11-17-2019, 02:51 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-17-2019, 02:55 PM by bcnaz.)
WIFI Issues :
There is every kind of user posting here, each with a different levels of proficiency.
Myself, I am a bit low on some of the skills needed, but I try to recognize my limits.
When I start poking around in settings, I try to recognize what I can change and be able to un-do,
I did follow Lukes directions to the letter when I first fired up my PBP, I did have to make some minor changes to my sound software to get that to function.
BUT, as we all have the same hardware and software 'out of the box' and most do not have the wifi issues, maybe, some of this is from a person changing their setting that perhaps they should not have changed ?
I am still just testing the original OS and it seems to function pretty well, the wifi is connecting quickly at boot up. It sees both my 2.4 and my 5 wifi and will work on both.
I did load a close copy of Debian/Mate (Stretch) on an ole Dell D531 laptop so if I want to consider making any changes, that will be a good place to try first. AND It is a simple and short process for me to wipe and re-install the whole OS on that. Installing arm is still a bit daunting to me.
I do also troll through this site reading everything, much of it I have studied multiple times as I try to bring myself up to par on how to work with arm systems.
Over-all this PBP is doing pretty good, one irritating item is just occasionally when I hit the space bar the screen will leave the post I am writing and fly to the bottom of the page ?
But, my Dell has done the exact same thing so that would seem to be non-related to the PBP.
The touch pad is a bit different, but I am getting used to it.
** So perhaps some of the problems are from the user changing something,
Then it is a faulty PBP when it does not function as it should ???
Sorry If I rambled a bit there, my point being I think the hardware is OK, the problem(s) appear to be software related.
LINUX = CHOICES
**BCnAZ**
Donate to $upport
your favorite OS Team
11-17-2019, 03:55 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-17-2019, 04:01 PM by Eggmonkey.)
(11-17-2019, 11:33 AM)Arwen Wrote: (11-17-2019, 09:26 AM)Der Geist der Maschine Wrote: Quote:OR wait for someone else to make the improvements/ software to catch up.
Personally, I'm happy to be patient.
I don't see anyone actively looking into fixing wifi instability or the crashes.
In another post, I did suggest that a person who had WiFi instability, check the antenna connection.
That's a straight forward check, and could easily have come loose in tranist.
It's actually something that happened to me with my old laptop. When I replaced my the SSD, I made sure to leave the WiFi antenna cable alone. But, it came loose anyway over time. Easy fix.
I meant to reply to you in the other thread - I will take it apart and check this in the next day or two.
(11-17-2019, 02:51 PM)bcnaz Wrote: WIFI Issues :
There is every kind of user posting here, each with a different levels of proficiency.
Myself, I am a bit low on some of the skills needed, but I try to recognize my limits.
When I start poking around in settings, I try to recognize what I can change and be able to un-do,
I did follow Lukes directions to the letter when I first fired up my PBP, I did have to make some minor changes to my sound software to get that to function.
BUT, as we all have the same hardware and software 'out of the box' and most do not have the wifi issues, maybe, some of this is from a person changing their setting that perhaps they should not have changed ?
I am still just testing the original OS and it seems to function pretty well, the wifi is connecting quickly at boot up. It sees both my 2.4 and my 5 wifi and will work on both.
I did load a close copy of Debian/Mate (Stretch) on an ole Dell D531 laptop so if I want to consider making any changes, that will be a good place to try first. AND It is a simple and short process for me to wipe and re-install the whole OS on that. Installing arm is still a bit daunting to me.
I do also troll through this site reading everything, much of it I have studied multiple times as I try to bring myself up to par on how to work with arm systems.
Over-all this PBP is doing pretty good, one irritating item is just occasionally when I hit the space bar the screen will leave the post I am writing and fly to the bottom of the page ?
But, my Dell has done the exact same thing so that would seem to be non-related to the PBP.
The touch pad is a bit different, but I am getting used to it.
** So perhaps some of the problems are from the user changing something,
Then it is a faulty PBP when it does not function as it should ???
Sorry If I rambled a bit there, my point being I think the hardware is OK, the problem(s) appear to be software related.
Isn't it more logical to assume it is the hardware that is different, not the software? Assuming we all have the same software?
As I said in the previous post, I'll take my pinebook apart and check the wifi card + antennae.
I will also do some more debugging when I have the time - dmesg and syslogs aren't telling me anything conclusive so far.
