Wireless problems

[Cattyfox]

After using Ubuntu (and others distros but mainly Ubuntu) for a few years, I decided to give Fedora a try. I downloaded Fedora and installed it from USB (lots of trouble to get this working starting on with a Windows machine in Portuguese!)

Anyway,

I was a little bit disappointed when after a fresh install Fedora couldn't connect to wireless networks. lspci told me I was using a "Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)" and after a while (with a wired network) I got it working by following some tutorials found online.

What I did (broadcom-wl should be used in my case):

yum -y install yum-fastestmirror
yum -y update
yum localinstall --nogpgcheck .../rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm .../rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm
yum install kmod-wl

After a reboot everything was working fine until...it was not.

The internet was slow and soon I got disconnected, from this time on I could not connect to WiFi, once I tried to access my wireless network my password was asked again and again with no sucess connecting.


I found it even spookier that sometimes it would connect,just to fail miserably soon after ...

After what I heard about fedora, I really wasn't expecting this kind of problems, thought it would be ready to work out of the box. *sigh*

Additional info:
$ uname -r
3.2.3-2.fc16.x86_64
Using an EEE PC 1215B


After a few reboots I noticed I can connect to my wireless network everytime I booted but once it failed, I could no longer connect again.

Thanks in advance guys

[Gödel]

what's the output of 'lspci -k | grep -A5 [Nn]et' ?

usually it's best to install akmod-wl rather than kmod-wl, since installing akmod-wl ensures the kernel module is rebuilt whenever a kernel update is booted. Then you need to blacklist some modules by adding these lines to the end of /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

blacklist b43-pci-bridge
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist ssb
blacklist b43
blacklist b44

and reboot

(if you do this and your hard wired ethernet uses b44 then do 'modprobe b44' before using hardwired ethernet)

[Cattyfox]

Thanks for such a quick reply!


I think it is working now, at least the netbook hasn't disconnected yet from the wireless network


The output of 'lspci -k | grep -A5 [Nn]et' was

01:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)
Subsystem: AzureWave Device 2047
Kernel driver in use: wl
Kernel modules: bcma, wl
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications AR8152 v2.0 Fast Ethernet (rev c1)
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 8468
Kernel driver in use: atl1c
Kernel modules: atl1c
07:00.0 USB Controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. ASM1042 SuperSpeed USB Host Controller
Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 8488

after blacklisting all the modules and installing akmod-wl it was the same but everything seems to be working now.

Thank you Gödel!

[Cattyfox]

Ok, after a while I noticed wireless isn't working at 100% yet...

I am getting some weird problems, not all wireless networks are being listed and sometimes I have problems reconnecting...

Also, my boot time was horrible so I did:

cat /var/log/boot.log
Failed to start LSB: Builds and install new kmods from akmod packages [FAILED]

So akmods is giving me some problems at boot.

I tried to run

su -c "akmods --kernels 3.2.3-2.fc16.x86_64"
Password:
Checking kmods exist for 3.2.3-2.fc16.x86_64 [ OK ]

and it just seems to run fine!

I did some "investigating" of my own but I can't seem to go any further, here is some information that may be helpful...

(grep -i akmod /var/log/messages gives me a lot of messages so I thought it would be better not to get it all in here)

systemctl status akmods.service
akmods.service - LSB: Builds and install new kmods from akmod packages
Loaded: loaded (/etc/rc.d/init.d/akmods)
Active: failed since Fri, 10 Feb 2012 17:12:20 +0000; 33min ago
Process: 989 ExecStart=/etc/rc.d/init.d/akmods start (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)
CGroup: name=systemd:/system/akmods.service

systemctl list-units --failed
UNIT LOAD ACTIVE SUB JOB DESCRIPTION
akmods.service loaded failed failed LSB: Builds and install new kmods from a

LOAD = Reflects whether the unit definition was properly loaded.
ACTIVE = The high-level unit activation state, i.e. generalization of SUB.
SUB = The low-level unit activation state, values depend on unit type.
JOB = Pending job for the unit.

1 units listed. Pass --all to see inactive units, too.

[Gödel]

yes, there are problems with the akmods service at boot eg see http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=266780

if the delayed boot is too much of a bother then disable the akmods service:

sudo systemctl disable akmods.service

and just run it manually after a boot when required (ie when a new kernel update has been installed):

sudo akmods --kernels $(uname -r)

(check service is enabled/disabled at boot with 'chkconfig --list')

as regards your reconnection problems, can you duplicate the errors in windows or ubuntu? it's hard to know what the problem is, could be a microwave nearby for example. If the problem is known to be absent in windows then try ndiswrapper (link to windows drivers and instructions in first post here)

---------- Post added at 08:50 PM ---------- Previous post was at 08:26 PM ----------

make sure the boot delay is not caused by iscsi service - press escape during boot to see boot log and see which service it gets delayed on - if iscsi is a problem and you have no iscsi targets (networked storage devices) then do

sudo systemctl disable iscsi.service
sudo systemctl disable iscsid.service

[Cattyfox]

The problem isn't only with reconnection as some wireless networks aren't even listed ( and are with Windows ).


About the boot delay I think iscsi and iscsid were one of the problems but I ended up disabling some other unnecessary services too.

Sorry for having so many subjects on one post only...


I will try NDISwrapper as soon as I get the chance,

Thank you

[Gödel]

for fixing boot issues with services take a look at AdamW's hints in this thread http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=273317

(particularly, run 'systemd-analyze blame' just after boot)

If you're gonna try ndiswrapper you'll have to remove wl, you can do it temporarily as described in the thread I linked to above, and if you like ndiswrapper and want to stick with it, you'll have remove the wl rpms from the system.

I have my doubts that the windows driver will show any improvement, but if it does it would be nice to have confirmation

[synic]

Hi CattyFox.

Did you get your Broadcom 4313 wireless working? I've never got mine working on my HP DM1-4108au.

It works in WindoWzz 7 but not in Fedora.

How did you go about getting it working?