BCM4306 do not work on powerbook

which version of ubuntu are you using? alternatively, you can just copy paste the output of uname -r

thanks

did you used the AppleAirport2 firmware from your osX partition?

try this:
http://blog.effraie.org/index.php/post/2006/10/20/Wifi-sous-ubuntu-ppc-avec-la-carte-Airport-extrem

(it 's in french, but easy...)

I am on Edgy
Linux toucan 2.6.17-10-powerpc #2 Tue Dec 5 22:00:09 UTC 2006 ppc GNU/Linux

I retried the firwmare extraction with the svn version of bcm43xx-fwcutter (instead of the one in the repository).
I also tried with the AppleAirPort2 from Effraie and the file in System/Library/Extensions/AppleAirPort2.kext/Contents/MacOS/AppleAirPort2 (in the MacOSX partition).

Same result, can scan but not connect (dhclient timeout).

I have such problems (ibook G4), too.

Sometimes this procedure helps:

killall dhclient
rmmod -v bcm43xx
modprobe -v bcm43xx
ifconfig eth1 up
iwconfig eth1 essid $YOUR_ESSID
ifconfig eth1 up
dhclient eth1

check, if you have an valid accesspoint (MAC is not 00:00:00....) with iwconfig before you try dhclient

Tried the procedure, nothing.
However, maybe you get a point since a did not notify that the Access Point is said Invalid!
But I do not know how to fix that... :/

# iwconfig eth1
eth1 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"XXXXX" Nickname:"Broadcom 4306"
          Mode:Managed Frequency=2.437 GHz Access Point: Invalid
          Bit Rate:1 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm
          RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

With the prism pcmcia card, I have:
# iwconfig eth2
eth2 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"XXXXX"
          Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:11:50:9D:BD:50
          Bit Rate:54 Mb/s Tx-Power=31 dBm Sensitivity=20/200
          Retry min limit:8 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

> the Access Point is said Invalid!

try giving it the essid, than the _mac_ address of the access point:

sudo iwconfig eth1 essid privatewifi2
sudo iwconfig eth1 ap xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

'iwconfig eth1 ap' seems to have no effets, acces point is still invalid :(

I just found a duplicate (#66594). I do not know how I could have missed it the first time.
It confirms the bug and, more important shows it is a regression from dapper to edgy.

However, I do not know how to handle duplicates with Malone.

confirmed by multiple comments reporting same problem and the dupe (to come in a second).

BCM4306 does not work on my Dell X300 either. Tested with the current Feisty and the card is not detected on boot. After "modprobe bcm43xx" I get following in my dmesg:

[ 1312.320000] bcm43xx driver
[ 1312.320000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:04.0[A] -> Link [LNKE] -> GSI 5 (level, low) -> IRQ 5
[ 1312.608000] bcm43xx: TODO: Incomplete code in keymac_write() at drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx_main.c:1132
[ 1312.608000] bcm43xx: TODO: Incomplete code in keymac_write() at drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx_main.c:1132
[ 1312.608000] bcm43xx: TODO: Incomplete code in keymac_write() at drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx_main.c:1132
[ 1312.608000] bcm43xx: TODO: Incomplete code in keymac_write() at drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx_main.c:1132
[ 1312.608000] bcm43xx: TODO: Incomplete code in keymac_write() at drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx_main.c:1132
[ 1312.608000] bcm43xx: TODO: Incomplete code in keymac_write() at drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx_main.c:1132
[ 1312.608000] bcm43xx: TODO: Incomplete code in keymac_write() at drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx_main.c:1132
[ 1312.608000] bcm43xx: TODO: Incomplete code in keymac_write() at drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx_main.c:1132
[ 1312.608000] bcm43xx: TODO: Incomplete code in keymac_write() at drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx_main.c:1134
[ 1312.608000] bcm43xx: TODO: Incomplete code in keymac_write() at drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx_main.c:1134
[ 1312.608000] bcm43xx: TODO: Incomplete code in keymac_write() at drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx_main.c:1134
[ 1312.608000] bcm43xx: TODO: Incomplete code in keymac_write() at drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/bcm43xx_main.c:1134

visit0r@x300:~$ iwconfig eth1
eth1 IEEE 802.11b/g ESSID:"default" Nickname:"Broadcom 4306"
          Mode:Managed Frequency=2.484 GHz Access Point: Invalid
          Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm
          RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
          Link Quality=0/100 Signal level=-256 dBm Noise level=-256 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

 sudo iwlist scan
lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth1 No scan results

dmesg:
[ 1312.616000] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth1: link is not ready

So it seems that the driver detects the wlan chipset, but just can't handle it.

Can someone test this on the latest Feisty so we can see if the last minute kernel additions have fixed anything.

No help for me.

Will gladly test once my iBook G4 is returned to me from the service shop, grr.

Andrew S.

I have an iBook G4 and can't get the wireless to work with feisty. Wireless was working before the distribution upgrade. I can successfully do an iwlist and see my AP. I can even get a DHCP lease, but I can't get any other packets through. A ping to my gateway has 100% packet loss. There doesn't seem to be any error message anywhere.

