Wifi card problem with CorePlus on MacBook Air

[PayloadHasher]

Hello guys/gals,
I just installed booted CorePlus on my MBA 2013 with a USB drive and installed the system onto an SD card. During the installation process, I ticked the boxes saying "wifi support/firmware" and it finished really quickly.
But when I booted into TC from my SD card, I typed "ifconfig" in the terminal and it only gave me a "lo" loopback interface. There's no "wlan" or "eth" or any other interface. Then I typed "lspci" and it showed me that there is a Broadcom network controller. I encountered the very same problem of having no wifi interface when I installed Debian on my MBA and I solved it by installing the broadcom-sta-dkms.deb package. Is there a similar way to solve this in TC?

Thanks! Any help would be appreciated 

[Misalf]

Running  ifconfig  only displays active connections. What does  iwconfig  give?

[Juanito]

There can be up to three choices with broadcom hardware:

* native reverse-engineered kernel driver plus additional firmware
* broadcom "wl" kernel driver, which includes firmware
* ndiswrapper with windows driver

As per: http://wiki.tinycorelinux.net/wiki:list_of_supported_wifi_devices#pci

..please supply the pci id of your hardware to help decide the best way to proceed.

[PayloadHasher]

@Juanito,
I used the broadcom "wl" package and solved my problem with Debian wifi. It came as a .deb package from debian.org.
Can I install the same package on my TC?

[Juanito]

you might be able to use the wl-modules-KERNEL extension (read the info file), but it would be better if you could post your device pci id to double-check

[PayloadHasher]

Oops sorry, I forgot to paste the wifi card device id
Here you go:

Software Versions:
  CoreWLAN:   11.0 (1200.31)
  CoreWLANKit:   12.0 (1200.31)
  Menu Extra:   12.0 (1200.46)
  System Information:   12.0 (1200.3)
  IO80211 Family:   12.0 (1200.12.2)
  Diagnostics:   7.0 (700.5)
  AirPort Utility:   6.3.7 (637.6)
  Interfaces:
en0:
  Card Type:   AirPort Extreme  (0x14E4, 0x117)
  Firmware Version:   Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (7.21.171.124.1a2)
  MAC Address:   48:bf:6b:de:59:c0
  Locale:   RoW
  Country Code:   US
  Supported PHY Modes:   802.11 a/b/g/n/ac

[Juanito]

Could you post the results of this command in tinycore:

Code: [Select]

$ lspci -vnn -d 14e4:
14e4:0177 does not look correct?

The wl-modules-KERNEL extension will probably work - remember to blacklist the bcma, ssb and b43 modules

[PayloadHasher]

Here it is:

03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43a0] (rev03)
      Subsystem: Apple Inc. Device [106b:0117]
      Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 18
      Memory at b0600000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
      Memory at b0400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2M]
      Capabilities: <access denied>
      Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge

P.S. Where can I find & download the "wl-modules-KERNEL extension" you mentioned??
Thanks a lot

[Juanito]

Hmm - as per: https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

..you look to be out of luck for pci id 14e4:4360, but the wl driver should work for 14e4:43a0

broadcom's wl driver was last updated in 2015 and says:

Broadcom's IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n hybrid Linux.. device driver for use with Broadcom's BCM4311-, BCM4312-, BCM4313-, BCM4321-, BCM4322-, BCM43224-, and BCM43225-, BCM43227- and BCM43228-based hardware

..so I'd be kind of surprised if it worked - where did the debian package come from?

to use the wl-modules-KERNEL extension, either use the apps gui to download it or "tce-load -wil wl-modules-KERNEL"

[PayloadHasher]

I typed the command and it said that the module is already installed. Is that what supposed to happen?
I got the broadcom-sta-dkms.deb package from this link: https://packages.debian.org/jessie/broadcom-sta-dkms

Just a question: Is TC Linux compatible with Mac hardware? is there just a little bit of incompatibility or a lot?

[Juanito]

If it says the module is already installed, that's fine.

Do you know if you have the the bcma, ssb and b43 modules blacklisted? You can check by looking at the control panel -> system stats -> boot.

You can also check with iwconfig if you have eth1 (used by broadcom for wifi) and examine dmesg for details on broadcom, wifi or eth0.

The debian version of the wl driver is 6.30.223.248, whereas the tinycore version is 6.30.223.271, but the debian version says it supports "BCM4360-, and BCM4352-based hardware" - since the tinycore version appears to be more recent, you would think it also supports those?

tinycorelinux works fine on my mac mini

[PayloadHasher]

I check the system stats > boot panel and I saw nothing related to "network", "broadcom", "b43", "wl", "bcma", etc. I assume that means I didn't blacklist anything yet? How do I blacklist something? I searched on Google and tried the "modprobe blacklist" command but it didn't work.
P.S. I noticed a message saying "Unsupported SPROM version" and "bcma: no SPROM available" during TC startup. Does that have anything to do with my network problems?

[Juanito]

You need to blacklist the modules in your bootloader config, using blacklist=bcma blacklist=ssb blacklist=b43

I'm not sure about about the sprom message, but you would definately see something about broadcom in dmesg if the bcma, ssb and b43 modules were blacklisted and then the wl-modules-KERNEL extension was loaded.

[polikuo]

You need to blacklist the modules in your bootloader config, using blacklist=bcma blacklist=ssb blacklist=b43

You need to modify your extlinux.conf
The full-path should be /etc/sysconfig/tcedir/boot/extlinux.conf
At the line "APPEND", add blacklist=bcma blacklist=ssb blacklist=b43

[Misalf]

Can be done a little shorter also.

Code: [Select]

blacklist=bcma,ssb,b43