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Ok, I updated to 17.10 and my wireless driver no longer works. I guess I should not be surprised since I know that these old macbooks use a broadcom wireless adapter the drivers for which are sometimes not easily found. ifconfig does not see the wireless adapter at all, but lshw -C Network actually seems to see it just fine but lists it as UNCLAIMED. I tried following this but I'm not able to find any linux-backports packages at all.

lsmod | grep wl returns nothing. grep ssb /etc/modprobe.d/* returns /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-bcm43.conf:blacklist ssb /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:# replaced by b43 and ssb.
/etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf:# wl module from Broadcom conflicts with ssb /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf:blacklist ssb
(this is what I get after fixing the problem with modprobe)

Does anyone know where I can get this driver for the kernel in Ubuntu 17.10?

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  • Hm, so I've sort of fixed it: using the modprobe utility sudo modprobe b43 and then sudo rfkill unblock all does fix the problem... but weirdly I have to do this every time I reboot. Anyone know how I can make this solution permanent? Oct 20, 2017 at 3:50
  • Edit to include results for lsmod | grep wl; grep ssb /etc/modprobe.d/*
    – Jeremy31
    Oct 20, 2017 at 11:36

2 Answers 2

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sudo rm /etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-common.conf
sudo rm /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-bcm43.conf
Then reboot. You had the needed modules blacklisted twice in /etc/modprobe.d/

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  • Worked thanks! I'm not too sure how this happened. These might have been left over from back when I installed Ubuntu for the very first time, as I remember I had to do a couple of things in /etc to get the wireless working, but I certainly don't remember creating any conf files. Oct 20, 2017 at 15:22
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The file /etc/modules list kernel modules to be loaded at boot. Modules are listed one per line. So edit it and add b43.
Then reboot. rfkill and unblock should not be needed.

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  • This isn't working, I'm still getting the same behavior. Oct 20, 2017 at 13:59

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