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Apparently, Canonical rolled out a HWE kernel and forget to upgrade bcmwl-kernel-source in the repos. This has caused my wifi adapter to go missing from my computer.

This solution recommends the following:

Install bcmwl-kernel-source from eoan repos. You can find it e.g. here. http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/restricted/b/bcmwl/bcmwl-kernel-source_6.30.223.271+bdcom-0ubuntu4_amd64.deb It will compile with the 5.8 kernel.

My implementation of these instructions looks like this:

sudo apt-get purge bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo apt autoremove
sudo dpkg -i bcmwl-kernel-source_6.30.223.271+bdcom-0ubuntu4_amd64.deb

But it doesn't work and I get an error:

ERROR: Cannot create report: [Errno 17] File exists: 
'/var/crash/bcmwl-kernel-source.0.crash'
Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 
5.8.0-34-generic (x86_64)
...
Consult /var/lib/dkms/bcmwl/6.30.223.271+bdcom/build/make.log
for more information.

I imagine I'm not installing bcmwl-kernel-source_6.30.223.271+bdcom-0ubuntu4_amd64.deb in the correct manner. How do I do it right?

Display name
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    Please consult the log as was suggested: `cat /var/lib/dkms/bcmwl/6.30.223.271+bdcom/build/make.log` What does it say the error was? – chili555 Jan 08 '21 at 01:50
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    I made a mistake with `eoan`. After the holidays I thought that eoan was 20.10 for some reason :-))) – Pilot6 Jan 08 '21 at 21:06

1 Answers1

5

As we see, bcmwl-kernel-source_6.30.223.271+bdcom-0ubuntu4 doesn't compile correctly for your system. On my system, using the exact same kernel version, bcmwl-kernel-source_6.30.223.271+bdcom-0ubuntu7 installs correctly. I therefore suggest:

mkdir bcmwl && cd bcmwl
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/restricted/b/bcmwl/bcmwl-kernel-source_6.30.223.271+bdcom-0ubuntu7_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i bcmwl*.deb

Is there any improvement?

chili555
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  • That worked! Is there a proper way to choose the `bcmwl-*-0ubuntuX` file? How would I choose `X`? Or is choosing `X` simply a matter of trial and error? – Display name Jan 08 '21 at 04:10
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    Although there may be some other canonical method, I simply ran: `lsb_release -c` and then matched the codename here: https://packages.ubuntu.com and search for *bcmwl*. Next I noted X. It is not perfectly clear that this will be successful in each and every setting, especially the problematic HWE kernel versions, but, in this case, it worked. – chili555 Jan 09 '21 at 15:28