Broadcom Wireless adapters and kernel updates

[poma]

On 01.07.2014 19:03, Temlakos wrote:
> Everyone:
>
> Updating to the new kernel temporarily knocked out my wireless
> connectivity on my Dell Inspiron 1545.
>
> That is, until I executed:
>
> # modprobe b43
>
> Or, since I am a member of "wheel":
>
> $ sudo modprobe b43
>
> A few seconds after I issued that command, wireless was enabled, and the
> connection I had long been using, re-activated itself.
>
> Question: must I execute "modprobe xxx" with every kernel upgrade?
>
> (By the way: it turns out that module "wl" is not necessary.)
>
> Temlakos
>

I was hoping that you understood what is written in
"Dell Wireless 1397 WLAN Mini-Card for Dell Inspiron 1545: How to Drive It!" thread,
including links provided.

"wl" is the original *proprietary* Broadcom's wireless module.
"b43" is *intree* Broadcom B43 wireless module.
If both are installed and unblacklisted, they are competing for the same device.
So if everything works OK with "b43", then you can safely remove "wl":

# yum erase broadcom-wl

So there is no need to tamper with the blacklist commands in the configuration files[1].
Besides, with this auto-loading a kernel module shouldn't be a problem.


poma


[1] http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#Switching_between_drivers