LibreELEC No wi-fi network found

  • Hi, I'm new to the forum.

    In these days I've installed from USB the new version of LibreELEC, the version 12.0.0.

    With the previous installed version, the 10 my wi-fi card was detected and discover wireless network properly, but now, with version 12, the wi-fi network card not find wireless network.

    Mi wi-fi card is based on Broadcom BCM4359 802.11 Hybrid Wireless Controller 6.30.223.271 (r587334)

    Someone with more experience than me can help solving the issue I'm facing?

    This is the output of pastekodi https://paste.libreelec.tv/enabling-mule.log

  • I've some some Google searching on the error messages but didn't find anything conclusive. The card is using the unmtaintained Broadcom "wl" driver and there's been a few issues reported recently that just seem to point to kernel drift as a cause. In short, the kernel keeps moving forwards and this (not in-kernel) vendor driver has been in a static state for some years (at least a decade, maybe longer) and the phrase "if you're not moving forwards, you're going backwards" applies. Eventually the kernel has moved forward far enough that random stuff just starts breaking, and that seems to be the pain zone where we are now. The main option for LE will be to drop "wl" and swap to the in-kernel "b43" driver, but that's not brilliant (not really maintained since forever too) and lacks 5GHz support which will break some people's setups. It's probably the lesser of evils though.

    If you can swap the card for something else, it might time to investigate doing so. Most of the devices I've seen this cards in use some kind of PCIe card or mini-PCIe daughter-card so they can be pulled and inexpensively replaced with something better.

  • Hi, thanks for the fast response, I've also figured out the using of the wl driver.

    Cheking the log seems a problem with something missing in the kernel tree.

    wl: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.

    Jul 27 08:21:01.001194 LibreELEC kernel: wl: module license 'MIXED/Proprietary' taints kernel.


    For now I've put an old USB card and wireless work.

  • The GPLv2 Linux kenel is considered to be pure code from a license perspective, so loading an external vendor module that often has no license or some proprietary license "taints" the kernel's purity. In short, the messages are harmless.