Kernel 2.6.40 and Broadcom Wireless Broken!

Unfortunately, I don’t have any fixes at this point. But, I do have some links. If you have any ideas, please comment below. I am sure I am not the only one with this problem.

I have updated the kernel with YumEx, and now I have two different 2.6.40 kernels. When I boot into either of those kernels, my wireless is gone! Currently, the only way I can make the wireless work is to select the 2.6.38 kernel at the grub menu during boot.

That is not a good long term solution because I believe that yum only saves the last two kernels previous to the current one. So, if I update the kernel one more time, I think 2.6.38 will fall off the list! That’s is why I haven’t just updated the /boot/grub/grub.conf to make the 2.6.38 kernel default.

Here are some links that may help:

• Fedora Forum: broadcom-wl not working for 2.6.30 kernel update
• Fedora Forum: Fedora 15 and Broadcom BCM43224 not working
• Red Hat Bugzilla: Bug 728016 – Kernel 2.6.40 breaks wireless broadcom bcm4313

One link that I found suggested adding a line to the modprobe configuration to blacklist bcma. Unfortunately, that didn’t work for me. That module doesn’t seem to be installed. Do I need to install it?

[skp@pecan ~]$ sudo modprobe bcma
[sudo] password for skp: 
FATAL: Module bcma not found.

Another post suggested blacklisting b44. That one didn’t work for me either. It just made the Wired connection not work.

In my old kernel, here is what things look like:

[skp@pecan ~]$ echo 'Kernel Version: ' `uname -r` && echo 'lspci Info:' && lspci -v | awk '/Ether|Net/,/^$/'
Kernel Version:  2.6.38.8-35.fc15.x86_64
lspci Info:
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 01f2
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 17
	Memory at fe5fe000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: b44
	Kernel modules: b44

0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
	Memory at fe8fc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: wl
	Kernel modules: wl, ssb

In, the new kernel, here is what it looks like:

[skp@pecan ~]$ echo 'Kernel Version: ' `uname -r` && echo 'lspci Info:' && lspci -v | awk '/Ether|Net/,/^$/'
Kernel Version:  2.6.40.3-0.fc15.x86_64
lspci Info:
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Dell Device 01f2
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 64, IRQ 17
	Memory at fe5fe000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: b44
	Kernel modules: b44

0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
	Memory at fe8fc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
	Kernel modules: ssb