Unable to install Debian Bullseye because of missing wifi firmware

[Pino64]

I am trying to install Debian Bullseye. I have Tow-Boot already installed to SPI.

From http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/b...rd-images/ I downloaded 'partition.img,gz' and 'firmware.pinebook-pro-rk3399.img.gz' and combined them as per the accompanying README:

Code:

zcat ~/firmware.pinebook-pro-rk3399.img.gz ~/partition.img.gz > ~/complete_image.img

I then used Disk Image Writer to write the resulting image to SD.


The PBP/Tow-Boot boots the installer and I get to select Location, Language, Locale and Keyboard. The installer then probes the networking hardware and reports:

[!] Detect network hardware
Some of your hardware needs non-free firmware files to operate. The firmware can be loaded from removable media such as a USB stick or floppy. The missing firmware files are:
brcm/brcmfmac43456-sdio.pine64,pinebook-pro.bin
brcm/brcmfmac43456-sdio.bin
If you have such media available now, insert it, and continue.
Load missing firmware from removable media? [Yes/No]

I assumed this firmware would have been in the firmware image I used to create the installer.


I searched online but couldn't find these files.

On an SD card with Debian installed with Daniel Thompson's installer (unfortunately not longer working) I found 2 brcm directories with the following files:
BCM4345C5.hcd
brcmfmac43456-sdio.clm_blob
brcmfmac43456-sdio.txt
nvram_ap6256.txt
brcmfmac43456-sdio.bin
brcmfmac43456-sdio.pine64,pinebook-pro.txt
fw_bcm43456c5_ag.bin
Notably there is no 'brcmfmac43456-sdio.pine64,pinebook-pro.bin', but there is a .txt file with the same name.


I copied all these files to a USB thumb drive (EXT4). Running the installer again and answering 'Yes' to the 'Load missing firmware from removable media?' question only results in the installer repeating the question. Selecting 'No' gets me to a list of drivers to choose from but none of the Broadcom drivers selectable work.


What am I doing wrong?

[wdt]

OK, what I have in my debian sd card is
brcm]$ ls -l
total 624
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 17 Jul 25 2021 BCM-0a5c-6410.hcd -> BCM-0bb4-0306.hcd
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 54734 Jul 25 2021 BCM-0bb4-0306.hcd
-rw-rw-r-- 1 d d 39411 Dec 5 2019 BCM4345C5.hcd
-rw-rw-r-- 1 d d 508373 Dec 5 2019 brcmfmac43456-sdio.bin
-rw-rw-r-- 1 d d 14036 Dec 5 2019 brcmfmac43456-sdio.clm_blob
-rw-rw-r-- 1 d d 2554 Jan 21 2020 brcmfmac43456-sdio.pine64,pinebook-pro.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 d d 2554 Dec 5 2019 brcmfmac43456-sdio.radxa,rockpi4.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 1000 1000 2196 Jan 16 2020 brcmfmac43456-sdio.txt
I got rid of everything that was not 43456, except for the link, so long ago I don't remember details
But, I won't use a distro that does not have 'good' sleep, very few do

[Pino64]

Thank you for your reply wdt and apologies for my late one: It turns out I didn't subscribe to my own thread and didn't get an email notification of your post.

I am very happy with my PBP on Manjaro now, it's quite an upgrade from Debian 10. As I would like my system to be encrypted I think I'll try Debian 11 again at some point with the latest image files and hope this issue will have disappeared. I'll report back either way.

[cypresstwist]

Copy the files in the attachment in /usr/lib/brcm/ and you will have WiFi 2.4GHz & 5GHz. They're from Armbian. Works for me.

[u974615]

This is bit late and for bookworm, not bulleye...

However, this is where I am at with this:

Code:

wget http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/bookworm/main/installer-arm64/current/images/netboot/SD-card-images/firmware.pinebook-pro-rk3399.img.gz

wget http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/bookworm/main/installer-arm64/current/images/netboot/SD-card-images/partition.img.gz

zcat firmware.pinebook-pro-rk3399.img.gz partition.img.gz  > complete_pbp_image.img

wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free-firmware/f/firmware-nonfree/firmware-brcm80211_20230515-3_all.deb

ar vx firmware-brcm80211_20230515-3_all.deb

However, the Debian package firmware-brcm80211_2023515-3_all.deb doesn't contain the files that the installer is asking for:

 brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.bin
 brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio..pine64,pinebook-pro.bin

Beside the symbolic links in the Debian firmware package, what is the package named with the correct files?

[diederik]

This is bit late and for bookworm, not bulleye...

Code:

wget http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/bookworm/main/installer-arm64/current/images/netboot/SD-card-images/firmware.pinebook-pro-rk3399.img.gz

wget http://http.us.debian.org/debian/dists/bookworm/main/installer-arm64/current/images/netboot/SD-card-images/partition.img.gz

zcat firmware.pinebook-pro-rk3399.img.gz partition.img.gz  > complete_pbp_image.img

wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free-firmware/f/firmware-nonfree/firmware-brcm80211_20230515-3_all.deb

ar vx firmware-brcm80211_20230515-3_all.deb

However, the Debian package firmware-brcm80211_2023515-3_all.deb doesn't contain the files that the installer is asking for:

 brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.bin
 brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio..pine64,pinebook-pro.bin

Beside the symbolic links in the Debian firmware package, what is the package named with the correct files?

Are you sure about the 2nd filename, because it looks all wrong.

AFAICT, you should have a symlink like this:
brcmfmac43455-sdio.pine64,pinebook-pro.txt -> brcmfmac43455-sdio.AW-CM256SM.txt

And then ofc also have the AW-CM256SM.txt file in the 'brcm' directory. And that should all be contained in the firmware-brcm80211 package.
(I have no idea how to integrate that with the installer though)

[dachalife]

It seems to be the same missing firmware bug we had last year.

[u974615]

I figured it out.  Simple really.  I formatted a second SSD drive (FAT), created a top level directory "firmware" on the new drive and copied the Debian package to the new "firmware" directory.  Then everything went well with the Debian installer.

I now have a TowBoot (eMMC) | Debian 12 GNOME3 Pine64 Pinebook laptop.