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+--- Forum: RockPro64 Hardware and Accessories (https://forum.pine64.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=102)
+--- Thread: Unacceptable Disabling of Wifi Module (/showthread.php?tid=6983)
Unacceptable Disabling of Wifi Module - axelf - 12-22-2018
I am sitting here with a totally useless cluster of over £1300 worth of pinepro64 because the wifi module has been disabled in the 7.8 + build. Many people buy these clusters for testing off corporate networks for prototyping and technology evaluation where bleeding edge open source software can be downloaded without the usual security screening. The wifi module was purchased to act as a bastion host to achieve this goal, but have been thwarted because Pine sell a wifi module that cant be supported in linux!!
It would appear that there are issues with the PCIe interface and teh decision was taken to disable the wifi in favour keeping the PCIe stable.
I have no issues with this, but surely it would have been courteous to give people the choice to enable wifi or PCIe?
I too have a NVMe PCIe Disk to add but network access is *critical*.
Question: Has *anybody* been able to get the wifi module working full stop on the rockPro64 linux builds ?
I have tried 20 builds in 2 days of testing with no luck ... even a 7.7 bionic-lxde arm64 dose not seem to work,
even with this build rfkill seems to only see the BT interface [# rfkill list] device 0 there is not device 1 for wifi
there is also no wlan0 interface to configure,
### Deeper Dive ###
### OS Drivers ###
From the kern.log it appears that the wifi device is being detected as chip ap6354 and allocated IRQ 3
There is an entry for Rockchip WiFi chip interface (V1.00)
I can not see any errors to indicate that there is a HW detection issue or a driver initialization issue for the wifi module
There is also a kernal command line entry registering a MAC address of e6:72:16:1c:22:0e on a uart8250 device which is not the RJ45 Ethernet device and has no registered vendor, but this may well be something to do with the boot process mounting to the emmc chip that holds the root partition.... (so it looks like a red herring)
What I do see is a statement that;
"of_get_named_gpiod_flags: can't parse 'WIFI,poweren_gpio' property of node '/wirelesspwlan[0]'
So I am wondering if the disabling has been triggered by a GPIO pin.
If anybody has any documentation on this wifi device HW design, driver and intended configuration it would be appreciated.
When I solve this I will post back to the forum.
### HW ###
The Block diagram schematics seem to indicate that it shares the PCIe bus, although looking at the chips and pinouts it seems the module is supposed to be using;
UART interface for BlueTooth
SDIO interface for Wifi
What this has to do with PCIe I dont know ... i am going to have to do some research here to understand how different bus \ signalling technologies can share a PCIe interface,
RE: Unacceptable Disabling of Wifi Module - Luke - 12-22-2018
A dev fixed SDIO BT/WiFi module -- will find its way into the next pre-release.
RE: Unacceptable Disabling of Wifi Module - Mrfixit2001 - 12-22-2018
There are some device tree fixes and some driver changes required. I'll be pushing these commits as PR to ayufan's repo when I have time between the family holiday events!
RE: Unacceptable Disabling of Wifi Module - axelf - 12-23-2018
Thanks for the updates, really appreciated.
As a temporary work around I purchased and Asus WiFi repeater that had an RJ45 socket on the side.
I am now able to work on building the cluster.
I also have realize that I have been a complete idiot and I have managed to purchase the wrong wifi module ... the one that came with my order was for the PINE A64 ... . this would explain why I was a moron and could not get the module working on 7.7
My apologies, I have ordered the correct version and I will test the builds as soon as they are shipped.
thanks for your help in patching the fix's.
let me know if you want me to do any testing.
RE: Unacceptable Disabling of Wifi Module - Lokyi792 - 04-17-2019
Either/or would have been a better option...
I bought one of these to start mucking around with emulators etc, wouldn't have wasted money if I knew the module didn't work because it was disabled intentionally.
Lack of Wifi is annoying, but looks like I'll have to go find a BT adapter somewhere to get controllers working.
RE: Unacceptable Disabling of Wifi Module - evilbunny - 04-17-2019
(04-17-2019, 08:19 AM)Lokyi792 Wrote: Either/or would have been a better option...
I bought one of these to start mucking around with emulators etc, wouldn't have wasted money if I knew the module didn't work because it was disabled intentionally.
Lack of Wifi is annoying, but looks like I'll have to go find a BT adapter somewhere to get controllers working.
Mrfixit and ayufan have both made images with wifi working...
https://github.com/ayufan-rock64/linux-build/releases/