Wireless firmware testers wanted

[macmpi]

There are still outstanding issues, but now we are on the main branch, these should be easier to track, fix and maintain.

Thanks for sharing details.
Once finally qualified, shall we expect it will be released under Foundation's repo within firmware-brcm80211 package as in here?
Thanks for confirmation.

[jamesh]

It'll just be released in the usual way - not sure where it ends up, all the items in the repo linked are quite old so might not be that one.

Anyway rpi-update will eventually get it and its will be included in the distro's

[macmpi]

It'll just be released in the usual way - not sure where it ends up

It seems like Foundation's firmware-brcm80211 package was where it usually ended-up so far...
Would definitely be helpful to get confirmation which specific package will be current, so that custom disto maintainers can plan & adjust accordingly (sometimes firmware packages contents are hard to track across repos...).

Thanks.

[jamesh]

It'll just be released in the usual way - not sure where it ends up

It seems like Foundation's firmware-brcm80211 package was where it usually ended-up so far...
Would definitely be helpful to get confirmation which specific package will be current, so that custom disto maintainers can plan & adjust accordingly (sometimes firmware packages contents are hard to track across repos...).

Thanks.

Jut spoken with the distro guys, that repo you linked is deprecated and is going to be removed (it's out of date, and no longer needed). The firmware will go in the apt repo, I suspect there will be a specific URL that points to it.

[macmpi]

Linked github was just for illustration purpose actually: noted it is not anymore a reference.

Nonetheless, is Foundation's firmware-brcm80211 apt package confirmed to be the one then, or will it be discarded too?

[ShiftPlusOne]

Correct, it will be in the firmware-brcm80211 apt package.

[pcmanbob]

jamesh

Don't know if you still want feed back on this,but posting it just in case.

As I said not had any problems with my zero w wifi but tested new firmware anyway, for 20 hours zero was sat idle to test if it remind connected to the router like it always had before and I am please to say there was no change connection is still stable .

Then set it to send an email every 20 min containing 968KB of data and that had been running for the past 20 hours without a problem, just as it has in the past.

So the only thing I can say is that I didn't have any problems before and I don't have any problems with the new firmware either.

[jamesh]

Thanks for all those testing. Please keep going, this sort of change does require some pretty extensive testing, so anyone who can help is most welcome.

[epoch1970]

I have an AP running on Pi 3 next to me, it is usually pretty idle.
In appreciation for your call for testing I have updated the driver and will use wifi on my desktop for a while.
I don't anticipate issues since I had none in the first place. I will post in case something breaks down.
Thanks for the opportunity!

Code: Select all

uname -a
Linux berck 4.9.63-v7+ #1052 SMP Sat Nov 18 21:50:59 GMT 2017 armv7l GNU/Linux

# lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID:	Raspbian
Description:	Raspbian GNU/Linux 8.0 (jessie)
Release:	8.0
Codename:	jessie

(I had to rpi-update at a time, the non-stock kernel version is not really intentional)

EDIT. I was connected for 4 h 20 mn to the AP and stopped once I had reached TX bytes counter rollover on the wifi interface. Payload was mostly video streams. Nothing to report, everything works fine.

[allfox]

Did the Pulse audio issue also happen with the previous firmware version? Also, dropping packets does not necessarily result in lower throughput, so would be interesting to see figures.

A reboot fixed PulseAudio. So nothing to do with the firmware.

And I tried the old firmware again, it works either. No freeze as AP. I guess a lot of things happened during this half year.
I observed the freeze with a Amazon Kindle Fire tablet, it also get upgraded during this half year.

[Beachdog]

I've put this firmware on a Pi3 that DOES have a WIFI dropout problem.
I run it 24/7 and the WIFI disconnects randomly, sometimes many times a day, and other times it will go 3 or 4 days before failing. My PI is used as a remote monitor for many things and my access to it is VNC over WIFI, so failing WIFI is a pain.
I've temporarily got by with code that pings my router every 10 mins and then resets the WIFI and logs the failure if it dies. This also gives me a better idea of how often the failure occurs, but I'll need to run for at least 5 days to be sure of success.

[asavah]

@jamesh

Would it be too much to ask for a separate github repo like https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware but with wireless/bt firmwares?
I think it would help a lot other distros and individuals which don't follow the forums on everyday basis and don't use raspbian to track changes of pi specific wireless firmware.
And you could have "next" branch to easily distribute testing firmware.
Edit: google drive approach IMO sucks, cause we can't download it directly on a headless pi with wget, the need to download it with browser and then copy to the pi is quite awkward.

[jamesh]

I'll have a chat with the guys in the office see if there's anything better we can do.