My card and kernel are:

0001:10:12.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)
Linux minnow 2.6.15-26-powerpc #1 Fri Sep 8 19:51:33 UTC 2006 ppc GNU/Linux

did you extract the binary firmware from your apple dvd/partition?
 it work well on my ibook

Hi effraie,

I've tried the firmware linked from the /usr/share/bcm43xx... script, firmware taken from a Powerbook running Tiger and a few other places on the net. Unfortunately I didn't take the firmware off my iBook before first installing Ubuntu. I've looked around on the installation disks and can't find the driver on them. I suspect it's hidden inside one of the installation files. Do you know how to extract the firmware from Panther installation disks?

i can't remember exactly where it is. but mine is here: http://vrac.effraie.org/AppleAirPort2

Hi effraie,

No luck with your firmware either. Similar behaviour as before, I can get a DHCP address, but can't ping the gateway, or anything else.

With your firmware, I also get some popup failure dialogs on reboot. The following panels all failed:

OAFIID:GNOME_Panel_WirelessApplet
OAFIID:GNOME_MixerApplet
evolution-alarm-notify
OAFIID:GNOME_Panel_TrashApplet

On a similar note (this might be a useful data point):

I've been having exactly the same problem (driver recognises the wireless card, I can scan for networks, but I see a signal quality of 0 and the minimum driver supported value (-73 dBm) for both signal and noise when I try and associate).

The interesting bit is this: I'm using a different PRISM based card (WL1100C-CF) on a different Linunx 2.6 platform (Arcom Embedded Linux running on an Intel XPA255 based Arcom Viper embedded board).

Not only have we observed this symptom, but we've been assembling a whole mess of these systems, and most of them work, some of them fail with this mode of failure, and we've fixed it by swapping out wireless cards. For a while I was working under the assumption that we just had a few bad cards in our batch, but then today I had one that was working, I rebooted the system (somewhat rudely with a power cycle) and when it came back up the drivers loaded without complaint but it began exhibiting the above described symptoms. I have rebooted it a couple of times since and it still does it.

I can confirm this in feisty: Xubuntu, used stock bcm43xx-fwcutter script from repositories. Not tested very throughly thought since my PB mostly serves its time as an Ethernet connected server. I have a WPA2 802.11B/G enabled network, but can only browse available networks and no luck in establish connection with NetworkManager-applet. This is on a PowerBook 1.33 GHz G4 12 inch.

$ lspci | grep Bro
0001:10:12.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03
$ uname -a
Linux powerbox 2.6.20-16-powerpc #3 Wed May 23 00:57:53 UTC 2007 ppc GNU/Linux
$ grep 'machine' /proc/cpuinfo
machine : PowerBook6,4

I can confirm this as well, you can take a look at the attached dmesg

Is there any way you can test this with the new restricted device manager in Gusty Alpha 2. There have a been a lot of changes involving the firmware for the Broadcom cards that may affect this bug.

Am afraid I cannot, since the problem occurs on my friends laptop, I would like to see fixes pushed to feisty if possible.

I forgot to say, that the problem occurs on a Dell 600m, and only with some access points (genrally those requiring a WEP key), it associates perfectly with some other AP, but the connection get lost very very frequently.

I have the same problem with my iBook and Feisty Fawn. I have an Airport Extreme too (Broadcom 4306)

does this problem still occour? I noticed better WLAN support in gutsy. I have an airport-extreme. too.

Now the WLAN works with the BCM43xx driver for me in Dell X300. This is great as I don't have to use ndiswrapper anymore.

However, the warning bcm43xx: TODO: Incomplete code in keymac_write() is still there.

I am assigning this bug to the 'ubuntu-kernel-team' per their bug policy. For future reference you can learn more about their bug policy at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies .

The Hardy Heron Alpha series was recently released which contains an updated version of the kernel. You can download and try the new Hardy Heron Alpha release from http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/hardy/ . You should be able to then test the new kernel via the LiveCD. If you can, please verify if this bug still exists or not and report back your results. General information regarding the release can also be found here: http://www.ubuntu.com/testing/ .

Also, we will keep this report open against the actively developed kernel bug against 2.6.17 this will be closed. Thanks.

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

The Ubuntu Kernel Team is planning to move to the 2.6.27 kernel for the upcoming Intrepid Ibex 8.10 release. As a result, the kernel team would appreciate it if you could please test this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. There are one of two ways you should be able to test:

1) If you are comfortable installing packages on your own, the linux-image-2.6.27-* package is currently available for you to install and test.

--or--

2) The upcoming Alpha5 for Intrepid Ibex 8.10 will contain this newer 2.6.27 Ubuntu kernel. Alpha5 is set to be released Thursday Sept 4. Please watch http://www.ubuntu.com/testing for Alpha5 to be announced. You should then be able to test via a LiveCD.

Please let us know immediately if this newer 2.6.27 kernel resolves the bug reported here or if the issue remains. More importantly, please open a new bug report for each new bug/regression introduced by the 2.6.27 kernel and tag the bug report with 'linux-2.6.27'. Also, please specifically note if the issue does or does not appear in the 2.6.26 kernel. Thanks again, we really appreicate your help and feedback.

Per a decision made by the Ubuntu Kernel Team, bugs will longer be assigned to the ubuntu-kernel-team in Launchpad as part of the bug triage process. The ubuntu-kernel-team is being unassigned from this bug report. Refer to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies for more information. Thanks.

Closing, as the bug was still incomplete and there was no activity in more than half a year. Please reopen if this is still valid and relevant information can be provided. Thanks.