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Good morning (8:45 am CST) Ubuntu family!

A friend of mine gave me his old MacBook Air (1,1) to make faster. Since I wasn't getting anywhere with OS X, I decided to install Ubuntu. The only distribution I felt comfortable with was 14.04 since it's LTS and EFI compatible.

Thus, my system is Ubuntu 14.04 with kernel 4.4.0-53-generic

As requested, here is my output of lspci -nnk | grep 0280 -A2:

02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Limited BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:4328] (rev 05) Subsystem: Apple Inc. AirPort Extreme [106b:008b]

I have run into 2 problems, however.

The Wi-Fi Driver is a Broadcom 4321, which in order to work had to have one of two options available:

  1. The proprietary driver gained in the package bcmwl-kernel-source had to be installed and used in the Additional Drivers page in Settings.
  2. Install the driver from source with the Broadcom Linux STA driver tarball downloaded from Broadcom's website

Sadly neither of these two options make the driver functional. Let's walk through each.

  1. The proprietary driver:

    • The Additional Drivers setting page is saying that the proprietary driver package bcmwl-kernel-source is installed and that the device is using an alternate driver.

    • The package bcmwl-kernel-source is having a problem in install, as seen on on a Pastebin in the comments (I do think that if I can find a way to successfully install a version of bcmwl-kernel-source without the error in pastebin that the driver will become functional.)

  2. The source driver:

    • I followed every step and everything given in the README file, but still came up with nothing.

    • Everything came up with no errors, but even after waiting quite a while to see if the driver worked, it didn't. (I may note that it magically came alive for a while but was lost on reboot. I am actively attempting to retry this method until it works.) I am currently using a PnP USB Wi-Fi dongle.

Does anybody have any suggestions on what I could change or redo to get either one of these methods working (without buying the Apple Ethernet Adapter)?

EDIT: I attempted the steps listed in the 1st and 2nd answers of this question: Installing Broadcom Wireless Drivers only to find that neither worked. The Additional Drivers setting screen is saying that unless I use the package bcmwl-kernel-source, I may not use the driver at all. This means that even with firmware-b43 the Broadcom Wi-Fi will not work.

Screenshot after reboot with firmware-b43-installer:screenshot
Output of dmesg | grep b43 returned literaly nothing
Out put of rfkill list all returned:

0: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: yes Hard blocked: no

Community
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Find Me In The Woods
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1 Answers1

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This means that even with firmware-b43 the Broadcom Wi-Fi will not work.

I am not at all sure that's the case. Let's try so we know for sure. With a temporary working internet connection:

sudo apt-get purge bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer

After it finishes, detach the ethernet or tether or however you connected to the internet and reboot. Give us your report.

chili555
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  • Already did that, and as stated, no results – Find Me In The Woods Dec 20 '16 at 16:19
  • Please try it again and then show us: `dmesg | grep b43` and also: `rfkill list all` – chili555 Dec 20 '16 at 16:21
  • Edits made to my question – Find Me In The Woods Dec 20 '16 at 16:59
  • Please try: `sudo modprobe b43 && dmesg | grep b43` Please forget about *Additional Drivers* as it is most likely incorrect for this device. – chili555 Dec 20 '16 at 18:42
  • [ 139.330438] b43-phy0: Broadcom 4321 WLAN found (core revision 12) [ 139.359766] b43-phy0: Found PHY: Analog 5, Type 4 (N), Revision 2 [ 139.359788] b43-phy0: Found Radio: Manuf 0x17F, ID 0x2055, Revision 4, Version 0 – Find Me In The Woods Dec 20 '16 at 22:56
  • Now does a wireless interface appear? `iwconfig`? – chili555 Dec 21 '16 at 01:55
  • Yes, it appears. But I cannot see any networks around me, and connecting to my home network via Hidden Network doesn't do anything – Find Me In The Woods Dec 21 '16 at 15:08
  • http://imgur.com/a/g7umr (screenshot of the unresponsive broadcom) – Find Me In The Woods Dec 21 '16 at 15:13
  • What is the partially showing wireless interface above `lo` in the picture? It appears to be a connected wireless interface. Do you also have a USB wireless or what? If so, Network Manager will default to the working device if available. Does the Broadcom scan if the USB is detached? – chili555 Dec 21 '16 at 15:39
  • notice how in the picture there is another print out of iwconfig. In that readout, there is wlan2 USB wifi dongle. I took it out for the second run of that readout. lo is simple loopback – Find Me In The Woods Dec 21 '16 at 16:09
  • Very mysterious! Please run and post: `dmesg | grep -e b43 -e wlan` As the result may be lengthy, paste it here and give us the link: http://paste.ubuntu.com Also, in `/etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf` is managed=false or =true? – chili555 Dec 22 '16 at 00:01
  • http://paste.ubuntu.com/23666906/ **Why is it describing my USB wifi driver??? – Find Me In The Woods Dec 22 '16 at 02:59
  • Try this instead: `dmesg | grep wlan0` with the USB detached, of course. – chili555 Dec 22 '16 at 03:28
  • [ 27.118652] rt2800usb 2-1:1.0 wlan2: renamed from wlan0 [ 27.132258] systemd-udevd[336]: renamed network interface wlan0 to wlan2 [ 2416.465315] rt2800usb 2-1:1.0 wlan2: renamed from wlan0 [ 2416.472431] systemd-udevd[3205]: renamed network interface wlan0 to wlan2 – Find Me In The Woods Dec 22 '16 at 04:19
  • keep in mind that was just after unplugging the usb wifi – Find Me In The Woods Dec 22 '16 at 04:19