And while I'm no Linux genius (though I'm qualified as a Linux Sys Admin and work as an IT Generalist), I'm fairly certain I didn't break the wifi myself. It wasn't working straight out of the box.
11-17-2019, 04:22 PM
(This post was last modified: 11-17-2019, 04:26 PM by bcnaz.)
*
Perhaps ask Pine64 directly if they used different wifi modules, they seem to respond rather quickly everytime I have emailed them.
There is a terminal request for hardware list (I dont remember it at the moment) ?
I have used that in the past to identify needed drivers for the wifi.
* I remember when Luke mentioned the 'Windows malware' being on some of the machines,
that involved just one of the sd cards used for factory installations.
LINUX = CHOICES
**BCnAZ**
Donate to $upport
your favorite OS Team
This says there is only one WiFi chip used for all Pinebook Pros;
Wiki - Pinebook Pro - Datasheets for Components and Peripherals
Further up where they show the picture of the underside, we see that the WiFi appears soldered to the mainboard. Probably to reduce cost.
Other laptops use half length MiniPCIe or short M.2 slots for the WiFi. Most likely so that it can be upgraded during it's life cycle. Not the end user life cycle. The OEM's life cycle which allows them to;
- Switch WiFi vendors if needed
- Use lower cost model on lower spec'ed units and higher cost model on higher spec'ed units
- Upgrade if a new WiFi standard comes out
- Allow LTE / cellular MODEM installation
- Pass the buck on government certification of the WiFi, since it's a module, the module vendor does the certification
--
Arwen Evenstar
Princess of Rivendale
@ everyone with crashes:
For the last couple of days, I was running Manjaro Preview 3 off an old 8 GB mini SD card. I pretty much stressed the system and there were no crashes. Give it a try!
Manjaro Preview 3 uses not Debian's 4.4.196 kernel but a 5.4-rc6 + some 4.4.196 patches. With this kernel, Manjaro has a few hiccups:
- the screen freezes every 10 min or so for a second. This might be due to my slow mini SD card.
- occasional audio cracks. Not a big thing if you listen to music on the side
- wifi is very flaky and needs to be reset every 10 to 15 min with
# cat /opt/bin/restartwifi.sh
#!/bin/sh
echo restarting wifi
echo fe310000.dwmmc > /sys/bus/platform/drivers/dwmmc_rockchip/unbind
sleep 1
echo fe310000.dwmmc > /sys/bus/platform/drivers/dwmmc_rockchip/bind
sleep 10
iwconfig wlan0 power off
If you don't get any crashes on Manjaro, then you will have peace of mind that you will eventually get a usable system as there is some active development work on integrating the Pinebook Pro into the 5.4 kernel.
I tried to get the 5.4 kernel running on Debian a few days ago but failed (see this thread). Next weekend, I'll give it another try.
[Caveat: I also disassembled my laptop for the first time. Nothing was loose or so. In theory, this could have also magically fixed the crashes as well.]
Thanks for the heads up on manjaro. To date I think I have only had 3 crashes with the stock OS. 2 were while I was watching a youtube video in Chromium, the other crash was while editing an Excel file running off my remote server. The main crashes I see are with Firefox which seems to crash every few minutes. At least the recovery function works pretty well.
I used to get crashes every 24 hours. Now with MrFixIt's epic v 1.5 update, I get crashes every 1 to 2 hours basically rendering the laptop unusable. 121 postings. That was it. Bye.
I keep monitoring this thread https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8207 to see if someone gets the 5.4 kernel running on Debian and give that a try.
01-01-2020, 02:08 PM
(This post was last modified: 01-01-2020, 02:21 PM by Twix166.
Edit Reason: Corrected some type-os
)
I have also been seeing frequent crashes in the past day. I have been using my PBP all day today doing Audiobook proof listening. So I have VLC running and a PDF reader open alongside Chromium to edit my Google sheet in which I make the edit notes.
Initially I was seeing the WiFi drop-outs and was able to stabilise this by setting managed=true for the NetworkManager. WiFi is now behaving correctly but the crashes have kept happening. Sometimes as frequently as every 10 minutes. I also noticed that when the crash happens, it does take about 10 seconds for the system to reboot. Which led me to believe that this is a kernel crash. As mentioned earlier, the 10 second timeout is one of the kernel options that is specified.
