comment/question on broadcom wireless
boresch
Status: New User - Welcome
Joined: 15 Mar 2010
Posts: 1
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My setup is a plain debian testing installation, augmented by the
"liquorix" kernel (2.6.33-0.dmz.4-liquorix-686) The laptop
happens to have broadcom wireless (BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01))

Everythings works fine when using the stock debian testing 2.6.32 kernel (plus
self-compiled nvidia 190.x driver (I need to do some CUDA stuff, so there isn't
much choice for me here)

When attempting to switch to the liquorix kernel, I most of the time
hang hard early in the boot sequence with some status message about
b43-pci-bridge. (This seems to have bitten many sidux people as well ...)

Since this pointed to a b43 driver issue,
I then thought that maybe I can circumvent this by switching to the
Broadcom STA driver, but initialy no joy. "Enlightenment" came from
sidux.com/PNphpBB2-viewtopic-t-20056.html By (more or less)
following the suggestions in this thread, I now have a booting liquorix kernel
and wireless. The key point is preventing the ohci_hcd module until the
wl (=sta) module has loaded, since ohci_hcd pulls in ssb, which (often)
leads to the b43-pci-bridge hang ...

I'm posting this for two reasons: first, it might help people who need the
sta driver since their card isn't supported by b43. Second, while
I can live with all that since I have a working system ;-) , any
insights why ohci_hcd (?) screws up the complete boot sequence would
be appreciated. I'd actually guess that the b43 driver works just fine (for my hardware) if one only delays ohci_hcd after it has loaded ... (somewhat too lazy to try that out) It also begs the question why things work on 2.6.32 ...

Thanks, and also thanks for making this nice kernel available!

Stefan
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damentz
Status: Assistant
Joined: 09 Sep 2008
Posts: 1117
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No clue, it just loads much earlier at boot time.
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