Connect to wifi

I just also want to say that we are in the same boat. We needed to reinstall several of our balenaFins due to the wlan driver disappearing after an update. So yea, a workaround (packaged standalone driver) would be much appreciated at this point!

@bucknalla Do you have an update on this issue? If its going to take some time to get a corrected version of Raspbian out, can you point us in the right direction of the wireless drivers? This is turning into a real issue for us.

Thanks!!

@mad.dove and @Jgilbert,

The devices team have resolved this driver issue and published a deb package which should resolve your wifi issues for your existing devices. The raspbian image is currently being tested and once verified will be uploaded to the balena fin raspbian repo.

You can install the sd8887-mrvl package with dpkg -i sd8887-mrvl_0.0.4-1_all.deb

Let me know how you get on with this and thanks again for your patience!

@bucknalla Thanks! I downloaded the two files “sd8887-mrvl_0.0.4-1_all.deb” and “sd8887-mrvl_0.0.4-1_all.deb.asc”, and ran the dpkg command above. I received the error that its not a valid Debian package.

Can you double check that the package is correct?

Thanks

John

@Jgilbert I’ve tried it on my own machine and it appears to be fine and install correctly; could you please share the command you ran from your terminal?

Thanks!

I did this in the same directory as the files. I am pretty sure its user error, so any tips are appreciated.

Does it need to be run from a certain place?

Thanks

@Jgilbert that should be correct; could you please share the error message?

Thanks!

@bucknalla I’m sorry I can’t get a screenshot or direct quote here, but this is what I am seeing:

sudo dpkg -i sd8887-mrvl_0.0.4-1_all.deb dpkg-deb: error: 'sd8887-mrvl_0.0.4-1_all.deb ' is not a Debian format archive dpkg: error processing archive sd8887-mrvl_0.0.4-1_all.deb (--install): dpkg-deb --control subprocess returned error exit status 2 Errors were encountered while processing: sd8887-mrvl_0.0.4-1_all.deb

Thoughts?

John

@Jgilbert Could you please run this dpkg-deb --info sd8887-mrvl_0.0.4-1_all.deb and let me know what you get as the output?

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@bucknalla I ran the above command, and received the error stating that its not a Debian format archive.

I also changed to a different directory (still in home/Downloads), re-downloaded the two files (with Curl), and ran the original sudo dpkg commands. I received the same results.

I performed a “sudo apt-get update” and install, and reran the dpkg command, and received the same results.

Do I need to download any other files from https://bintray.com/balenaos/raspbian/sd8887-mrvl/0.0.4-1#files/pool%2Fmain%2Fs%2Fsd8887-mrvl to make this work?

If you’re going to have the Raspbian update out the door soon (this week), I can wait for it. Although, frankly, my inability to install a software package really bothers me.

John

@Jgilbert No worries, it’s puzzling me too - you could try downloading it with apt-get install sd8887-mrvl - I’ve been advised it should always be available there now too. Let me know if that works and which version of sd8887 it installs?

Thanks!

To add some more visibility to what is happening behind the scenes, we’ve got the patched Raspbian image in staging now and are testing the build. We’re aware that there are some further tweaks that are required - Problems flashing co-processor on balenaFin V1.1 (via. Raspbian) and are additionally working on these issues. We’re aiming to push the wlan fix on monday and will notify here when it’s up.

Again, thanks everyone for your patience whilst we fix this!

@bucknalla Running

sudo apt-get install sd8887-mrvl

results in

sd8887-mrvl is already the newest version (0.0.2-1)

I did

sudo apt-get remove --purge sd8887-mrvl

to remove the driver in order to reinstall.

Running

sudo apt-get install sd8887-mrvl

results in

Unable to locate package sd88887-mrvl

OK - no problem. I downloaded the files above, and suddenly, the dpkg command worked. Rebooted.

nmcli shows

wlan0: unavailable
“Marvell Wi-Fi”
wifi (wlan_sdio), (MAC Address), hw, mtu 1500

I have to step away, but next steps will be to turn on that interface.

More to follow…

John

@bucknalla OK - we are up and running.

I needed a couple of additional commands:

sudo systemctl start wpa_supplicant.service
nmcli device wifi connect (SSID) password (PSK)

Currently connected to both wired and wireless connections.

Please let us know when the Raspbian image is available.

Thanks!

John

@Jgilbert great news! Glad this is sorted now!

Yes; I’ll update when the new image is out :slight_smile:

Alex

Hi @Jgilbert,

The image for the WLAN fixes is available now - https://github.com/balena-os/pi-gen/releases/tag/v0.1.0.

Thanks for your patience on this!

@bucknalla Thanks! I have downloaded the image, and was able to update it without issues. For future reference, upgrading the OS loses the driver again.

Thank you again!

1 Like

Hello Everyone,

I have been following these details in an attempt to get a baked Yocto image with the fin running. Most of it works, except wlan.

I was wondering if there is (?) a detail explanation on the steps mentioned here:

Thanks for the great work!

Hi, we do not have any docs on how to integrate the proprietary WiFi driver, but I can point you to the corresponding recipes and patches we use:

Including the driver:

And those are the two patches that we include in our OS on top of the raspberrypi kernel:


Please check those and let us know if you have any questions regarding them.

Thanks,
Zahari

I appreciate the commentary and support in this thread and was able to get this fixed. However I skipped the “disable opensource wifi/bt driver” because I wasn’t sure how to do that.

Here are some more in depth steps to accomplish this.

My Situation

I have an image developed on RPI3/Raspbian that I’d like to flash on to the MMC and deploy on a BalenaFin v1.1.1. The BalenaFin flavored Raspbian is still on Debian Stretch and I need Python 3.7 among other systemd tweaks I’ve made to this image. I should note that my image started from a Raspbian Stretch image and then dist-upgraded to Buster.

Update the device tree stuff

On the boot partition change /config.txt to have

dt-overlay=balena-fin

Then copy the balena-fin.dtbo from their repository to /overlays/balena-fin.dtbo and overwrite the one that exists.

Notes

In the BalenaFin flavored Raspbian I noticed that it actually has /overlays/balena-fin-updated.dtbo and dt-overlay=balena-fin-updated in the /config.txt. I did not do this. Perhaps the -updated is because the Original Raspbian Stretch image seems to have shipped with a balena-fin.dtbo because there was already one there!

I did remove my other dt-overlays which activated a RTC and it does seem like this image boots and sets the right clock value. Nice! However it was hanging for 90 seconds on waiting for /dev/serial1 and wlan0 was not to be found once I hit the console.

Get the WiFi to work

Download the deb file from their debian repo

wget https://dl.bintray.com/balenaos/raspbian/pool/main/s/sd8887-mrvl/sd8887-mrvl_0.0.4-1_all.deb

Install needed dependencies

sudo apt-get install dkms bc raspberrypi-kernel-headers

Install proprietary wireless driver

sudo dpkg -i sd8887-mrvl_0.0.4-1_all.deb

…and it will recompile the modules against the wifi. I rebooted for good measure and wlan0 shows up!

Notes

I did not add the repository to sources.list because I know Buster is not officially supported and did not want to deal with that complexity at this time. This device is to be deployed in a remote location with no internet so updates do not need to be automatic or anything like that.

During boot, it does take about 10 more seconds waiting for /dev/serial1 before networking is established. Good enough for now.