kernel-packages team mailing list archive

[Nehal Mistry <nehalmistry@xxxxxxxxx>]

Christopher,

Sorry, I should have been more clear in my previous comment. There was
no checkbox for third party drivers, but I did select a checkbox for
installing third party software, and that apparently also includes third
party drivers (although the user has no way of knowing this).

I had a spare external USB drive so I tested this out with Ubuntu 14.10.
I installed once without that checkbox unselected: the 'wl' driver did not install and everything worked perfectly.
Then I reinstalled with it selected: The 'wl' driver installed and I got the same problems (installation froze, reboot froze, stack trace in dmesg). I had to use the workaround I specified in comment #8.

The official Ubuntu installation instructions even advises selecting it and says "We advise you to select Download updates while installing and Install this third-party software now" ( http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/install-ubuntu-desktop ) .
So although it is not installed by default, it is still too easy to install this driver which causes problems on unsupported broadcom devices.

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You received this bug notification because you are a member of Kernel
Packages, which is subscribed to bcmwl in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1313221

Title:
  modprobe wl crashes with broadcom 4306

Status in “bcmwl” package in Ubuntu:
  Incomplete

Bug description:
  I was installing Xubuntu 14.04. It said 'Configuring bcmwl-kernel-
  source (amd64)' and in the details "DKMS: install completed." and it
  just froze there. To continue installation I had to open up a terminal
  and execute  'sudo killall -9 modprobe'

  After getting it installed, I found out that the 'wl' module causes
  problems with my broadcom 4306 wireless card. I had to add it to the
  module blacklist.

  When I load the 'b43' module first (which is the correct module for my
  card), it loads fine [dmesg-b43-first.txt, 134-136]. Then when I try
  to load the 'wl' module after that, it seems to fail gracefully
  [dmesg-b43-first.txt, 203-end]. This seems normal to me.

  However, when I load the 'wl' module first, I get a stack trace
  [dmesg-wl-first.txt, 62-end]. I cannot unload it after that as it says
  it's in use. If I try to load 'b43' after that, modprobe just freezes
  (which I assume is what happened during installation). The system also
  freezes during reboot and I need to hard reboot my system.

  Two issues here it seems:
  1. The wrong module is being automatically loaded for my card. It should be 'b43' not 'wl'.
  2. More importantly, 'wl' is causing a stack trace and causing the modprobe process to lock up when loading 'b43'.

  Please let me know if you need any more information and thank you for
  the assistance.

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