Trouble with the wireless network adapter, old macbook BCM4360

Ask Fedora
1

After trying some of the solutions that were posted in similar situations with this adapter, nothing seems to work.

Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4360 802.11ac Dual Band Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43a0] (rev 03)
	Subsystem: Apple Inc. Device [106b:0117]
	Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx-
	Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort+ <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
	Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 256 bytes
	Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 0
	Region 0: Memory at b0600000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
	Region 2: Memory at b0400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2M]
	Capabilities: <access denied>
	Kernel modules: bcma
2

Hi and welcome to :fedora: !

I suggest using the proprietary Broadcom drivers from RPM Fusion. For that you would need to:

  • Add the RPM Fusion repos, if not already done, according to these instructions.
  • Install the broadcom-wl package with sudo dnf install broadcom-wl.
  • Wait about 5 minutes for the kernel modules to get built[1].
  • Reboot and check that the wl module is used, and WiFi is functional.

  1. The kernel modules are being built with every new kernel installed on the system, so it is advisable not to reboot immediately afterwards. The process of building the modules is finished when the ps -ax | grep kmod command only returns one line: the one with the grep command. ↩︎

1 Like
3

Hi there, still not working after trying that
when looking for wl it doesn’t appear:
sudo modprobe wl modprobe: FATAL: Module wl not found in directory /lib/modules/6.11.4-301.fc41.x86_64

4

I have the same WiFi chipset on an old iMac, but normally use a wired connection. The wl module some times fails to build with new kernels, and often has issues when it does build, so I have a cheap USB wifi dongle to use when wl fails. The akmods build has detailed logs that are useful, but it may take some effort to identify relevant entries.

5

Can you provide the output of the following commands:

  • dnf list --installed "kernel.*"
  • dnf list --installed "kmod-wl*"
  • dnf list --installed broadcom-wl
  • inxi -Nxx

Is there a reason why you’re still on kernel 6.11.4? If this is the latest kernel installed, then your system might not have been updated for a while.