mjhjmtu

Background

I am setting up an old HP Mini that is partitioned with windows xp that works fine.

Having installed Debian 9 on a partition, I am having issues with the wifi network device. However these issues only occur when I enter Xorg.

The issue

On boot, I enter a tty and having setup basic wpa2 details in /etc/network/interfaces, I can run the ifup wlan0 command as root and everything works fine (I can ping, wget, etc.).

This is my network config:

source /etc/network/interfaces.d/*

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# Ethernet adapter
iface enp7s3 inet dhcp

# Wireless adapter
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
 wpa-ssid *my SSID*
 wpa-psk *my password*

and as I say, all is well in the tty session.

The problem is when I enter the x-server with xinit.

The ifup wlan0 command now yields:

Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:21:00:83:40:1c
Sending on LPF/wlan0/00:21:00:83:40:1c
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5
send_packet: Network is down
dhclient.c:2315: Failed to send 300 byte long packet over wlan0 interface.

so I can no longer connect when inside the x-server.

Some logs and outputs

The result from rfkill list 1 (since 1 is the number assigned to the device):

1: phy0: Wireless LAN
 Soft blocked: no
 Hard blocked: no

The relevant end lines from dmesg (I added a comment from when I entered the x-server):

[ 125.794118] wlan0: authenticate with 00:11:50:0d:88:2e
[ 125.836300] wlan0: send auth to 00:11:50:0d:88:2e (try 1/3)
[ 125.853327] wlan0: authenticated
[ 125.853863] b43 ssb0:0 wlan0: disabling HT/VHT due to WEP/TKIP use
[ 125.853875] b43 ssb0:0 wlan0: disabling HT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP
[ 125.853883] b43 ssb0:0 wlan0: disabling VHT as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP
[ 125.856556] wlan0: associate with 00:11:50:0d:88:2e (try 1/3)
[ 125.858773] wlan0: RX AssocResp from 00:11:50:0d:88:2e (capab=0x411 status=0 aid=7)
[ 125.859529] wlan0: associated
[ 125.872908] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlan0: link becomes ready
#enter x-server here
[ 919.008115] b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED
[ 919.132191] b43-phy0 ERROR: DMA RX reset timed out
[ 919.372068] b43-phy0 ERROR: DMA TX reset timed out
[ 919.612061] b43-phy0 ERROR: DMA TX reset timed out
[ 919.852114] b43-phy0 ERROR: DMA TX reset timed out
[ 920.092062] b43-phy0 ERROR: DMA TX reset timed out
[ 920.332094] b43-phy0 ERROR: DMA TX reset timed out

So clearly the x-server is causing the b43-phy0: Radio hardware status changed to DISABLED, but I don't know how to go about debugging the source of this.

Another big problem is the result from lspci.

The result from lspci -vs 00:02:0 when in the tty (working):

02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Limited BCM4311 802.11a/b/g (rev 02)
 Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Broadcom 802.11a/b/g WLAN
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 26
 Memory at fdffc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
 Capabilities: <access denied>
 Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
 Kernel modules: ssb

but in the x-server, the result from the same command is:

02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Limited BCM4311 802.11a/b/g (rev ff) (prog-if ff)
 !!! Unknown header type 7f
 Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge
 Kernel modules: ssb

So this is where the error lies: !!! Unkown header type 7f. Somehow the xinit command which triggers the x-server mucks with the device causing this error.

Maybe a separate, conflicting driver is being activated that overrides the b43 one and this causes the error but again I do not know how to go about debugging this (networking is not my strong suit!).

What have I tried?

As a first punt (before I discovered the error in lspci), I tired restarting the networking daemon:

systemctl restart networking

when in the x-server but to no avail.

I then worked out you can fiddle with pci device settings which is what is most likely causing the issue.

So I tried in the /sys/bus/pci directory to rescan the pci devices:

echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/rescan

and also resetting the device:

echo 1 > /sys/bus/pci/devices/0000:02:00.0/reset

but no change.

I had another idea to remove the kernel driver (b43) before running xinit with:

modprobe -r b43

and then, once inside the x-server, re-adding it with:

modprobe -a b43

but again, the unknown header type message prevails.

I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read all this and try and decipher my confusion.

At the very least, a possible solution could be to somehow disable the device or similar before starting the x-server and then re-enable it on the inside. This was my attention behind the modprobe fix, but it had no affect on the logs which all returned the same thing once more.