Comments to b43's wiki page plus recent changes

[Rafał Miłecki]

W dniu 20 czerwca 2011 02:07 użytkownik Larry Finger
<Larry.Finger at lwfinger.net> napisał:
> On 06/19/2011 06:17 PM, Rafał Miłecki wrote:
>>
>> I'm getting uncomfortable with recent changes made to b43 wiki page
>> http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
>>
>> First we got Stuart who felt it's necessary to explain that "partially
>> supported" on b43's page means it's "partially supported by b43". It
>> was so obvious to me I just reverted that change. He also linked to
>> some discussion with random BCM4322 issue on 2.6.38 kernel. Well,
>> support in 2.6.38 was highly experimental, it got many more issues, I
>> don't think it makes any sense to display all of them. 2.6.39 is
>> suggested, that's all.
>>
>> Today we got David Wang's modification. He wrote instruction how to
>> check if firmware was installed. I've no idea what's unclear with
>> messages like:
>> "Cannot open input file
>> broadcom-wl-5.10.56.27.3/driver/wl_apsta/wl_prebuilt.o"
>> "failed to create output directory: Permission denied"
>> ?
>>
>> Plus I found the following checks quite silly:
>> ls -1 "$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR"| grep b43| wc -1
>> ls -1 "$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR"/b43| wc -l
>> "An output of>5 is good"
>>
>> It also adds twice info about LP-PHY which is already duplicated:
>>>
>>> Those of you who has bcm4315 (bcm4312 LP-PHY) and bcm4321 chipset, you
>>> will need to make sure you enable PIO mode as DMA mode does not work with
>>> your chipset. So instead of following the guide above you will need to do a
>>> few more extra steps:
>>
>> (We inform about LP-PHY and DMA problems in known issues).
>>
>> Additionally it provides not working right-away instruction about
>> switching to pio:
>>>
>>> modprobe -r b43
>>> modprobe b43 pio=1
>>> echo "options b43 pio=1">>  /etc/modprobe.d/options.conf
>>
>>
>> Is it just me, or are that changes quite silly?
>>
>> Does anyone have contact to David Wang? He does not have his page on wiki.
>
> As my son in law keeps reminding me, "You cannot fix stupid." I'm always
> assuming he is not referring to me! :)
>
> Along a similar vein, the helpers on the openSUSE forums are consistently
> recommending that Broadcom users install wl and blacklist ssb and b43. I
> have given up trying to overcome that issue. I feel that if people fall for
> such bad info, then they deserve to have their wireless fail every time that
> the kernel is updated, and that kernel developers will ignore the oops
> reports coming from their tainted kernels.

Thanks for answer.


> You know as much or more than anyone about b43. Please make any cleanups
> that you want on the wiki.

Thanks, however I believe the worst thing is to assume "I do sth = I
set the rules" and stop listening to the others. That's why I
preferred to ask for opinion.

-- 
Rafał