WiFi failing on new Arch installation

[wet island]

hey! just installed arch on my macbook (14.1.) wlan0 appears on the usb installer, but i have no such luck on the actual install. iwctl just shows a blank table, where in the installer it had wlan0

so far i have tried installing some drivers for the adapter which appears to be a "bcm4350" (according to lspci) by broadcom. (b43 and broadcom-wl)

any tips or tricks? any advice is welcome!

my fourth install of linux was nearly perfect until this came up lol, one day ill be able to do it perfectly

[inner shore]

3 words for you. read the wiki.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Network_configuration/Wireless#Device_driver

if you lspci -k then it shows what driver you're using

[torpid night]

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop/Apple

[inner shore]

not sure that this would help

[inner shore]

so now you know how to find the driver and then you can install it

[inner shore]

not sure if this is a 12,1

[wet island]

I have been, but I’ve been a bit confused

I’ll try all this and report back in a minute thanks

[wet island]

ooh neat

[inner shore]

understandable, but have you read the help:reading page?

if not you should

[wet island]

parts of it

i will though lol thanks

[inner shore]

pacman -Fy
pacman -F [driver name].ko.zst
that should give you the package name for it

no [] in the actual command

and pacman -F is explained in the pacman wiki page

[inner shore]

glad i can help

[wet island]

oh

lspci -k on the real system doesnt show anything as a kernel driver

🤣

linux never fails to amuse me

[inner shore]

what the heck

[inner shore]

even for iwd?

[wet island]

thats what i thought!

[inner shore]

i mean

even for your netword card

what does your bio mean

are you saying if wind gets up you do too???

[wet island]

left out of it to redownload brcmfmac (how the hell do i pronounce this) but it basically just said Network controller: Broadcom Inc. blah blah blah
Subsystem: Apple blah blah blah
(no kernel driver)
Kerynel modules: brcmfmac, wl

on the live env. it has brcmfmac there

[wet island]

quote by paul valery, "the wind will rise, we must live on"

[inner shore]

well yea but what does that mean

[wet island]

stuff happens

[inner shore]

oh

[wet island]

you gotta get through it

[inner shore]

i get it

[inner shore]

broadcom for mac
anyway idk what 'kernel driver' means but kernel modules is what you're looking for

so anyway

go to iso

remount all your partitions

arch-chroot /mnt pacman -S broadcom-wl

i don't know why it doesn't show what wl is called but i do know that wl module=broadcom wl driver

[wet island]

it shows up as already installed but ill try reinstalling it

[inner shore]

weird

yea just do that for now

wait did you chroot

or boot

[wet island]

i have not chrooted or anything

just in the regular live env

[inner shore]

then mount everything

and chroot

[wet island]

alright im chrooted

[inner shore]

yea and you wanna get it to work in your actual installation

so you gotta chroot

[inner shore]

see this

[wet island]

ah

[inner shore]

just get broadcom-wl

[wet island]

still appears as downloaded

redownloaded now though

[inner shore]

weird

reboot then

[inner shore]

might be helpful to know that downloading means getting the files and installing means setting up

there is a difference

[wet island]

ah, i meant that pacman said it was a 0.00 difference

or net size

[wet island]

alright ive rebooted

[inner shore]

into arch?

[wet island]

yep

[inner shore]

ok was wl loaded

um

lsmod |grep wl

[wet island]

it was indeed

[inner shore]

does it say wl in one line

ok did that change anything

does iwd work now

[wet island]

nope

[inner shore]

hm then

lol your username is just roof

what even

[wet island]

root and roof

perfect

[inner shore]

yes

anyway

can you send ip a output

oh yeah btw

[inner shore]

you should enable iwd so you don't have to start it every time you boot up

[wet island]

that is so blurry

[inner shore]

weird, why does it not see it

[wet island]

great question!

[inner shore]

it says brcmfmac was also loaded?

lets see

[wet island]

this is what i was talking about earlier, see how the network controller on the left (regular arch) doesnt have the "kernel driver in use" that the live environment has (right)

that could be the issue

[inner shore]

The 'Kernel driver in use' line shows the driver that binds the pci device

no idea what that means

im tired maybe ill look later

[wet island]

all good

[inner shore]

i can tell you that if ip a only shows 1: lo then your driver isn't working

[wet island]

wait

the driver just uhh

doesnt exist?

[inner shore]

and link this again https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Network_configuration/Wireless#Device_driver

[inner shore]

it means that it isn't working or isn't installed usually

oh taht

[wet island]

shouldnt it be there

[inner shore]

idk

[wet island]

I feel very idiotic

Solution: Sudo modprobe brcmfmac

🤦‍♂️

[inner shore]

oh

[torpid night]

... solved