Hello,
I have a Broadcom BCM4311 wifi card and I'm using the b43 kernel driver with it
(Ubuntu 3.11.0-13-generic). Unfortunately my system seems to have problems
loading the driver correctly at boot time. In most cases it does not properly
load the driver on boot making it necessary to use the radio killswitch to
manually stop and restart the wifi which then works perfectly and without any
further disruptions.
The bug is not reproducible in a way that that I am not able to predict if it
will happen after the next boot. I am also not able to reproduce it once I
have successfully enabled the wifi after a failed boot. Since I only started
using the b43 driver with the kernel I'm still using I do not know if it would
have worked with previous kernels which were using the Broadcom driver.
The only hint I have so far found in debugging is a small difference in the
dmesg output between working and non-working boot sequences. When the wifi
fails to start dmesg contains the following lines:
[ 16.169637] b43-phy0: Broadcom 4311 WLAN found (core revision 13)
[…]
[ 16.217018] b43-phy0: Found PHY: Analog 4, Type 2 (G), Revision 9
[…]
[ 16.246721] Broadcom 43xx driver loaded [ Features: PNL ]
Using the radio killswitch under these circumstances yields the following
output:
[ 496.421727] pci 0000:30:00.0: [14e4:4312] type 00 class 0x028000
[ 496.421782] pci 0000:30:00.0: reg 0x10: [mem 0x00000000-0x00003fff 64bit]
[ 496.421930] pci 0000:30:00.0: supports D1 D2
[ 496.422004] pci 0000:30:00.0: System wakeup disabled by ACPI
[ 496.428993] pci 0000:30:00.0: BAR 0: assigned [mem 0xc8000000-0xc8003fff
64bit]
[ 496.577397] b43-pci-bridge 0000:30:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[ 496.596096] ssb: Found chip with id 0x4311, rev 0x02 and package 0x00
[ 496.596111] ssb: Core 0 found: ChipCommon (cc 0x800, rev 0x13, vendor
0x4243)
[ 496.596123] ssb: Core 1 found: IEEE 802.11 (cc 0x812, rev 0x0D, vendor
0x4243)
[ 496.596136] ssb: Core 2 found: USB 1.1 Host (cc 0x817, rev 0x04, vendor
0x4243)
[ 496.596148] ssb: Core 3 found: PCI-E (cc 0x820, rev 0x05, vendor 0x4243)
[ 496.660259] b43-phy1: Broadcom 4311 WLAN found (core revision 13)
[ 496.704083] b43-phy1: Found PHY: Analog 4, Type 2 (G), Revision 9
[ 496.728352] ssb: Sonics Silicon Backplane found on PCI device
0000:30:00.0
[ 496.729194] ieee80211 phy1: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel_ht'
[ 496.972075] b43-phy1: Loading firmware version 666.2 (2011-02-23 01:15:07)
When everything is working as expected I can find the following in the dmesg
output:
[ 16.115666] b43-phy0: Broadcom 4311 WLAN found (core revision 13)
[…]
[ 16.160089] b43-phy0: Found PHY: Analog 4, Type 2 (G), Revision 9
[…]
[ 16.184214] Broadcom 43xx driver loaded [ Features: PNL ]
[…]
[ 24.738141] pci 0000:30:00.0: [14e4:4312] type 00 class 0x028000
[ 24.738203] pci 0000:30:00.0: reg 0x10: [mem 0x00000000-0x00003fff 64bit]
[ 24.738350] pci 0000:30:00.0: supports D1 D2
[ 24.738425] pci 0000:30:00.0: System wakeup disabled by ACPI
[ 24.755897] pci 0000:30:00.0: BAR 0: assigned [mem 0xc8000000-0xc8003fff
64bit]
[ 24.809549] b43-pci-bridge 0000:30:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[ 24.896511] ssb: Found chip with id 0x4311, rev 0x02 and package 0x00
[ 24.896538] ssb: Core 0 found: ChipCommon (cc 0x800, rev 0x13, vendor
0x4243)
[ 24.896551] ssb: Core 1 found: IEEE 802.11 (cc 0x812, rev 0x0D, vendor
0x4243)
[ 24.896563] ssb: Core 2 found: USB 1.1 Host (cc 0x817, rev 0x04, vendor
0x4243)
[ 24.896574] ssb: Core 3 found: PCI-E (cc 0x820, rev 0x05, vendor 0x4243)
[ 24.960281] b43-phy1: Broadcom 4311 WLAN found (core revision 13)
[ 25.004095] b43-phy1: Found PHY: Analog 4, Type 2 (G), Revision 9
[ 25.028328] ssb: Sonics Silicon Backplane found on PCI device
0000:30:00.0
[ 25.029050] ieee80211 phy1: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel_ht'
[ 25.236092] b43-phy1: Loading firmware version 666.2 (2011-02-23 01:15:07)
Am I right in suspecting that this may be a bug in the driver? What can I do
in order to help debugging? And if it's not a bug in the driver what could be
the reason for this behaviour?
