Pinebook pro poor performance on 5Ghz WiFi

[Iolaum]

Hello,

I have been testing and enjoying my new Pinebook Pro. I 've noticed however that 5Ghz Wifi is performing poor. I have activated both 2.4 Ghz and 5Ghz wifi on my home router. Things I 've noticed:

• There are times when 5Ghz wifi is not working at all - as if there's no wifi signal available. Devices next to the pinebook, such as a smartphone, work fine with 5Ghz wifi so I know the signal is good but PBP can't interface with it.
  
• I 've tested wifi speeds when both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz are working in the Pinebook. The 2.4Ghz connection easily gets 4+Mbytes/sec while the 5Ghz oscillates between 500Kbytes/sec to 1.2Mbytes/sec.
  The network connection is 150Mbps.
  

Has anyone else experienced anything similar?

[Syonyk]

Have you tried building the updated wireless firmware? I have my 2.4 and 5GHz combined onto the same SSID so I'm not generally sure what I'm connected to...

https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm/p...6-firmware has the firmware, and the pkgbuild file has suggestions about where you stick the various files.

[Iolaum]

Have you tried building the updated wireless firmware?  I have my 2.4 and 5GHz combined onto the same SSID so I'm not generally sure what I'm connected to...

https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm/p...6-firmware has the firmware, and the pkgbuild file has suggestions about where you stick the various files.

I am afraid I am not experienced enough to build a package from it's speccfile. (I will search for it to see what I can find.)

However I think that given I am using the official Majaro KDE image this package should be available from the repositories.

Doing a check with:

Code:

$ pacman -Ss ap6256
community/ap6256-firmware 2020.02-1 [installed]
    Firmware files for the ap6256 wifi/bt module

I think I may have the latest version. At least it looks like that given the latest commit message in the linked repository.

[carlosqueso]

Have you tried building the updated wireless firmware?  I have my 2.4 and 5GHz combined onto the same SSID so I'm not generally sure what I'm connected to...

https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm/p...6-firmware has the firmware, and the pkgbuild file has suggestions about where you stick the various files.

I am afraid I am not experienced enough to build a package from it's speccfile. (I will search for it to see what I can find.)

However I think that given I am using the official Majaro KDE image this package should be available from the repositories.

Doing a check with:

Code:

$ pacman -Ss ap6256
community/ap6256-firmware 2020.02-1 [installed]
    Firmware files for the ap6256 wifi/bt module

I think I may have the latest version. At least it looks like that given the latest commit message in the linked repository.

You're using the latest, and it's buggy, so that's causing the problems.  You need the one linked in this post: https://forum.pine64.org/showthread.php?...9#pid67119

Then follow the instructions on downgrading from the Manjaro Wiki: https://wiki.manjaro.org/index.php?title...s_manually

That cleared it up for me.

[ashwinpatel]

Hello, I am unable to connect to my WiFi after the latest pacman update. I tried downgrading the wifi firmware, and restarted my PBP but the wifi still won't connect. Any help is appreciated.

Sent from my Pixel 2 XL using Tapatalk

[Syonyk]

The PKGBUILD file is just a few copy commands.

The pbp-tools utility scripts will check out the proper version and install it (https://github.com/xmixahlx/pbp-tools), but you could also try the following to get the (theoretically) non-buggy firmware:

Code:

cd /tmp
git clone https://gitlab.manjaro.org/manjaro-arm/packages/community/ap6256-firmware
cd ap6256-firmware
git checkout a30bf312b268eab42d38fab0cc3ed3177895ff5d
sudo mv -f /usr/lib/firmware/brcm /usr/lib/firmware/brcm-backup
sudo mkdir -p /usr/lib/firmware/brcm
sudo install -Dm644 "BCM4345C5.hcd" /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/
sudo install -Dm644 "nvram_ap6256.txt" /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43456-sdio.txt
sudo install -Dm644 "fw_bcm43456c5_ag.bin" /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43456-sdio.bin
sudo install -Dm644 "brcmfmac43456-sdio.clm_blob" /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43456-sdio.clm_blob
sudo ln -s /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43456-sdio.txt /usr/lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43456-sdio.pine64,pinebook-pro.txt

That should get you back on the working firmware, even if a package has fouled it up. Though reverting your distro package is probably the right answer.

[xmixahlx]

if you are on manjaro arm, i'd say use pacman for that, ya. otherwise, you can use the pbp-tools script to checkout any commit.

[nbxmike]

I believe took the advice and downgraded the driver.  I performed the following steps, stated here specifically rather than linking to vague steps so anyone who wants to help me knows exactly what I did:

Download:
Got the old package from:

Code:

http://ftp-nyc.osuosl.org/pub/manjaro-arm/repo/stable/community/aarch64/ap6256-firmware-2020.01-1-aarch64.pkg.tar.xz
http://ftp-nyc.osuosl.org/pub/manjaro-arm/repo/stable/community/aarch64/ap6256-firmware-2020.01-1-aarch64.pkg.tar.xz.sig

Downgrade:
Opened a bash shell and changed to the Download directory.
Typed the command to install the downloaded package:

Code:

sudo pacman -U ap6256-firmware-2020.01-1-aarch64.pkg.tar.xz

Lock:
To ensure the package doesn’t "upgrade" immediately back to the buggy version, I added it to the ignore list in the file /etc/pacman.conf.  Found the line ignore package line which now reads:

Code:

IgnorePkg =  ap6256-firmware

Restore:
When I should care to try a newer version of the WiFi firmware in the future, I understand I must either install it manually repeating the download and install, or, comment the IgnorePkg line again and let normal upgrades take their course.


Assuming the above is the process that is described / cross linked in preceding posts, I am working with the best know Broadcom driver and the performance may have improved but not significantly.  Are their any other recommendations I should be following; like perhaps an antenna upgrade?

Thanks

[mamboman777]

Thanks for the info. 5g back up and running, although, I had to change router stirrings as apparently the pinebook pro can't see an 80mhz wide channel only. Another question, how will we know when the new driver is big free and we should upgrade? (I completed the steps above)

[ezryder324r]

The Wifi has been so bad with initial new pbpro. Want to see if anyone out there has found a solution.