Bluefin can't see wifi adapter

[novakwh]

Describe the bug

My laptop wifi adapter works perfectly fine on Silverblue (Fedora 40), but Bluefin does not see it.

What did you expect to happen?

I expected the wifi adapter to be seen by the system, but there is no wifi adapter found.

Output of rpm-ostree status

State: idle
AutomaticUpdates: stage; rpm-ostreed-automatic.timer: no runs since boot
Deployments:
● ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:stable
Digest: sha256:931a5a251bfbe4e6127d17bb42e828e5af02cbfc232fc2d230cd8ff4591a2407
Version: 40.20241011.0 (2024-10-12T22:40:03Z)

ostree-image-signed:docker://ghcr.io/ublue-os/bluefin:gts
Digest: sha256:ba81f343f1be0681f257fa9dd644c6cea5bffad59d2317c61434f51438799169
Version: 39.20241012.0 (2024-10-13T05:44:08Z)

Output of groups

[username] wheel

Extra information or context

I posted this on the ublue discourse and then realized I should probably post it here, sorry for duplication.

Last couple of days I have been trying to check out Bluefin again after having been using Silverblue (without any issues) on my laptop (Dell XPS 13 9350). Bluefin just will not recognize the Wifi adapter even though Silverblue (40) works fine. I did a fresh install of Bluefin ISO (non-developer) yesterday, and nothing; tethered to my phone I rebased to stable, and still nothing. I reinstalled Silverblue from ISO, and again, that works fine. Did a rebase to Bluefin from Silverblue and wifi vanished. Reinstalled Silverblue from ISO again, and again Wifi works fine.

Today, did the whole thing again just to see if I could figure something out, reinstalling Bluefin from fresh ISO, no wifi, rebasing to stable, no wifi.

I am not Linux capable enough to know more than to scratch my head after all of these installs and rebases and reinstalls. It just seems plain weird that Silverblue works like a dream but I just can’t get Bluefin to recognize a wifi adapter.

The wifi device info from lspci is, I believe

3a:00.0 Non-VGA unclassified device [0000]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries Device [14e4:8100] (rev 08)

[castrojo]

I feel like we've seen this before? I think it's because of the broadcom firmware choice we made.

[castrojo]

Could be this? https://universal-blue.discourse.group/t/wifi-kernel-module-brcmfmac-no-longer-auto-loads-at-boot/4499/3

[novakwh]

Hmm, I'm not tech savvy enough to know offhand how to follow the suggestions in that thread re inserting a module.

One thing I didn't mention in my original post, and I don't know if it helps or adds to the confusion or just states the obvious, but:

After the Bluefin ISO install didn't work, and I reinstalled Silverblue and then rebased to Bluefin (following instructions found on the discourse), it seemed to work fine except, as noted, there was no wifi adapter. So I then used rpm-ostree rollback to get back to Silverblue, but this time after rebooting, Silverblue didn't see the wifi adapter, either.

So then I did a fresh install of Silverblue from ISO and the wifi adapter was there.

So, once I rebased from Silverblue to Bluefin, the wifi adapter could no longer be found, even when I rolled back to Silverblue.

[novakwh]

Note that the most recent post today from the ublue discourse link above indicates that the OP has decided he is having a hardware issue with a flakey Broadcom wifi. That is NOT my issue, just to be clear: the wifi card works not only fine with Silverblue (going back and forth, it works every time Silverblue is installed from an ISO) but also works fine with other Linux distros (most recently, last week, Tumbleweed).

[novakwh]

Ok, some more weird stuff about this issue as I've been playing around.

Note that I have done fresh installs of Bluefin both with secure boot enabled, and with secure boot disabled, and in neither case was the wifi adapter recognized.

I have always installed Silverblue with secure boot disabled (and it has always recognized the wifi card without a problem), so this morning I tried installing it from a fresh ISO but with secure boot enabled -- and this time, Silverblue did NOT see a wifi adapter.

I then reinstalled Silverblue from the same ISO but this time with secure boot disabled like usual, and yes, the wifi was recognized as normal.

So I then did a direct rebase from Silverblue to vauxite-main -- and this time, the wifi worked!

Note that whenever I did a rebase from Silverblue (with working wifi) to Bluefin, the wifi disappeared. (And rebasing from Bluefin then to Vauxite, or rolling back to Silverblue, the wifi still did not work.)

Anyway thought I would mention this, since so far it seems secure boot had something to do with Silverblue not recognizing the wifi card, but rebasing to Vauxite from Silverblue (with secure boot disabled) meant the wifi worked fine, but Bluefin does not recognize it in any event. Or maybe all this secure boot stuff is just coincidental.

One other thing -- with Bluefin installs I've always had to do a MOK enrollment before the first boot, whether secure boot was enabled or disabled -- that's the only time I've ever seen that screen on an install. Not sure if that has anything to do with it, but I'm just trying to provide info. Sometimes I skipped the enrollment, sometimes I used universalblue as the password, but the wifi was never recognized in any event.

(The irony here is that I was really trying to get to XFCE anyway, I was just under the impression it would be better to go to Bluefin first.)

[jaredhenderson]

Hello, just chiming in that this issue is happening with me also - trying Bluefin for the first time today, have previously tried Bazzite and Silverblue where wifi works out of the box.

I have a Broadcom 94360 wireless adaptor (MacBook Pro mid 2015). In Bluefin, wifi works straight away when I use modprobe brcmfmac, however it does not persist across reboots as mentioned in the prior linked issue that got closed.

[osalbahr]

This also happens with a 2017 MacBook Pro.