I can’t seem to get the TP-Link AC600 USB Wifi dongle to be recognized by Balana, despite it being on the list of “probably supported” devices here. Another forum post (here) suggested that support for that device was inadvertently dropped and will be re-added in 2.85.2. Is there anything I can do in the meantime on 2.83 or do I just have to wait? If I have to wait, any idea about how long?
Thanks!
Hey @cbrady I’m not on the Balena team, but I’m the author of the other posts you mentioned! Balena manages the linux driver configuration for all the different boards separately, so the changes you linked are only relevant for raspberry pi based boards and I wouldn’t expect the 2.85.2 release to resolve your issue.
Have you checked the dmesg log for your device? If the problem is similar (the firmware support has been dropped, you should see a message like this in the log?)
[ 128.621010] r8188eu 1-1.2:1.0: Direct firmware load for rtlwifi/rtl8188eufw.bin failed with error -2
[ 128.630369] r8188eu 1-1.2:1.0: Firmware rtlwifi/rtl8188eufw.bin not available
I’ve not seen any error messages using either dmesg or journalctl that look like they relate to this issue, which is frustrating. Since I neither saw error messages nor was the device listed in the output for nmcli I just assumed it was a related issue. I have had to deal recently with missing firmware for newer versions of the Intel NUC hardware (different device, not the one I’m having issues with) so I am familiar with what you’ve mentioned here.
There is a cluster of messages in the dmesg output that relate to wifi that looks like there might be an error of some sort, but I’m reasonably confident they refer to the onboard wifi which works fine.
One more maybe clue. If I unplug the AC600 from the USB port and switch to a new port, this is what comes back in dmesg. It looks like it’s being recognized as a USB device, but nothing’s happening beyond that. I have also tried rebooting after doing this with no effect.
Hi @cbrady, sorry for the delayed reply. Keenan is correct, drivers are all included on a per-device basis, so that particular WiFi dongle must not be included in the NUC image.
First, do you know the actual chipset of that particular adapter? As Keenan showed in his snippet, his used the rtl8188eu. Is yours in need of that same driver, do you know?
Second and perhaps not totally ideal, you can actually try flashing your NUC with the generic-x86_64 device type image, and see if it works out-of-the-box using that balenaOS instead. The NUC image is cut down and only includes the hardware that is internal to the NUC, for a smaller operating system. But, the “generic” image includes many more drivers, though at the expense of a larger overall OS. Perhaps give that a try, thanks!
Hello @cbrady did you have time to test what my colleague recommended?
Let us know if that helps to make your wifi dongle work.
Unfortunately the generic device type image wasn’t an off-the-shelf solution. We’re looking at other USB Wifi dongles that might work, or to add support through a custom kernel module GitHub - balena-os/kernel-module-build: Example project for building an OOT kernel module in balena.
Hi
Thanks for confirming. Let us know if you need any help
As a sidenote: the linux-firmware-rtl8188eu is available in intel NUC image 2.83. There is possibly an incompatibility with the chipset firmware version and perhaps troubleshooting further would be helpful - ie we could get the dongle to work and you don’t need to go down the custom kernel module route.
