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When my machine starts up, I get the following messages:

[17.789158] b43-phy0 ERROR: FOUND UNSUPPORTED PHY(Analog 10, Type 8 (LCN), Revision 1)
[21.656204] brcmsmac bcma:0: brcms_ops_bss_info_changed: qos enabled: false (implement)
[21.656266] brcmsmac bcma:0: brcms_config: change power-save mode: false (implement)

How can I fix this?

3 Answers 3

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https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/brcm80211

Looks like the wireless driver needs an updating

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  • Whilst this may theoretically answer the question, it would be preferable to include the essential parts of the answer here. Please describe what needs to be done to update the driver within Ubuntu.
    – MadMike
    Mar 3, 2015 at 16:39
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This message derives from my Broadcom BCM4313 wireless chip. The crucial question is: does your wifi work or not? Although I get this message at startup, my wifi works flawlessly. Every attempt to make the message disappear, ended in nothing or a non-working wifi. So, if you wifi works, I recommend to ignore the message (it appears with different kernels and on different linux distros).

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For me, it was because my computer's Broadcom wi-fi chip was not supported by the included open-source bcma kernel module driver. No wireless connection appeared when I ran ip link, so this definitely wasn't a transient error message. I identified the wi-fi chip by running the lspci -k command (note: might have to use lsusb if the chip is connected via USB instead of PCI), then finding the line (usually the last) saying:

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4352 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 03)
    Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 855c
    Kernel driver in use: bcma
    Kernel modules: bcma

The wi-fi chip is a BCM4352, and we're trying to use the bcma kernel module to interface with it. According to this page on kernel.org, the BCM4352 chip is not supported by the default bcma kernel module; you have to use the restrictively-licensed broadcom-wl kernel module instead. The installation process for this driver varies depending on your distro; here were the directions I used for Arch Linux.

Once you install broadcom-wl you'll have two kernel modules competing to service your wi-fi chip - wl and bcma. You can see this by running lspci -k and seeing:

03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4352 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 03)
    Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device 855c
    Kernel driver in use: wl
    Kernel modules: bcma, wl

To prevent conflicts you'll want to blacklist the bcma kernel module. I did this by following the directions on the Arch Linux wiki here, creating a file at /etc/modprobe.d/nobcma.conf containing:

# Do not load the 'bcma' module on boot.
blacklist bcma

After rebooting you can run dmesg | grep bcma to check that it isn't loaded, and dmesg | grep wl to ensure wl is loaded (along with some messages about the kernel being tainted by the proprietary code!)

I can now run ip link and see the wireless link exists:

...
3: wlp3s0: <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN mode DEFAULT group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 54:27:1e:30:26:61 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

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