Broadcom BCM4352 wi-fi drivers no longer working as of 22.04

**chili555** · June 27th, 2023

Sorry for my delay. I have beed quite ill.

is there anything you can suggest looking at?

There are only two reasons that I know of that bcma would possibly load in spite of being blacklisted. First, modules that are to be loaded explicitly, are declared in /etc/modules. Please check to see that bcma, ssb nor cordic are declared. If so, remove them.

The second is that certain Broadcom ethernet devices use the driver b44. It's dependencies are ssb and mii. I beleive that it is possible that, in the presence of the driver b44 and ssb, that bcma and all of her noisy sisters will also load.

What is your ethernet device?

Code:

lspci -nnk | grep 0200 -A3

**veleek** · June 30th, 2023

/etc/modules is empty and the Ethernet device is a Realtek, so nothing obvious conflicting there.

Code:

> lspci -nnk | grep 0200 -A3
02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller [10ec:8168] (rev 0c)        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller [103c:21b4]
        Kernel driver in use: r8169
        Kernel modules: r8169

That being said, I have a proper repro now.

First I tried the live distro off a USB key (Lubuntu 23.04).
1. Boot up
2. Check lsmod and verified that b43 and bcma drivers exist and are loaded.
3. Install driver from Additional Drivers window.
4. Since I can't reboot and keep the live distro changes, after installing the driver I manually removed b43 and bcma drivers (sudo modprobe -r b43, etc.)
5. Then manually loaded wl (sudo modprobe wl)
6. Successful wifi connection.

So next steps:
1. Re-install Lubuntu fresh on the machine.
2. Verify same state (b43 and bcma loaded)
3. Install the Broadcom driver
4. Verify that /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-dkms.conf contains b43 and bcma.
5. Reboot machine
6. lsmod | grep -e b43 -e bcma, shows that bcma is still loaded but not b43.
7. verify that wifi doesn't work.

At this point in time I did some digging and found Modules loading despite being added to the blacklist - Ask Ubuntu. The suggestion was to run

Code:

sudo update-initramfs -u

as that was required to update the blacklist. I ran this command, and rebooted and verified that neither b43 or bcma were loaded and wifi worked properly.

So! We know what the problem is, and we know how to fix it. What's next? Is there anyway to troubleshoot why the blacklist isn't being respected? Or why on the earlier version I don't even need to restart after installing the driver for it to work? Should it really be neccessary to run update-initramfs after changing the blacklist for this to work? What changed since version 20 for this to break?

**chili555** · July 1st, 2023

sudo update-initramfs -u

I suspect that this is the key. I also suspect that the process of installing the driver bcmwl-kernel-source should, but does not, include that as the final step in it's latest version.

I recommend that you file a bug report: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu

**veleek** · July 2nd, 2023

Bug filed: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread....1#post14148921

Thanks for the help! This thread can be marked resolved now.

**smikesmith** · 4 Weeks Ago

Hi, I've installed a brand-new Ubuntu 22.04LTS, and have this same problem. Broadcom 4352 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter is not found. The system is using "Broadcom Linux STA wireless driver from bcmwl-kernel-source (proprietary)", but I get no function, i.e., no wifi is found. This built-in adapter has worked perfectly for years with Ubuntu 14.04 and 20.04. I've tried numerous suggestions across the web, but with no success. What doe it take, after two years of OS release, to get a working driver?