Broadcom b43 driver again: Why modprobe b43 manually?

Question

I can see that this has been asked here several times before, but no one seems to have an answer or to be willing to give it, so I ask again.

After reading through a dozens of tutorials, I finally managed to get my Broadcom 4312 to work. But after every reboot, I have to do manually a

$ sudo modprobe b43

Then, after 20-30 secs, the WLAN connection is etablished. What can I do to circumvent this?

I am running Lubuntu 13.10 and have a

0b:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
    Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card [1028:000b]
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
    Memory at fe7fc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge

(BTW, why is the model number 4312, but the subnumber in the brackets 4315?)

Solution

The pci.id for Broadcom cards sometimes but not always matches the model number; only Broadcom knows why. It is not significant to your problem.

Get the module to load automatically on boot with:

sudo -i
echo b43  >>  /etc/modules
exit

You should be all set.

If you find you have a conflicting blacklist, please do:

gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Remove the line 'blacklist b43' save and close gedit.

Comments

[ubuplex]

Works like a charm. But is this not a bug in the 13.10 setup procedure for the Broadcom driver? Should the above line not be inserted into /etc/modules automagically (or something somewhere else in the boot procedure)? I see that others have this problem, too. I am willing to file a bug report (I am new to Ubuntu, came from SuSE).

[chili555]

There is probably a conflicting blacklist somewhere in your system from where you tried to install another driver and incorrectly removed it. Are there any suspicious files related to bcm in /etc/modprobe.d? Any listings in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf?

[ubuplex]

Do you mean this: $ grep -i bcm /etc/modprobe.d/* /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:blacklist bcm43xx (This carriage return comment behaviour is making me crazy.) Yes, I have tried to install and remove some bcm-related drivers according to the tutorials I have read. It seems to me that something has changed in 13.10 so that some tutorials are not valid any more.

[chili555]

"blacklist bcm43xx" wouldn't be effective as there is no module bcm43xx in 13.10. Please grep b43 instead.

[ubuplex]

As requested: $ grep -i b43 /etc/modprobe.d/* /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:# replaced by b43 and ssb. /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf:blacklist b43

[chili555]

Ah, ha!! Please see my edit above.