MacBook Pro Wifi on Fedora 24.md

The current kernel/drivers of Fedora 24 do not support the Wifi chip used on my Mac Book Pro. Proprietary Broadcom drivers are packaged and available in the rpmfusion repo.

Verify that your card is a Broadcom using: lspci -vnn -d 14e4:

Sample output:

02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43a0] (rev 03)

Install

Install the rpmfusion repo, note only "nonfree" is required, as the Broadcom Driver is proprietry: http://rpmfusion.org/

su -c 'dnf install -y http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm'

Then install the akmods and kernel-devel packages (special thanks to @celsom3 for providing this):

sudo dnf install -y akmods "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"

Finally install broadcom-wl package from the rpmfusion repo, which will install kmod-wl, akmod-wl, and other dependencies.

sudo dnf install -y broadcom-wl

Next run akmods to rebuild the kernel extension in the broadcom-wl package:

sudo akmods

Finally, reboot Fedora.

Troubleshooting

• lsmod to list all kernel modules
• sudo modprobe wl will force the wireless kernel extension to load.
• sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager

Total Linux noob here, trying to do this on macbook pro early 2008 model with Fedora 25. When running sudo dnf install -y akmods "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)" I get the following output:

Last metadata expiration check: 0:26:40 ago on Sat Jan 7 14:51:05 2017. No package akmods available. Error: Unable to find a match.

Any clues as to why this might not work?

@rtjfarrimond:

Use https versions

su -c 'dnf install -y https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm'
su -c 'dnf install -y https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm'

Since the last update, I have lost my Wifi and I am totally clueless here:

akmods
Checking kmods exist for 4.8.6-300.fc25.x86_64 [ OK ]

sudo modprobe wl
modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'wl': Permission denied

NB: I removed and reinstalled everything.

If someone has any tips to share, it would be fantastic!

Okay SELinux was to blame:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1426741

sudo setenforce 0
sudo modprobe wl
sudo setenforce 1

Thank you! It worked perfectly. MacBook Pro late 2011 Fedora 25

Thank you @jamespamplin and @celsom3, it worked perfectly on Fedora 25 running on Macbook Pro Early 2011!

Thanks you! It worked perfectly. MacBook Air late 2014 Fedora 26 :)

Thank you so much for this. It worked perfectly on a mid 2009 Macbook Pro with Fedora 27.

All good on a MacBook 11,x (late-2013) with Fedora 27. Thanks.

Thank you works like a charm!

Thank you 👍

well this is completely useless when you've a MacBook pro WITHOUT an ethernet port. How are we suppose to install a repo when we aint got internet connection in the first place!!??? Guess y'all didn't consider that

well this is completely useless when you've a MacBook pro WITHOUT an ethernet port. How are we suppose to install a repo when we aint got internet connection in the first place!!??? Guess y'all didn't consider that

Use your phone (usb) tethering.

On another note, just report that this steps worked for Fedora 28 on a MacBook Pro (13-inch, Early 2011).

Thank you so much, it worked perfectly fine on a dual-boot with osx mojave on a macbook pro retina mid-2014 !

I tried this tutorial with a mid-2014 MacBook Pro and Fedora 29. Note that UnitedRPMs also publish the driver: https://github.com/UnitedRPMs/broadcom-wl-dkms

$ modinfo wl
filename:       /lib/modules/5.0.7-200.fc29.x86_64/extra/wl/wl.ko
license:        MIXED/Proprietary
alias:          pci:v*d*sv*sd*bc02sc80i*
depends:        cfg80211
retpoline:      Y
name:           wl
vermagic:       5.0.7-200.fc29.x86_64 SMP mod_unload
parm:           passivemode:int
parm:           wl_txq_thresh:int
parm:           oneonly:int
parm:           piomode:int
parm:           instance_base:int
parm:           nompc:int
parm:           intf_name:string

It works but it's highly unreliable for me. The wl adapter drops its internet access frequently. I tried finding errors in the system logs but nothing stood out. Anyone else having similar issues?

As a workaround, I created a cron job with the following script to keep the connection alive:

#!/bin/bash
x=`ping -c1 google.com 2>&1 | grep unknown`
if [ ! "$x" = "" ]; then
   echo "Network down!! Attempting to restart."
   systemctl restart NetworkManager
else
   echo "Network up"
fi

Okay SELinux was to blame:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1426741

sudo setenforce 0
sudo modprobe wl
sudo setenforce 1

Worked perfectly for me on Mid-2013 Macbook Air running F30; but I had to run @poltys inputs. Maybe this step should be included in the instructions now, too. Keeping an eye on connection stability a la @fredfortier. So far so good.

Mostly worked like a charm on Fedora 30 on late 2008 model Macbook (unibody). I just had to adjust NetworkManager.conf file with then reboot:

Try to put:

[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no

in /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf

See: https://ask.fedoraproject.org/t/wifi-not-working-on-mac-mini-after-installing-fedora/827/4

I had to omit the second equal sign for the following line on Fedora 32:

sudo dnf install -y akmods "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"

Running it with both equal signs produced the following error:

$ sudo dnf install akmods "kernel-devel-uname-r == $(uname -r)"
Last metadata expiration check: 0:15:14 ago on Fri 15 May 2020 12:41:50 PM MDT.
Package akmods-0.5.6-25.fc32.noarch is already installed.
No match for argument: kernel-devel-uname-r == 5.6.6-300.fc32.x86_64
Error: Unable to find a match: kernel-devel-uname-r == 5.6.6-300.fc32.x86_64

Thanks a lot! I had almost given up when I found this...

But now I can confirm it works flawlessly in Fedora 33 on my late 2013 15" MBP, with Villarealized's modification.

Trying this on a late 2009 Mac Mini with Fedora Server 36.
After running akmods, I saw the following on dmesg:
[ 1251.670088] wl: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
[ 1251.670097] wl: module license 'MIXED/Proprietary' taints kernel.
[ 1251.670099] Disabling lock debugging due to kernel taint
[ 1251.676955] wl: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel
That made me a little nervous but there were no more dmesg like that any more after review (not sure what happened).
After finding out how to configure the wireless adapter (BCM4321, btw.) headless via nmcli it's now working fine.

Hahaha - meant to say "after reboot" (not review ...)