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: scanning -> authenticating
NetworkManager[2572]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: authenticating -> disconnected
NetworkManager[2572]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> scanning
NetworkManager[2572]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: scanning -> authenticating
NetworkManager[2572]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: authenticating -> disconnected
NetworkManager[2572]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> scanning
NetworkManager[2572]: <warn> Activation (wlan0/wireless): association took too long.
NetworkManager[2572]: <info> (wlan0): device state change: config -> need-auth (reason 'none') [50 60 0]
NetworkManager[2572]: <warn> Activation (wlan0/wireless): asking for new secrets
NetworkManager[2572]: <info> (wlan0): supplicant interface state: scanning -> disconnected
NetworkManager[2572]: <warn> Couldn't disconnect supplicant interface: This interface is not connected.
NetworkManager[2572]: <warn> No agents were available for this request.
NetworkManager[2572]: <info> (wlan0): device state change: need-auth -> failed (reason 'no-secrets') [60 120 7]
NetworkManager debug log
Google resp. searching the forums did not give me a clue. However I switched to the broadcom-wl driver, and now wireless is working again. Nevertheless I would like to use the b43 driver, mainly for the reason that my neighborhood is quite busy with WLAN, and I like to run my router on channel 13, but the broadcom-wl driver only seems to support channel 1-11 in contrast to the b43 driver; also b43 is the OpenSource recommended one, according to the wiki.
Any help or ideas is appreciated. Thanks in advance, best regards,
christoph
Last edited by roepi (2013-11-24 18:43:55)

Answer 1

Koven wrote:My only limitation right now is that I can't connect to any hidden ESSID network
Hmmm, my limitation with the wl driver is, that channel 12/13 is not supported. As far as I found out there is no way to make it work, as the driver itself does not support it.
Koven wrote:Wiki says b43 is supported for BCM4322 but if you go to the link they give you it says it's not supported.
On the b43 Linux Wireless site as well as in the wiki the BCM4322 [14e4:432b] is listed as "Not in kernel26-lts" and "partially in 2.6.39+". Where did you find it is not supported at all?
However it used to work on my machine month ago flawlessly with the b43 driver, but somehow stopped working. That's why.