Broadcom BCM43228 wifi broken by UP7

[balan]

I've been a very happy LMDE user across five machines for a few years now with virtually no problems to solve. So I've gotten comfortable and complacent and am now totally baffled by this unexpected breakage of the wifi on my Thinkpad T430u which is equipped with (according to Device Driver Manager) Broadcom BCM43228 802.11a/b/g/n and the broadcom-sta-dkms 5.100.82.112-9 driver is activated and recommended (also according to DDM). Interestingly, this driver seems to be the only one that DDM can see as it continues to show up as activated even after I uninstalled it and installed other Broadcom drivers via Synaptic. Neither Network Manager nor WICD detects any wifi signals (and there are usually several to choose from--including my own which is up and running). Any thoughts about what might be happening or how to fix it? Thanks.

[balan]

Following the instructions for enabling support for my wifi device found here re: "wheezy" (https://wiki.debian.org/wl#Debian_7.0_.22Wheezy.22), everything goes fine until I get to "modprobe wl" which prompts a series of error messages to the effect that the wl module could not be found, inserting such module is a function that is not implemented, there is an error running the install command for wl, and inserting wl is an operation that is not permitted.

Any ideas? Anyone?

[balan]

No ideas, huh? It is time to start exploring other alternatives. Guess my days of hopping are not done. See ya. Time for some fun!

[paulbonner]

Hey if you're still watching this forum, or if you've tried other distributions and found that 3.10 kernel hoses Broadcom pretty much everywhere -- do what I did to get my BCM43228 working again in 64-bit LMDE -- go to debian.org and install the deb for broadcom-sta-dkms.6.100. It works.

[tvicol]

This worked for me on a HP EliteBook 8470p on latest LMDE update pack 7 version
http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free/b/broadcom-sta/broadcom-sta-dkms_6.30.223.141-1_all.deb

[jockovonred]

LMDE update 7 installed (was putting it off). i installed updates separately to monitor which dependencies were removed (in case I needed one later).
last to update was network drivers. rebooted and no wifi.

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# lspci -vnn -d 14e4:

BCM4312 (14e4:4315)

futzed around trying to get them fixed. things tried but failed:
tried compiling driver (complained of the kernel)
updated repository to pull 6.30.223.141-1

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# deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian unstable main contrib non-free
# deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib non-free

installed common and source but didn't try dkms (perhaps it would have worked)

found this post which has been most helpful!
downloaded the file: http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free/b/broadcom-sta/broadcom-sta-dkms_6.30.223.141-1_all.deb
installed it and then did the following:

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# modprobe -r b44 b43 b43legacy ssb brcmsmac
# modprobe wl

wireless back on!

i just wanted to post and say thanks and to keep this thread for myself in case I run into issues later (and forward to friends if they have problems too).

edit: https://wiki.debian.org/wl