Bug 784644

Summary: brcmsmac no more present since kernel 3.2.1
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Maël Lavault <mael.lavault>
Component: kernelAssignee: John W. Linville <linville>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: urgent Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 16CC: gansalmon, itamar, jonathan, kernel-maint, madhu.chinakonda
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: kernel-3.2.2-1.fc16 Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2012-01-28 03:33:45 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Maël Lavault 2012-01-25 16:42:17 UTC
Description of problem:

Hi,

I just mupdated to linux kernel 3.2.1 in fedora 16. After reboot, no more wifi network. after some searches, it seems that the brcmsmac driver is not included anymore (it worked fine with 3.1.9). It's a huge regression for me, i need wifi to work...


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

Kernel 3.2.1


How reproducible:

Just try to use wifi with broadcom wireless chip (bcm 4313 for example)

Steps to Reproduce:

1. Boot your laptop
2. Try to connect to wifi
  
Actual results:

Broadcom wireless network card unrecognized

Expected results:

Broadcom wireless network card should work out of the box

Comment 1 Josh Boyer 2012-01-25 16:54:36 UTC
(In reply to comment #0)
> Description of problem:
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I just mupdated to linux kernel 3.2.1 in fedora 16. After reboot, no more wifi
> network. after some searches, it seems that the brcmsmac driver is not included
> anymore (it worked fine with 3.1.9). It's a huge regression for me, i need wifi
> to work...

Grrr... I think this is a result of the compat-wireless functionality being turned off and the base kernel config not including that driver.  It was turned off because we rebased to 3.2.1 and the compat-wireless stuff was 3.2 so there was no need.  Obviously we missed that the base kernel config had this driver disabled so it didn't conflict with the compat-wireless stuff that was being built before.

Sigh.  I believe the next kernel build should solve this, as compat-wireless is now re-enabled.

John, does that all sound right to you?  Can we leave these drivers enabled in the base config to catch something like this, or is that going to break things?

Comment 2 John W. Linville 2012-01-25 21:09:25 UTC
Well, sorta...what happened is that during the rebase the application of bcma-brcmsmac-compat.patch got dropped.  Without that patch, "depends on BCMA=n" came back into drivers/net/wireless/brcm80211/Kconfig for BRCMSMAC and so that driver got turned-off.

So, this was a special-case fault and shouldn't happen again.  In the general case, we should have all the drivers enabled in the base kernel so that they are available when the backports are turned-off.  In fact, that is why I used config-backports in the kernel.spec file rather than simply turning them off in the config. :-)

In any case, this should be fixed with the next f16 kernel build as Josh points-out in comment 1.

Comment 3 Fedora Update System 2012-01-26 13:53:26 UTC
kernel-3.2.2-1.fc16 has been submitted as an update for Fedora 16.
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/kernel-3.2.2-1.fc16

Comment 4 Fedora Update System 2012-01-26 22:55:15 UTC
Package kernel-3.2.2-1.fc16:
* should fix your issue,
* was pushed to the Fedora 16 testing repository,
* should be available at your local mirror within two days.
Update it with:
# su -c 'yum update --enablerepo=updates-testing kernel-3.2.2-1.fc16'
as soon as you are able to, then reboot.
Please go to the following url:
https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2012-0949/kernel-3.2.2-1.fc16
then log in and leave karma (feedback).

Comment 5 Fedora Update System 2012-01-28 03:33:45 UTC
kernel-3.2.2-1.fc16 has been pushed to the Fedora 16 stable repository.  If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.