[acidsun]

This firmware makes my Rpi audio-streamer stable.

Thank you, good job.

[ShiftPlusOne]

The firmware has been added to the apt repo and can also be found here: https://github.com/RPi-Distro/firmware- ... 0-sdio.bin

[Beachdog]

I've been running the new firmware for about 11 days now but sadly it has NOT fixed my WIFI dropouts.
There doesn't seem to be any pattern, but on average it still fails about once a day.
I'm sure I've copied the new firmware to the right place, and nothing else seem to have been adversely affected.

[jamesh]

I've been running the new firmware for about 11 days now but sadly it has NOT fixed my WIFI dropouts.
There doesn't seem to be any pattern, but on average it still fails about once a day.
I'm sure I've copied the new firmware to the right place, and nothing else seem to have been adversely affected.

Hmm, perhaps another corner case that is still present. Any errors in the logs?

You can now use

Code: Select all

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

to get the firmware as it has now been officially released. This will update other stuff too.

[bensimmo]

Seems like the other WiFi firmwares Atheros, Realtek etc also have an update as they all came down too.

[ShiftPlusOne]

Seems like the other WiFi firmwares Atheros, Realtek etc also have an update as they all came down too.

No, that's just the result of how debian packaging works. There's a source package which produced a number of binary (.deb) packages, which all inherit the same version number. So any change in the source package will result in all of the binary packages being updated, even if they're otherwise identical to the previous version.

[Beachdog]

Hmm, perhaps another corner case that is still present. Any errors in the logs?

Couldn't find anything of interest in the logs, so I've done an apt-get update etc and will see if that improves things.

[MrEngman]

Noticed several posts about issues with Pi 0 W and the built in Broadcom wifi after updating the firmware.

Did some testing and found after installing the new firmware my Pi 0 W would not connect to my network.

See post here viewtopic.php?f=63&t=204882&p=1271170#p1271170

For some reason after installing the new firmware the built in wifi would not connect unless I disabled IPV6 or with IPV6 enabled I connected another wifi adapter to the USB port and then both the built in wifi and USB wifi would connect to my network OK which seems really rather strange.

Rather weird.

[carriba]

Interesting. It would be the firmware-brcm80211 package.
Maybe leave a comment here:
viewtopic.php?t=203508

I've done some further troubleshooting on the issues encountered with this latest firmware laballed as "firmware-brcm80211 (1:20161130-3+rpt1)" that you can read under viewtopic.php?f=63&t=204882&p=1277124#p1277124.

The RPi 0 W device is hooked up in an IPv4 network, and disabling IPv6 settings on the RPi 0 W device did not help further as described in a post under viewtopic.php?f=63&t=204882&start=25#p1271196.

[ensdev]

I too have a similar problem.

We have an issue where if a new Pi3 is connected to our WiFi but we turn the WiFi off for a period of time, the Pi freezes around the time that the WiFi is switched on again. We need our Pi's to reconnect after being disconnected as they send critical data periodically.

Is this a similar issue to that which others are having.
Is this a very new issue - is it firmware or OS related. This happens whether we are running our software or not.
Guidance please.
Is taking part in your testing process likely to help us solve this - we have just bought 120 no. Pi Zero W !!!!!!!!!
We have only tested this on Pi 3s - we have used 'wpa_supplicant.conf' to force the Pis to connect to a known network on boot.

[RobertLoblaw89213783]

See my post here:

viewtopic.php?f=63&t=204882&start=75#p1277585

The latest firmware causes kernel panics for a non broadcasted SSID.

[tthosta]

The same to me after Raspberry Pi Zero W update from 2018-02-07:

A few seconds after switching on WLAN router (router is switched off, if not used) the Raspberry Pi Zero W crashed.
At the same time, a connected monitor starts to flicker. The WLAN SSID is not hidden.

After some investigation I did these steps:
- full revovery
- saved /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43430-sdio.bin (version from Aug 9 2017)
- sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get upgrade
- restored /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac43430-sdio.bin (replaced version from Feb 7 2018 with version from Aug 9 2017)
- reboot

After this, everything worked fine. So I guess the new brcmfmac43430-sdio.bin cause the issue.

My /etc/os-release:
PRETTY_NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux 9 (stretch)"
NAME="Raspbian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="9"
VERSION="9 (stretch)"
ID=raspbian
ID_LIKE=debian
HOME_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/"
SUPPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianForums"
BUG_REPORT_URL="http://www.raspbian.org/RaspbianBugs"

My /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf:
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=DE
network={
ssid="XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX"
psk="XXXXXXXXX"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}