MacBook Pro (Late 2013) – Wi-Fi Driver Install Loop (BCM4360) & Tethering Issues

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1

I recently transitioned my MacBook Pro (Late 2013) to Fedora 43 as the latest supported macOS version is very outdated. I am currently stuck in a loop trying to install the Broadcom BCM4360 wireless drivers without a reliable internet connection.

Here is a summary of my attempts and the issues encountered:

  • Offline RPM Install: On my first OS installation, I attempted to install broadcom-wl, akmod-wl, kernel-devel, and kernel-headers from a USB drive. I used the --nodeps flag to bypass dependency errors during the offline install. This failed to initialize the interface and seemed to break the package database.
  • USB Tethering Failure: After a clean reinstall, I tried to use iPhone USB Tethering. I attempted to install usbmuxd and libimobiledevice, but I could not get the system to recognize the iPhone as a network interface.
  • Bluetooth Tethering: In a final attempt, I used Bluetooth tethering to download the drivers with all dependencies (took about 2 hours). The installation appeared to complete successfully, however the system failed to detect or initialize the Wi-Fi adapter.

Current State: I have a fresh installation of Fedora 43, but no functional Wi-Fi or USB tethering. I have access to another computer to download files to a USB drive, but I am struggling with the dependency chain required for an offline akmod build.

Any guidance on how to break this cycle would be greatly appreciated!

2

My imac 14,2 uses the same WiFi chip. After installing broadcom-wl, wifi is not activated. inxi -Nzxx shows: driver: bcma-pci-bridge chip-ID: 14e4:43a0.

The bcma driver also supports this chip and appears to be loaded by default, so I had to blacklist conflicting drivers.

See broadcom-wl-aerynos for a list of incompatible drivers:

# wireless drivers (conflict with Broadcom hybrid wireless driver 'wl')
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist ssb
blacklist b43
blacklist ndiswrapper
blacklist brcm80211
blacklist bcma
blacklist brcmsmac
3

I tried adding them to a blacklist config file, since you can’t run blacklist as a command in the terminal. The absolute same issues happened again…

4

blacklist is a kernel configuration setting, not a command. Your response doesn’t tell me much about what you are using. It is best if you provide the actual text – from long experience, new users often make spelling or permission mistakes so I have posted what has been working for me ever since my wife bought a new Apple Silicon system and gave me her old Intel iMac.

Here, with WiFI using broadcom-wl from rpmfusion:

% ls -l /lib/modules/*/extra/wl
/lib/modules/6.17.12-300.fc43.x86_64/extra/wl:
total 1464
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 1497200 Sep 17 21:00 wl.ko.xz

/lib/modules/6.18.3-200.fc43.x86_64/extra/wl:
total 1464
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 1498196 Sep 17 21:00 wl.ko.xz

and:

% ls -l /etc/modprobe.d/50-broadcom-wl-blacklist.conf
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 249 Jan  4 10:43 /etc/modprobe.d/50-broadcom-wl-blacklist.conf
% cat /etc/modprobe.d/50-broadcom-wl-blacklist.conf 
# wireless drivers that conflict with Broadcom hybrid wireless driver 'wl'
# from: https://github.com/Vanco/broadcom-wl-aerynos
blacklist bcm43xx
blacklist ssb
blacklist b43
blacklist ndiswrapper
blacklist brcm80211
blacklist bcma
blacklist brcmsmac

Once everything is in place, reboot and check that the wl module is being loaded:

% lsmod | grep wl
wl                   6524928  0
cfg80211             1544192  1 wl
5

One of my systems is an even older MacBook, needing broadcom-wl for the wireless card. The last time I’ve installed Fedora on it, I went the iPhone USB tethering route. I am sorry to hear that didn’t work for you.

Can’t you temporarily connect to a wired network, in order to finish your setup?

EDIT: I just saw that bluetooth tethering worked out for you , so pls disregard the above question.

EDIT2: Still not clear whether you had a good enough internet connection in order to install the RPM-Fusion repos and the broadcom-wl package afterwards.