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I plan to install Debian 9 to my Apple Desktop, which has a Broadcom BCM4360 (PCI IDs 14e4:43a0, 14e4:4360) in it. The installer says "Broadcom 4360 WLAN found" but complains "unsupported phy".

This link says broadcom-sta-dkms package supports the aforementioned BRCM chip. So I included the package into my installation CD. However, I still see the same error. I believe the package should be right, but it seems it's not enough to just include it my CD ( I build the installation CD using simple-cdd). How to let the installer loads the module inside the package when the CD boots up the system?

Max Li
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  • It may be that it needs some firmware, like `firmware-brcm80211`. –  Dec 25 '19 at 05:55
  • this may help: https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/ –  Dec 25 '19 at 06:04

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Not that this is a direct answer to your question, but I had the same problem and solved it by using a USB->ethernet adapter and then installing the broadcom-sta-dkms package (and rebooting) afterwards.

This allows the BCM4360 in a 2014 11" Macbook Air to be supported after the install (which previously reported via dmesg that it had an unsupported PHY), but doesn't update the installer in the way you are asking for.

It's likely that part of the problem is that that package doesn't actually include the driver module -- it just builds it and then you can load it instead of the b43 module. If you could build it separately and then include the wl module (and any dependencies) in the installer then that might work, or you could provide the generated package(s) on a USB stick during the install. (Because the broadcom-sta-dkms package builds the module it also needs gcc, kernel headers etc, so it may be possible to install those all during the pre-installer running just to get the driver working for the actual installer, but that sounds like quite a pain...)

David Gardner
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