January 11, 20251 yr Hi all, I'm building a rpi5b image with some success. My build machine is a x86_64 GNU/Linux with a 1gb ssd and 32gb of ram . The image builds and boots fine but there is no wlan0 device available in the booted image. I can get it by installing the armbian-firmware-full package and rebooting apt install -y armbian-firmware-full reboot I thought I could include the install in the customize-image.sh script but I get an error E: Unable to locate package armbian-firmware-full ( line 515 in the log ) - any ideas guys Edited January 11, 20251 yr by pkfox more detail added
January 11, 20251 yr Confirmed. Well that's odd. Maybe bad luck to both of us having a bad mirror when attempting? Anyway have you checked if the armbian-firmware-full packages actually contains the necessary blobs you are looking for? Check github.com/armbian/firmware
January 11, 20251 yr Well rpi is partially proprietary and especially the boot process is handled completely different that other boards. However I found a workaround. No clue it if works, I don't have this board and probably never get one unless its a gift lol Main() { apt-get update apt-get -y install wget cd /root wget http://mirrors.dotsrc.org/armbian-apt/pool/main/a/armbian-firmware-full/armbian-firmware-full_24.11.2_all__1-SA8dbb-SM633e-B6c7f-R448a.deb dpkg -i *.deb } # Main Main "$@"
January 11, 20251 yr Author Anyway have you checked if the armbian-firmware-full packages actually contains the necessary blobs you are looking for? No, I don't know what blobs I need, all I know is, wlan0 appears after I install armbian-firmware-full and reboot - is it because my build machine isn't running armbian that the armbian mirrors are not found - could I add them to my /etc/apt/sources.list ? getting desperate now 😀
January 11, 20251 yr 19 minutes ago, pkfox said: is it because my build machine isn't running armbian that the armbian mirrors are not found No. You can build Armbian on any Linux machine if Docker is available. Check my workaround above. It just pulls the package from a random mirror (dotsrc in this case) and installs it via dpkg. 20 minutes ago, pkfox said: No, I don't know what blobs I need, all I know is, wlan0 appears after I install armbian-firmware-full and reboot Might be interesting to know which are necessary so they might get moved into standard firmware package to make this work oob.
January 11, 20251 yr Author Your suggestion of wget and install worked perfectly so thanks @Werner now I'll have to ascertain which blob is doing the business - any idea as to how I can do that ? thanks again
January 11, 20251 yr That's a good question. I would probably try things like comparing dmesg output after boot from the board with and without and check for differences. If you're lucky the name is right there. If so I'd try to extract the blob and place it manually where it would be if the firmware package would be installed and see if it works.
January 11, 20251 yr Author That's probably what I'll do - I'm fairly sure it's broadcom related - I have another pi 5 with raspbian installed (which has wlan0 present by default) so I can probably glean some info there - wish me luck
January 11, 20251 yr Does this resolve it? sudo git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/pyavitz/firmware.git /lib/firmware/updates/brcm If so we should be able to resolve this for future builds.
January 11, 20251 yr 4 minutes ago, pkfox said: I'll give it a try - are these the broadcom blobs ? yes
January 11, 20251 yr Author Good stuff thanks - why put them in /lib/firmware/updates ? I'm not doubting you just tring to make sense of all this 😀
January 11, 20251 yr The kernel checks a few places for firmware blobs. https://docs.kernel.org/driver-api/firmware/fw_search_path.html You can also set a firmware path in cmdline. This usually isn't needed though. firmware_class.path=/lib/firmware/updates/brcm The kernel checks /lib/firmware/updates before /lib/firmware, allowing us to be able to test new firmware without removing the old.
January 11, 20251 yr Author Ah that's good to know thanks very much for your help - are you a kernel developer ?
January 11, 20251 yr 4 minutes ago, pkfox said: Ah that's good to know thanks very much for your help - are you a kernel developer ? I just maintain a few boards here and help out where I can.
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