Bug 710765

Summary: Wireless function broken in Fedora 15 for Broadcom chipset 4313
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Alice K <alice_knoll_drouin>
Component: b43-fwcutterAssignee: John W. Linville <linville>
Status: CLOSED CANTFIX QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: unspecified Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 15CC: elad, linville
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: Unspecified   
OS: Unspecified   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
HP notebook 2.6.38.6-27.fc15.x86_64
Last Closed: 2011-06-05 05:00:19 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:

Description Alice K 2011-06-04 16:43:50 UTC 
Description of problem:


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Wireless (WiFi) broken/failed in Fedora 15


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$ uname -r
2.6.38.6-27.fc15.x86_64

$ iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.
eth0      no wireless extensions.

$ lspci
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)


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In Fedora 14, there is a need to install kmod-wl and the wireless function will function without further intervention.


In Fedora 15, kmod-wl does not exist anymore or is now missing in the fedora repository.

$ sudo yum -y install kmod-wl

No package kmod-wl available.


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Wireless (WiFi) should function out of the box at installation, as it is an essential part of notebooks.  Installing third party drivers that is outside of Fedora may break the integrity of the system and may introduce unwanted security risks.

Broadcom BMC4313 chip series is common in millions of notebooks.  It is essential that Fedora include kmod-wl in the next update as well as in future Fedora releases.  If not, millions of Fedora notebooks users will have to spend lot of unnecessary time looking for external WiFi drivers and there is every chance to do it wrong that will compromise the security and integrity of the Fedora suite.


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Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
2.6.38.6-27.fc15.x86_64

How reproducible:


Steps to Reproduce:
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Expected results:


Additional info:
Comment 1 Elad Alfassa 2011-06-05 05:00:19 UTC 
kmod-wl is a non-free (proprietary) driver that was never (and never will be) in fedora repositories.
It was available using 3rd party repositories, eg. rpmfusion.
This non-free driver doesn't support kernel 2.6.38, and we can't fix that because we don't have the source code.

More information about supported (with the free driver) b43 chipsets can be found here: http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43




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