With this information, I decided to tail /var/log/kern.log so that I could keep an eye on it. I also monitored CPU temperature by using 'watch -n 5 cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp'. The temperature readout hovered around 36500 (assuming this means 36.5 degr C) most of the time. But, upon the moment of the crash, it had risen to around 45000. This is still not very hot in my opinion but, it may be related. It might be that whatever causes the kernel to crash causes the temp to rise.
Code: Jan 1 19:30:01 eggsy kernel: [ 4644.137134] wl_run_escan: LEGACY_SCAN sync ID: 43, bssidx: 0
Jan 1 19:32:01 eggsy kernel: [ 4764.140080] wl_run_escan: LEGACY_SCAN sync ID: 44, bssidx: 0
Jan 1 19:34:01 eggsy kernel: [ 4884.139105] wl_run_escan: LEGACY_SCAN sync ID: 45, bssidx: 0
Jan 1 19:36:01 eggsy kernel: [ 5004.138227] wl_run_escan: LEGACY_SCAN sync ID: 46, bssidx: 0
Jan 1 19:38:01 eggsy kernel: [ 5124.141598] wl_run_escan: LEGACY_SCAN sync ID: 47, bssidx: 0
^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^@^$
Jan 1 19:39:57 eggsy kernel: [ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuset
Jan 1 19:39:57 eggsy kernel: [ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpu
Jan 1 19:39:57 eggsy kernel: [ 0.000000] Initializing cgroup subsys cpuacct
Jan 1 19:39:57 eggsy kernel: [ 0.000000] Linux version 4.4.190 (adam@adam-vb) (gcc version 7.1.1 20170707 (Linaro GCC 7.1-201$
Jan 1 19:39:57 eggsy kernel: [ 0.000000] Boot CPU: AArch64 Processor [410fd034]
Jan 1 19:39:57 eggsy kernel: [ 0.000000] earlycon: Early serial console at MMIO32 0xff1a0000 (options '')
Jan 1 19:39:57 eggsy kernel: [ 0.000000] bootconsole [uart0] enabled
The crash happens after 'endless' mention of ' wl_run_escan'. I am not sure what this means but perhaps somebody else can use this information. I did do a quick search relating to 'wl_run_escan' and found that there is a related heap overflow vulnerability. It is documented here: https://packetstormsecurity.com/files/14...rflow.html
<<UPDATE>> It looks like the vulnarability may have been fixed:
https://review.lineageos.org/c/LineageOS.../+/184549/.
I don't know if this made it into the Debian/Mate build though. I am afraid I am starting to run out of skill at this point.
I have not had a chance to further investigate this so this may take me on a wild goose chase. I thought I'd share rather than sit on this so that other can maybe confirm this behaviour.
I will continue to monitor the logs and temps.
(01-01-2020, 02:08 PM)Twix166 Wrote: I have also been seeing frequent crashes in the past day.
Welcome to the club.
Quote:# Linux version 4.4.190
First thing, update the kernel via /usr/bin/mrfixit_update.sh and reboot. That has not helped me, though.
If you don't care for the OS, then try Manjaro. It has a funky new 5.4 kernel. I run it off an SD card 24/7 for 4 or 5 weeks. No single crash. Wifi was stable. A few days, I rebooted into the latest update and got mild wifi issues back. The joy of rolling releases.
Eventually, we'll get NetBSD https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?tid=8659.
Also open the case, pull and push here and there to make sure everything sits tight.
Quote:First thing, update the kernel via /usr/bin/mrfixit_update.sh and reboot. That has not helped me, though.
Thank you, I have done this now. 'wl_run_escan' doesn't appear to be happening any longer. I will have to see if the kernel crashes continue. It is too early to say.
Quote:If you don't care for the OS, then try Manjaro. It has a funky new 5.4 kernel. I run it off an SD card 24/7 for 4 or 5 weeks. No single crash. Wifi was stable. A few days, I rebooted into the latest update and got mild wifi issues back. The joy of rolling releases.
I will get onto Manjaro at some point but I would like to push the stock image for a bit to see if I can get it stable. I am not picky about my distros but I am not switching on day four yet. 
Quote:Also open the case, pull and push here and there to make sure everything sits tight.
Haven' t gotten around to doing this yet. I'll have to find some spare time to sit down and try this. Let's see if the crashes continue.
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