[resolved] Dell XPS 15 issue with BRCFMAC wifi card

archenroot · Last edited by archenroot on Thu Mar 02, 2017 7:23 pm; edited 1 time in total

Hi guys,

I know this is probably to report as bug to resolve, but I would like to confirm first what is the issue really. My wifi doesn't work for few months already in my DELL XPS 15 9550. I tried on multiple kernels:

fedeliallalinea · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 9:15 am Post subject:

You can post output of command grep FIRMWARE /usr/src/linux/.config?
I use sys-kernel/linux-firmware-20161205 and firmware brcmfmac43602-pcie.bin exists

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 9:17 am Post subject:

archenroot,

Its failing for

archenroot · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 9:51 am Post subject:

Hi,

thanks for reply!

DMESG output.
Kernel 4.10.0 .config file.

archenroot · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 10:04 am Post subject:

Actually there is message:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 12:05 pm Post subject:

archenroot,

Heres the important bits of dmesg.

fedeliallalinea · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:17 pm Post subject:

archenroot · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 2:07 pm Post subject:

Ok, now I learned something! Great thanks for this explanation. I will give this a try(EXTRA path) and will report back.

It is also clear now how could be useful using modules as otherwise I go usually as everything builtin the kernel.

Regards,

Ladislav
_________________
Emperor wants to control outer space Yoda wants to explore inner space that's the fundamental difference between good and bad sides of the Force

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 2:19 pm Post subject:

archenroot,

Both ways work. Some drivers are in two or more pieces.
You must ensure that all the pieces are in the same place.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

archenroot · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 2:04 pm Post subject:

Hi guys,

I updated and recompiled kernel with new .config which includes following:

archenroot · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 2:50 pm Post subject:

Ok, i am adding here some useful link which I found:
https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2276504&page=4&s=a47f3a32bb300a42d4197f8fdc662744

Guy reported there he faced same error (on different hardware):

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 3:19 pm Post subject:

archenroot,

It still wants that txt file.

fedeliallalinea · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 3:28 pm Post subject:

archenroot · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 4:27 pm Post subject:

Bluetooth
Regarding bluetooth I downloaded file and put it into the /lib/firmware/brcm, I will add it into kernel .config file.
Thanks for the file!
Should I file a bug/feature request to include the file in firmware package?

In general it looks like Bluetooth works, under Configuration (right-click in KDE-Plasma) I see Adapters, where is "BlueZ 5.43 {48:..etc. MAC} - hci0", and in Devices I see constantly changing visible MAC addresses, still I configured the kernel and going to reboot now.

Wifi
Well, the file brcmfmac43602-pcie.txt doesn't exists, actually there is not .txt file under that brcm folder. When searching on the internet I cannot find it, I tried following repos:
https://github.com/OpenELEC/wlan-firmware/tree/master/firmware/brcm where is only bin and AP bin files listed.

archenroot · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 7:20 pm Post subject:

Bluetooth

So by customizing the kernel .config as following:

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 7:37 pm Post subject:

archenroot,

You may have no more than one tool to manage your network connections.
They all depend on wpa_supplicant for wifi.

Heres what happens.

When no tools are started in the default runlevel, you need to start networking yourself.
This is always save and a good place to be, since if ifconfig -a shows your interfaces but no IP addresses, you know where you are.

When exactly one tool is started, it mostly works as long as you can see the interfaces listed in ifconfig -a

With more than one tool, the driver gets in a mess because wpa_supplicant tries to execute commands for all the tools.
All the tools try to do the scan/authenticate/associate loop independently and the interface can only really follow one chain of commands.
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

archenroot · Posted: Fri Mar 03, 2017 9:26 am Post subject:

Hi NeddySeagoon,

wpa_supplicant is initiated in sysinit phase.

Then I have NetworkManager as central network tool and DHCP client package:

archenroot · Posted: Tue Mar 21, 2017 10:56 am Post subject:

Just some small update. The driver or firmware is anyway somehow buggy.

I realized that on some kind of WPA2 wifi networks I still get Kernel Panic, but I found that this only occurs when my wife is sitting next to me and is connected to same network with her phone :-)

LOL

I did this test with here for about 5x times, when she is not connected, it is stable without issues, once she connected, my kernel gets panic in few minutes :-)

)))

Ok, so fun, but this is already related to channel switching, and overall low-level management which this driver doesn't do well probably.
_________________
Emperor wants to control outer space Yoda wants to explore inner space that's the fundamental difference between good and bad sides of the Force

archenroot · Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2017 9:32 pm Post subject:

Well after some time of testing on multiple networks I realized, that these failures are not only happening when my wife uses here phone (even it looked as is originally)

.

I can certainly say that on some WPA2 networks driver fails in few minutes (in most cases laptop gets completely unresponsive and capslock remain blinking -> kernel panic) and on some WPA2 I am fine for few days without any issue. On non-secured networks I didn't experience any failure so far. In case of failure I usually try multiple times reboot, then failover to boot Windows, which doesn't suffer.

I put here latest dmesg where are visible 2 failures of driver in kernel: https://pastebin.com/SVmFUDnW

In most cases(90%) the laptop gets completely frozen, in the rest computer remain responding, but driver unusable and cannot connect to wifi anymore.

I am on 4.10.3-gentoo in the moment.

I travel a lot and and I experience this behavior on about 15% of WPA2 secured networks, I usually try reboot multiple times, but the kernel panics in few minutes, on others it is stable whole day/days.

I am in middle of decision really replacing this broadcom "shit" with other "chip".

Any hints appreciated.
_________________
Emperor wants to control outer space Yoda wants to explore inner space that's the fundamental difference between good and bad sides of the Force

archenroot · Posted: Fri Apr 28, 2017 7:28 am Post subject:

There is still issue with random kernel panic I reaised issue on kernel.org:
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=195427

I also found some valuable external sources on this issue although not with same chip in all cases (I experienced similar simptomps as well):
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=138312

I will probably change the chip in my laptop, going to look for some quality replacement.

Ladislav
_________________
Emperor wants to control outer space Yoda wants to explore inner space that's the fundamental difference between good and bad sides of the Force