Wireless Broadcom issue on Mac Mini 2012

Asked Apr 07 '19 at 17:40

Active Apr 09 '19 at 21:25

Viewed 1,206 times

I connected my Mac Mini to my network but every now and then the connection slows to almost zero without dropping. I'm aware of and have followed some questions about similar issues on this site, however my question isn't about this.

In Installing Broadcom Wireless Drivers which contains a great guide as the top voted answer a driver bcmwl-kernel-source is listed as the driver to install but not for my wireless card (which is Broadcom 4331). I have installed the needed drivers for the 4331 (fwcutter and firmware-b43-installer) but the command "ubuntu-drivers devices" returns my wireless card 4331 and the driver is listed as bcmwl-kernel-source (distro non-free). Does this mean fwcutter wasn't installed fully? I'm not sure how to purge bcmwl-kernel-source since I didn't install it. Or is this insignificant and the driver I installed is working properly? Prior to fwcutter+installer I had no connection.

Additional: It looks to me like bcmwl is preventing the drivers from running smoothly. Theres a file in etc/modprobe.d blacklist-bcm43.conf blacklisting bcm43xx, bcma, b43 etc. The file is autogened by bcmwl I've commented out bcm43xx but how can I (should I?) remove bcmwl?

I ran the commands suggested by @Jeremy31 and got the following results: https://pastebin.com/MHWKRUV6

Results for dpkg -l | grep -i broadcom are::

    ii  b43-fwcutter   1:019-3   amd64   utility for extracting Broadcom 43xx firmware  

    ii  bcmwl-kernel-source   6.30.223.271+bdcom-0ubuntu4   amd64   Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA wireless driver source

edited Apr 09 '19 at 21:25

asked Apr 07 '19 at 17:40

Artemmm

If you want to try using the firmware and the open source driver bcmwl needs to be removed – Jeremy31 Apr 07 '19 at 19:25
I've blacklisted bcmwl -is that what you mean?. – Artemmm Apr 07 '19 at 21:44
I get "the package isnt found". – Artemmm Apr 08 '19 at 18:16
See https://askubuntu.com/questions/425155/my-wireless-wifi-connection-does-not-work-what-information-is-needed-to-diagnos and edit the question to include the script results – Jeremy31 Apr 08 '19 at 21:23
@Jeremy31 added the results – Artemmm Apr 09 '19 at 03:43
I get >broadcom-sta-dkms isn't installed, so it can't be removed – Artemmm Apr 09 '19 at 18:14
What is result for dpkg -l | grep -i broadcom – Jeremy31 Apr 09 '19 at 21:03
@Jeremy31 I updated the answer with the results – Artemmm Apr 09 '19 at 21:22
sudo apt remove bcmwl-kernel-source – Jeremy31 Apr 09 '19 at 21:26
Uninstalled all dkms modules. I rebooted. grep result is the same – Artemmm Apr 09 '19 at 21:32
Try sudo rm /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-bcm43.conf && echo "blacklist wl" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf reboot – Jeremy31 Apr 09 '19 at 21:58
Did that, not sure what to check. Is the STA driver removable? – Artemmm Apr 09 '19 at 22:18
Got it. Ran remove --purge bcwl...source and that did it. ubuntu-drivers devices still lists bcmwl-kernel-source as the driver after reboot. Does that mean anything? I found the command on this site – Artemmm Apr 09 '19 at 22:36
lspci returns the proper driver. I'll see in a few days if the connection works better. – Artemmm Apr 09 '19 at 23:05
@Jeremy31 thank you, glad for your help – Artemmm Apr 09 '19 at 23:06

Wireless Broadcom issue on Mac Mini 2012

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