Broadcom wireless monitor mode freezes system

Question

I have a broadcom BCM43142 wireless card, and wish to enable monitor mode. I'm using the broadcom-sta wl driver, manually upgraded to the latest version. This card is not supported by the b43 driver.

Monitor mode is not supported on the wlan0 interface, but according to the documentation, this should enable a prism0 interface with monitoring capabilities:

echo 1 > /proc/brcm_monitor0

The moment I write 1 to that file, however, my system freezes completely.

How can I enable monitor mode, switch to another driver, or at least debug the freezing problem?

Answer 1

As mentioned, this is due to a bug in the driver. The new Broadcom source has already patched this so there's no need to manually patch it.

For A X64 System try

mkdir broadcom

cd broadcom

wget http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/hybrid-v35_64-nodebug-pcoem-6_30_223_271.tar.gz

tar xzf http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/hybrid-v35_64-nodebug-pcoem-6_30_223_271.tar.gz

build

For A x32 System try

mkdir broadcom

cd broadcom

wget http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/hybrid-v35-nodebug-pcoem-6_30_223_271.tar.gz

tar xzf http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/hybrid-v35-nodebug-pcoem-6_30_223_271.tar.gz

build

Then follow the instructions from the STA readme to install it

Answer 2

This is a bug in the driver. You have to patch the driver and compile it yourself. See: https://askubuntu.com/questions/387780/cant-change-brcm-monitor0-in-proc