Broadcom wireless: ifconfig eth1 up result in hard-lockup

i can't reproduce this under 686 kernel
maybe a 64bit problem
or a driver problem

#44174 was my last report (prior to fw-cutter).

If the microcode is good, I wonder if theres something in the firmware loader which breaks under 64bit?

I'll try ndsiwrapper again - until as/when I hear about any firmware /microcode updates as Im not able to progress this much on my own.

did you use the provided script :
/usr/share/bcm43xx-fwcutter/install_bcm43xx_firmware.sh

please try and post back here

Ive just dist-upgraded to catch all updates as of May17:

I ran the script again, it did its stuff and added files to /lib/firmware as before. If the firmware is in place (using the script) and I do ifconfig eth1 up, I get an immediate hardware lockup. If the firmware isn't in place I get 'SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory'.

Using ndiswrapper I can load up the 64bit netbc564 driver but still cannot get eth1 up, it results in the same error as above. I wonder if this boils down to an incompatibility with bcm43xx firmware and the hardware I have '564'? different family or is it basically the same? I checked iwconfig, and it lists the device as a "Broadcom 4306" without ndiswrapper drivers registered or firmware loaded into /lib/firmware - so perhaps it is natively compatibile - so why this problem?

well i don't really know
if it is the hardware '564' or the 64bit the source of this bug

Moreover bcm43xx seems to be buggy.
It worked yesterday but today, the network applet tell me "Deconnected" even if i de-activate then activate my eth1 interface ...

I think this may be due to the 1GB ram bug. This driver causes a kernel panic on my machine (amd64 with 1.5 GB ram). There's talk that this 1GB+ addressing bug has been found and fixed upstream.

For the record I get the following panic:

Kernel panic - not syncing: PCI-DMA high address but no IOMMU

Interesting, Ive got 2GB onboard, I'll pull one out to verify.

I can confirm this. I just pulled out 1GB and the module loads and runs fine. The bcm43xx module needs to be rebuilt with a kernel with (I think) the following options:

CONFIG_HIGHMEM4G=y
CONFIG_HIGHMEM=y

I have a gateway MX7118 AMD64 notebook running todays amd64 dapper with all updates. I don't have an intel box to test on.

Just confirming that I am getting the following kernel panic:
  Kernel panic - not syncing: PCI-DMA high address but no IOMMU

This occurs shortly after I cut the firmware into the /lib/firmware directory, and also during bootup. It's a hard crash needing a hardware reset (and then booting into a LiveCD to remove the firmware files from /lib/firmware).

I have a Ferrari 4005 laptop, running AMD64 kernel with 2Gig of ram and the Broadcom 4318 card.

I also use a Broadcom wireless card. It worked fine with Breezy, but doesn't work with a clean install of Dapper. I have an Athlon 32 processor.

When I reinstalled Breezy, the Belkin F5D7010 worked again.

Then I used the update feature to install Dapper a second time and the card stopped working the minute the new operating system took over.

The card doesn't seem to power up under Dapper. I can't activate it.

> Then I used the update feature to install Dapper a second time and the
> card stopped working the minute the new operating system took over.

When you say "the minute the new operating system took over", does that
mean before or after you rebooted into the new kernel?

Hello Ben,

Thanks for your response. I'm a little hazy on exactly when the card stopped
working.

I used the WiFi card to download all the software that transformed the
system from Breezy to Drake. I believe the card stopped working just before
the reboot. It definitely wasn't working after the reboot.

I have another computer I want to upgrade to 6.06. I'll watch that one
closely and give you a more precise report. Hopefully I can get to that this
evening.

Fortunately, I got my Belkin card working last night using some outstanding
information from the Ubuntu Forums. That particular article was titled
(howto) General 6.06 - How to: Broadcom Wireless cards.

This method doesn't rely on ndiswrapper. It allows users to install firmware
for cards that are already recognized by the system, which mine was.

Thanks for your interest. I was about to reinstall Breezy and throw up my
hands. I'd like to help others who might be having this problem, so I'll
definitely get back to you.

Is there anything else you want me to watch for when I update the other
computer?

Best,

Elliott L. Minor

I should have looked closer. Your issue is that you had ndiswrapper setup to operate this card in breezy, when in dapper we have a stock driver for it (although it does need firmware that we cannot redistribute).

I'll consider this bug closed, as it's not really a bug, just an upgrade note.

Can you please reopen this bug? I can confirm it exists. The previous commenter seems to be talking about other issues not related to the original bug report.

To re-summarize the actual bug:

bcm43xx module causes a panic on amd64 (and possibly other) if the system has more than 1GB RAM.

If you want a panic dump I can send it to you, but I believe this was documented on the bcm43xx.berlios.de site. The module needs to be rebuilt with a kernel build configured for more than 1GB ram.

Thanks!

On Wed, 2006-06-07 at 18:48 +0000, BHowell wrote:
> Can you please reopen this bug? I can confirm it exists. The previous
> commenter seems to be talking about other issues not related to the
> original bug report.
>
> To re-summarize the actual bug:
>
> bcm43xx module causes a panic on amd64 (and possibly other) if the
> system has more than 1GB RAM.
>
> If you want a panic dump I can send it to you, but I believe this was
> documented on the bcm43xx.berlios.de site. The module needs to be
> rebuilt with a kernel build configured for more than 1GB ram.

There's already another bug report for that. So just dupe this one to
it, or ignore this one and move on to the existing bug report.

Ben, I've just tried to find the other bug report which will solve this issue, but could not find it when searching.

Do you have the bug number available?

After a bit of searching I foudn this bug that seems related, however it is focussed more on the PPC kernel than the AMD64-k8 kernel.

38912 : https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+bug/38912

Hello Ben,

I appreciate the interest you showed in my wireless problem. I found a
solution on the Umbuntu forum and learned a lot while solving it.

Specifically, I learned that Drake has the necessary drivers and recognizes
my Belkin 54G card (Broadcom), but lacks for legal reasons the firmware to
make it work. Using the excellent instructions from the forum, I was able to
install the firmware and get it working.

Elliott L. Minor

Finally got the back off my laptop and proved wireless works with 1GB of ram (ok, it can see base stations, but configuring wpa-supplicant for WPA-TKIP is the next challenge!). Have moved firmware files out of the way to stop lockup at bootup ( /lib/firmware/bcm* ).

Looking forward to an updated module at some point.

andy

The 1G problem has been fixed in a recent update of dapper. 2.6.15-25.

Great, verified, 15-25 does indeed fix the hang!

However after ifup eth1, starting wpa_supplicant now causes a hard lockup. Ill raise a separate bug for that.

i'm Enrico from Italy
and first of all sorry for my bad english
i have a Laptop HP Pavilion DV8306ea with wifi of Broadcom
i had installed Linux Kubuntu 6.06 with 2.6.15 kernel
To install wifi i had done all
but ndiswrapper -l tell me:
Installed ndis drivers:
bcmwl5 driver present

it doesn't tell me "Hardware present"
i think my device is not switched on and even after if i load the
module on kernel is all ok
but if i go in /var/log/syslog i find he download the driver but not
(as wroten in ndiswrapper installation doc):
something like wlan: ndiswrapper ethernet device xx:xx:xx:........
but (regard my eth1 (wifi device)) i read a repetition of a line like
this: localhost dhclient:DHCPDISCOVER on eth1 to 255.255.255.2555 port
67 interval 5...7...9...4...15 (and other numbers in the consequences
line)
what happend to my wifi? where is the problem?
can someone help me to solve my problem?
i have 1 gb ram and kernel 2.6.16-26-386
thx
enrico