Michael's Blog

Building the wl module on linux 3.2

After upgrading my netbook kernel to the latest stable version available on backports.org I soon discovered that my wireless interface no longer worked. Trying to rebuild the module resulted in the following error:

/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c: In function ‘_wl_set_multicast_list’:
/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c:1435: error: ‘struct net_device’ has no member named ‘mc_list’
/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c:1435: error: ‘struct net_device’ has no member named ‘mc_count’
/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c:1436: error: dereferencing pointer to incomplete type
/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c:1442: error: dereferencing pointer to incomplete type
make[4]: *** [/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.o] Error 1
make[3]: *** [_module_/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64] Error 2
make[2]: *** [sub-make] Error 2
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-0.bpo.2-amd64'
make: *** [all] Error 2
root@netbook:/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64#  run "make API=WEXT"
bash: run: command not found
root@netbook:/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64# "make API=WEXT"
bash: make API=WEXT: command not found
root@netbook:/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64# make API=WEXT
KBUILD_NOPEDANTIC=1 make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=`pwd`
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-0.bpo.2-amd64'
  CC [M]  /usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.o
/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c: In function ‘_wl_set_multicast_list’:
/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c:1435: error: ‘struct net_device’ has no member named ‘mc_list’
/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c:1435: error: ‘struct net_device’ has no member named ‘mc_count’
/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c:1436: error: dereferencing pointer to incomplete type
/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.c:1442: error: dereferencing pointer to incomplete type
make[4]: *** [/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64/src/wl/sys/wl_linux.o] Error 1
make[3]: *** [_module_/usr/src/modules/broadcom-sta/amd64] Error 2
make[2]: *** [sub-make] Error 2
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-3.2.0-0.bpo.2-amd64'
make: *** [all] Error 2

A bit of googling lead me to a few patches that helped solve the issue. Here is a unified diff of my changes which should allow you to cleanly build and install the wl module using module-assistant.

http://www.watters.ws/broadcom_bcm4313_linux3.2.patch

One thing to note is that the source code needs to be patched BEFORE you run m-a, i.e. cd to /usr/src/modules/broadcom_sta/amd64/src/wl/sys and run patch the patch from there.

I hope that somebody will find this useful.

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