MacBook Air 2014: WiFi not working on Fedora Silverblue - installed with "rpm-ostree" the packages "b43-fwcutter" and "b43-openfwwf"

Ask Fedora
, , , , , ,
1

Hi

My WiFi card on MBA 2014 (MacBook Air)

dmesg | grep -i broad
[    1.664982] IPI shorthand broadcast: enabled
[   17.975844] b43-phy0: Broadcom 4360 WLAN found (core revision 42)
[   17.977165] Broadcom 43xx driver loaded [ Features: PNLS ]

What I tried, because found with a web search Enabling Wi-Fi :: Fedora Docs

rpm-ostree install --allow-inactive brcmfmmac-firmware b43-tools

rpm-ostree install --allow-inactive b43-fwcutter b43-openfwwf

sudo rpm-ostree install -y --allow-inactive NetworkManager-wifi

No luck

WiFi not working.

In Settings there is no WiFi available

Thank you

2

From your dmesg output, I would guess that the proprietary broadcom-wl driver, available in the RPM Fusion repos, covers the 4360 chip:

$ dnf info broadcom-wl
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Available packages
Name           : broadcom-wl
Epoch          : 0
Version        : 6.30.223.271
Release        : 24.fc41
Architecture   : noarch
Download size  : 24.0 KiB
Installed size : 38.4 KiB
Source         : broadcom-wl-6.30.223.271-24.fc41.src.rpm
Repository     : rpmfusion-nonfree
Summary        : Common files for Broadcom 802.11 STA driver
URL            : https://www.broadcom.com/support/download-search?pg=Legacy+Products&pf=Legac
               : y+Wireless&pn=&pa=&po=&dk=&pl=
License        : Redistributable, no modification permitted
Description    : This package contains the license, README.txt and configuration
               : files for the Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA Driver for WiFi, a Linux
               : device driver for use with Broadcom's BCM4311-, BCM4312-, BCM4313-,
               : BCM4321-, BCM4322-, BCM43142-, BCM43224-, BCM43225-, BCM43227-,
               : BCM43228-, BCM4331-, BCM4360 and -BCM4352- based hardware.
Vendor         : RPM Fusion

If you’d want to give it a go, I would suggest the following:

  • Uninstall the above mentioned layered packages, or rebase to the deployment previous to those installations. This is just to make sure there will be no conflicting packages, but can be skipped initially.
  • Install/layer the RPM Fusion repos if not already installed. Instructions here for Silverblue as well.
  • Reboot into the new deployment.
  • Install/layer the broadcom-wl package (rpm-ostree install broadcom-wl).
  • Reboot into the new deployment.
  • Check if WiFi available.
1 Like
3

Thank you very much. You really are an everyday hero. Thank you, it worked on the first try. No problems at all.

$ rpm-ostree status
State: idle
Deployments:
â—Ź fedora:fedora/41/x86_64/silverblue
                  Version: 41.1.4 (2024-10-24T13:24:56Z)
               BaseCommit: 308868a0660c0231a0c039896647a5db43f1a258cd211890ce83b06953384c4c
             GPGSignature: Valid signature by 466CF2D8B60BC3057AA9453ED0622462E99D6AD1
          LayeredPackages: broadcom-wl
            LocalPackages: rpmfusion-free-release-41-1.noarch rpmfusion-nonfree-release-41-1.noarch

  fedora:fedora/41/x86_64/silverblue
                  Version: 41.1.4 (2024-10-24T13:24:56Z)
               BaseCommit: 308868a0660c0231a0c039896647a5db43f1a258cd211890ce83b06953384c4c
             GPGSignature: Valid signature by 466CF2D8B60BC3057AA9453ED0622462E99D6AD1
            LocalPackages: rpmfusion-free-release-41-1.noarch rpmfusion-nonfree-release-41-1.noarch
1 Like
4

Happy to hear it worked.

Remember that when the time will come to upgrade/rebase to a new major version (F42 in this case), there might be a need to temporarily remove the layered RPM Fusion repos. At least this was the way to go when upgrading Silverblue from F40 to F41 (see the FAQ section from this Fedora Magazine article).

1 Like