I am experiencing an issue where the Intel BE200 Wi-Fi module stops working on the NanoPi R5C after upgrading to the latest Armbian v26.2.1 with newer kernels. The iwlwifi driver fails to initialize the device due to a missing configuration profile.

 

Environment:

Board: NanoPi R5C OS
Version: Armbian v26.2.1
Wi-Fi Module: Intel BE200
Failing Kernels: v6.19.0-edge-rockchip64, v6.18.10-current-rockchip64
Working Kernel: 6.12.58-current-rockchip64

Actual Behavior & Logs:

When booting with v6.18.10-current-rockchip64 or v6.19.0-edge-rockchip64, the Wi-Fi interface does not show up. Checking dmesg reveals the following iwlwifi probe failure (error -22):

[ +0.001360] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: Detected crf-id 0x2001910, cnv-id 0x2001910 wfpm id 0x80000000
[ +0.000070] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: PCI dev 272b/00f4, rev=0x472, rfid=0x112200
[ +0.000012] No config found for PCI dev 272b/00f4, rev=0x472, rfid=0x112200
[ +0.026664] iwlwifi 0000:01:00.0: probe with driver iwlwifi failed with error -22

 

pi@nanopi-r5c:~$ ls /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0*
/lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-100.ucode      /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-96.ucode
/lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-100.ucode.zst  /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-96.ucode.zst
/lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-101.ucode      /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-97.ucode
/lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-101.ucode.zst  /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-97.ucode.zst
/lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-83.ucode       /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-98.ucode
/lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-83.ucode.zst   /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-98.ucode.zst
/lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-86.ucode       /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-c101.ucode
/lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-86.ucode.zst   /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-c101.ucode.zst
/lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-90.ucode       /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-c102.ucode
/lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-90.ucode.zst   /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-c102.ucode.zst
/lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-92.ucode       /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-c103.ucode
/lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-92.ucode.zst   /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0.pnvm
/lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-94.ucode       /lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0.pnvm.zst
/lib/firmware/iwlwifi-gl-c0-fm-c0-94.ucode.zst

 

Workaround:

Downgrading the kernel to 6.12.58-current-rockchip64 via armbian-config completely resolves the issue, and the BE200 module works as expected.

It seems there might be a regression or missing iwlwifi config definitions for the BE200 in the recent rockchip64 kernel builds. I would appreciate it if you could look into this. Thank you!

 

 

Since we do not add any Intel drivers this regression may come from upstream.

You could test nightly build which have kernel 7.0.

Also total random guess: Perhaps more recent kernels expect more recent firmware blobs, perhaps the ones on the board are outdated (or are expected to be on a different place)? No clue though through which package those are shipped though.

 

Seems like the files have been touched last around 7 month ago: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/iwlwifi/linux-firmware.git/tree/intel/iwlwifi

Thank you for your reply, Werner.

As I mentioned, all firmware versions from the very old ones to the latest are already installed.

 

Since then, after some trial and error, I have confirmed that it works by building the RELEASE as resolute.

The command I used for the build is as follows:

./compile.sh BOARD='nanopi-r5c' BRANCH=edge RELEASE=resolute DISABLE_IPV6=no EXTRAWIFI=yes BUILD_DESKTOP=no KERNEL_CONFIGURE=no BUILD_MINIMAL=no PREFER_DOCKER=no CONSOLE_AUTOLOGIN=no && pigz -9 -v output/images/*r5c*.img