After the update from Suse Leap 42.2 to Suse Leap 42.3, my Wifi stopped working. Which is kind of bad, because I need internet to figure out what is wrong…

This was the situation right after the update, when it was not working:

> lspci -nnk | grep -A 3 "Network"
04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4365] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:804a]
        Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge
        Kernel modules: bcma

> hwinfo --short
network:
  eth0                 Realtek RTL8101/2/6E PCI Express Fast/Gigabit Ethernet controller
                       Broadcom BCM43142 802.11b/g/n
network interface:
  eth0                 Ethernet network interface
  lo                   Loopback network interface

> iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.
eth0      no wireless extensions.

> lsmod | grep "wl"

No WiFi to be seen!

So now this is what I did:

1. Remove the old driver:

   > rpm -e broadcom-wl broadcom-wl-kmp-default 
   

2. Find out my exact kernel version (the last part is the part we need, i.e., “default”):

   > uname -r
   4.4.104-39-default
   

3. Add the Packman repository to my repositories:

   > zypper addrepo http://packman.inode.at/suse/openSUSE_Leap_42.3/ packman
   

4. Install the drivers, paying attention to my kernel type (…-“default”):

   > zypper install broadcom-wl-kmp-default broadcom-wl
   

   You can also download the rpm by hand and install it. In that case, you need to pay attention to the full kernel number. Meaning, for my kernel 4.4.104-39, I should install the driver from broadcom-wl-kmp-default-6.30.223.271_k4.4.49_19-3.6.x86_64.rpm where the numbers after the k match exactly. Using Packman does that for you.

   Another issue I had with manual installation was missing keys. At least my configuration forces a valid PGP key and aborts if no key is in the key list. And I didn’t have a key for the downloaded rpms. It is possible to tell rpm to install the packages without checking the key (option --nosignature), but that did not properly install the package (without error messages, of course). When installing with zypper it looks for the key itself and you don’t have to worry.

5. I rebuilt the loaded modules list and then restarted, but I am not sure it is necessary:

   > mkinitrd
   

Finally, the outputs of the above commands are (for reference, the next time it breaks):

> lspci -nnk | grep -A 3 "Network"
04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4365] (rev 01)
        Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Device [103c:804a]
        Kernel driver in use: wl
        Kernel modules: bcma, wl

> hwinfo --short
network:
  eth0                 Realtek RTL8101/2/6E PCI Express Fast/Gigabit Ethernet controller
  wlan0                Broadcom BCM43142 802.11b/g/n

network interface:
  wlan0                WLAN network interface
  eth0                 Ethernet network interface
  lo                   Loopback network interface

> iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.
wlan0     IEEE 802.11abg  ESSID:"..."  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: ...   
          Bit Rate=65 Mb/s   Tx-Power=200 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=70/70  Signal level=-39 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
eth0      no wireless extensions.

> lsmod | grep "wl"
wl                   6451200  0 
cfg80211              610304  1 wl

And it only took all afternoon … sometimes I hate Linux 🙁