Failing to create a hotspot using TP Link Archer T6E AC1300 (BCM4360)

[tukykarmakar]

EDIT [09-Dec-2023]: If you also have a TP Link Archer T6E AC1300 card with BCM4360 chip, TL;DR: the broadcom-wl driver doesn't support AP mode. As of writing this, it's been about a week now since I reached out to the TP Link support using their Email Support form. There was no response from them yet, so I don't think they're gonna work on this in future.

I'm using a Fedora-based distro (Nobara) with KDE, dual-booting with Windows 10 from a physically separate drive. I have the TP Link Archer T6E AC1300 wifi card and broadcom-wl driver version 6.30.223.271-21.fc38 from the RPM Fusion Non-free repository. My card is working fine and connects with my router, hotspots from my phones, but is unable to create a hotspot from the desktop.

Every time I click on the Hotspot button from the Network menu in the system tray, nothing happens and I get the message "Authorisation supplicant timed out". Below the is the notification popup that I see-- Blacksite is the name of my PC and wlp4s0 is the wifi card name in the system.

Below is the output of the command lspci -vnn -d 14e4:--

04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4360 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [14e4:43a0] (rev 03)
        Subsystem: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries Device [14e4:0619]
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 31
        Memory at fc400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=32K]
        Memory at fc200000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2M]
        Capabilities: <access denied>
        Kernel driver in use: wl
        Kernel modules: bcma, wl

I know that my card supports the AP mode because I can create hotspots in Windows 10, and also, it shows in the iw list output--

Supported interface modes:
                 * IBSS
                 * managed
                 * AP

I ran journatctl -f and saved the logs in the attached file. journalctl.txt

I tried using linux-wifi-hotspot by following this instruction, but I keep getting the following error--

pkexec --user root create_ap wlp4s0 enp5s0 'Blacksite' '12345678' --mkconfig /etc/create_ap.conf --no-virt  
Config options written to '/etc/create_ap.conf'

Error: Failed to run hostapd, maybe a program is interfering.
If an error like 'n80211: Could not configure driver mode' was thrown
try running the following before starting create_ap:
    nmcli r wifi off
    rfkill unblock wlan

Command not found or exited with error status

PC Specifications:-

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 3600
• GPU: AMD Radeon RX 6600 8GB GDDR6
• Motherboard: ASrock B450M Pro 4
• RAM: 2x8 GB 3600 MHz running at 3200 MHz
• Storage: 1 TB NVMe m.2, 1 TB SATA 3 6 GB/s m.2, 1 TB SATA 3 6 GB/s 2.5'
• Power: Corsair RM650 80+ Gold

I have tried restarting the wpa_supplicant and the NetworkManager services multiple times, reinstalled the driver, tried using pre-installed drivers but card wasn't detected. Now I have no idea why the WPA Supplicant is failing.

I'm new to Linux, but I can find my way around the system, so I'll appreciate all the details provided when preforming tasks for troubleshooting. If it's not possible to create access point at all, then I'll appreciate the explanations too.

Thanks!

[antoineco]

Unfortunately this aging driver does not support AP mode: https://github.com/antoineco/broadcom-wl/issues/26#issuecomment-1144690708

[antoineco]

This is not the canonical repository for this driver by the way. The source code belongs to Broadcom and has been unmaintained since early 2015. I'm merely making sure that it works on all kernel versions, but there is no big fixing or feature additions happening here.

[tukykarmakar]

Well that sucks! My fried gifted me this card seeing that it was one of the most popular cards on Amazon. At least I can connect to the internet and if needed, I'll boot up Windows I guess.

Is there any guides or resources that'll help a new user in Linux to buy a supported wifi card?

Am I correct in assuming that TP Link gets the chips from Broadcom and creates the firmware based on the firmware provided by Broadcom? I'll be opening a support case with TP Link and let them know about this. I know that it won't fix the issues, but it should put the info in the back of their head. I urge everyone having the same issue in Linux and reading this, to open a support case too. I'll update here with their response.

[antoineco]

The card is perfectly fine, it's the support for it in Linux which is suboptimal because Broadcom seems to only release proprietary drivers for Windows and macOS, and the OSS options do not support all Broadcom chips.

I ran into the same issue as you did (minus the support for AP mode, which I don't use). This was in fact what prompted me to start maintaining this distro-agnostic patch repo.

On Linux one has to be very careful with the hardware they choose, generally speaking but even more so with wireless devices such as WiFi, Bluetooth, etc.

I don't know about a page that lists all hardware that is known to be well supported on Linux. The best is to first identify your usage of said hardware (e.g. "WiFi card in AP mode"), and then search the wikis of popular distribution for relevant information and hardware which users can vet for.