WiFi issue on live from laptop, works fine after install to HD

[Moderator BobC]

On my Dell D620 with BRCM 4311, when I try to connect to WiFi from live it doesn’t see any WiFi connections available, but after installing to HD they appear.

I think its a network issue, not a Connman one, and I’ve seen 2 other people, plus one Distrowatch review that I think had the same issue.

If any help is wanted making it fail and pulling data to analyze and solve it, I can use the D620 to help. The ones with the problem are all 64 bit, but I don’t have a 32 bit machine that is reasonable to run uninstalled from to test with.

[Forum Admin anticapitalista]

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Could you test MX-19 live and see if the problem exists there? MX-19 uses network-manager.

Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.

antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.

[Moderator BobC]

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Sure…

[Moderator BobC]

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Ok, It had the same problem with mx19-64 live. I ran inxi -Fxz on all 3 in case that might help

PS: Let me know if there is some other config or log file that would help…

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by BobC.

Attachments:

1. inxi-antiX19-64-installed.txt
2. inxi-antiX19-64-live.txt
3. inxi-mx19-64-live.txt

[Moderator BobC]

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Ok, I ran these commands on all 3. Attached is a zip file of the results from each of the 3 all run on the same Dell D620.

cat /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-dkms.conf > broadcom-sta-dkms.conf
lspci -vnn > lspci.txt
cat /etc/resolv.conf > resolv.conf
sudo iwconfig > iwconfig.txt
sudo ifconfig -a > ifconfig.txt
sudo lsmod > lsmod.txt
inxi -Fxz > inxi.txt

Attachments:

1. wifi-compare.zip

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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BobC

I know that this Broadcom device is not (or was not) a standard device that is universally a available.

I have had this device on past systems though and I don’t remember any problem with it on either antiX or MEPIS. I may have had the device before MX replaced MEPIS.

On some distributions I had to go get the device config or a driver and manually install it, then it worked. I had a D600 at one time, but I think it had a wireless card that worked on almost anything, never had a problem.

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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I should have said that Broadcom in the past did not provide device driver code, but they usually had driver binaries available.

Not sure what is available these days. I have not had a system with a Broadcom device recently.

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Brian Masinick

[Moderator BobC]

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I have had the broadcom 43xx series wifi devices that came in both hp and Dell laptops.

I will get a dmesg readout

[Member Yoghi]

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I too encountered troubles to connect with antix-19 base from live and I have a Ralink chip not a Broadcom.

It’s due to a soft rfkill signal if you give the command rfkill list you will see this result
yoghi@ranger:~
$ rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no

give the command rfkill unblock 0 and you are done.

To anticapitalista to find why this spurious rfkill signal 😛

Hope this helps

Yoghi

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by Yoghi.

[Moderator Brian Masinick]

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Nice work, Yoghi!

Yoghi wrote:

I too encountered troubles to connect with antix-19 base from live and I have a Ralink chip not a Broadcom.

It’s due to a soft rfkill signal if you give the command rfkill list you will see this result
yoghi@ranger:~
$ rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no

give the command rfkill unblock 0 and you are done.

To anticapitalista to find why this spurious rfkill signal />

Hope this helps

Yoghi

• This reply was modified 3 years, 6 months ago by anticapitalista.

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Brian Masinick

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