WiFi, SMP but not both

[HankB]

Hi folks,x
I've installed 32 bit LMDE 2 Mate on an 2011 Macbook (Core(TM)2 Duo CPU P7350), Since it has 4GB RAM I went with a 32 bit install. I found that the default kernel does not support SMP. I installed the 686-pae kernel which shows both cores in /proc/cpuinfo but WiFi does not work.

The WiFi module is
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)

I tried installing the firmware packages and firmware-b43-installer and b43-fwcutter and that did not help.

Is there a way to get WiFi working with the 686-pae kernel (or should I have installed 64 bit in the first place.)

Thanks!

[Laurent85]

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller (rev 01)

Open a terminal, copy/paste command then post the output

Code: Select all

lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net

[HankB]

Hi Laurent,
My apologies for not having the good manners to follow up on this. It's an old thread but for the benefit for anyone else who might have the same problem, here is the info you requested.

Code: Select all

macintosh ~ # lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: NVIDIA Corporation MCP79 Ethernet [10de:0ab0] (rev b1)
	Subsystem: NVIDIA Corporation Apple iMac 9,1 [10de:cb79]
	Kernel driver in use: forcedeth
--
03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:432b] (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Apple Inc. AirPort Extreme [106b:008d]
	Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
macintosh ~ # 

For my own part, the issue is moot. I upgraded from Mavericks to Yosemite (in the OS X side) and that caused refit not to be able to boot Linux. I wound up upgrading to refind and in the process I also reinstalled Linux. (One of the benefits of going with a separate /home partition is that reinstalls are pretty painless.) This time I went with the 64 bit which seems not to have this difficulty.

Hmmm... still cannot find the <insert> key on this Macbook.

[Zill]

HankB: Probably irrelevant to you now but, IMO, WiFi and SMP are totally independent of each other and so you should be able to run WiFi equally well on both a 32 and a 64 bit system.

I suggest your WiFi problem was simply due to the wrong driver and so I would suggest, for anyone else with the BCM4322 [14e4:432b] chipset, following the Debian Wiki "wl" document, which details how to install the correct driver.