[Post-Install] NOOB needs a little wi-fi help... please!

[gevalt]

ok... as i mentioned, i am an absolute linux noob.

i'm trying to extend the life of a 2015 MacBook Air 11" laptop (loved this machine) by installing Linux.
after shopping around with several distros using live sessions off of thumb drives with persistent memory
i decided on kubuntu. watched a few youtube videos on it and it seemed to be pretty straight forward.
but i also waited for 26.04 LTS. clearly it's too new for videos about my particular setup.

wiped the SSD.
reinstalled MacOS... just in case.
added a 2nd volume to the hard drive.
installed kubuntu.
sudo apt update
sudo apt upgrade
enabled flatpak.
install went pretty well... except...

kinda as expected, wifi doesn't work
sudo apt install firmware-b43-installer to load drivers for the modem
restart.

nada.
wifi still not being seen.

went to manually add the connection but i'm not 100% sure what it's looking for.

please help.

TIA.

[boospy33]

What kind of Wi-Fi card is installed?

Execute

lspci

and

lsusb

→ Is there something in that looks like a Wi-Fi card?

What kind of output do you get when they enter that?

iw list

[gevalt]

sorry for the delay. was away and didn't bring the machine with me.

per chat GPT i executed "lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 net"

got back that the 'card' is a broadcom BCM4360 802.11ac

per you i ran 'lsusb' which shows a broadcom usb hub, which makes sense since i assume that command is looking for usb devices

'iwlist' comes back with nothing... at all.

chat gpt suggested 'dmesg | grep -i firmware' to see if the firmware loaded correctly but konsole came back with 'operation not permitted'

so i'm stuck again.

luckily i have a mac ethernet dongle for a wired connection, but what fun is that?

david

[Snowhog]

dmesg | grep -i firmware

Try sudo dmesg | grep -i firmware

[die.boer]

post output of these please

lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 net

lsmod | grep -E 'b43|bcma|ssb|wl'

sudo dmesg | grep -iE 'wl|b43|brcm|firmware'​

[gevalt]

Try sudo dmesg | grep -i firmware

[sudo: authenticate] Password:
[ 0.102543] Spectre V2 : Enabling Restricted Speculation for firmware calls
[ 0.158238] ACPI: [Firmware Bug]: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored
[ 0.191443] acpi PNP0A08:00: [Firmware Info]: ECAM [mem 0xe0000000-0xe9bfffff] for domain 0000 [bus 00-9b] only partially covers this bridge
[ 4.001253] systemd[1]: systemd-hibernate-clear.service - Clear Stale Hibernate Storage Info skipped, unmet condition check ConditionPathExists=/sys/firmware/efi/efivars/HibernateLocation-8cf2644b-4b0b-428f-9387-6d876050dc67

[gevalt]

post output of these please

lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 net

david@dMF-MBA-kubuntu:~$ lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 net
03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4360 802.11ac Dual Band Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43a0] (rev 03)
Subsystem: Apple Inc. Device [106b:0117]
Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge
Kernel modules: bcma

lsmod | grep -E 'b43|bcma|ssb|wl'

david@dMF-MBA-kubuntu:~$ lsmod | grep -E 'b43|bcma|ssb|wl'
b43 589824 0
cordic 12288 1 b43
mac80211 1933312 1 b43
cfg80211 1536000 2 b43,mac80211
ssb 106496 1 b43
bcma 90112 1 b43

sudo dmesg | grep -iE 'wl|b43|brcm|firmware'​

david@dMF-MBA-kubuntu:~$ sudo dmesg | grep -iE 'wl|b43|brcm|firmware'
[ 0.102543] Spectre V2 : Enabling Restricted Speculation for firmware calls
[ 0.158238] ACPI: [Firmware Bug]: BIOS _OSI(Linux) query ignored
[ 0.191443] acpi PNP0A08:00: [Firmware Info]: ECAM [mem 0xe0000000-0xe9bfffff] for domain 0000 [bus 00-9b] only partially covers this bridge
[ 0.668761] usb 1-3: Product: BRCM20702 Hub
[ 4.001253] systemd[1]: systemd-hibernate-clear.service - Clear Stale Hibernate Storage Info skipped, unmet condition check ConditionPathExists=/sys/firmware/efi/efivars/HibernateLocation-8cf2644b-4b0b-428f-9387-6d876050dc67
[ 7.031292] b43-phy0: Broadcom 4360 WLAN found (core revision 42)
[ 7.031902] b43-phy0 ERROR: FOUND UNSUPPORTED PHY (Analog 12, Type 11 (AC), Revision 1)
[ 7.031922] b43 bcma0:1: probe with driver b43 failed with error -95
david@dMF-MBA-kubuntu:~$
::1 ff02::1 ip6-allnodes ip6-localhost localhost
dMF-MBA-kubuntu ff02::2 ip6-allrouters ip6-loopback

[die.boer]

your Mac is loading the wrong driver (b43) for the BCM4360
do these in precise order

sudo apt purge firmware-b43-installer b43-fwcutter

sudo apt install bcmwl-kernel-source

sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-wl.conf <<EOF
blacklist b43
blacklist bcma
blacklist ssb
blacklist brcmsmac
EOF​

sudo update-initramfs -u

sudo reboot

NetworkManager should now show Wi-Fi networks normally