victroniko

Quick update on ESP8089: with this module, it works every time 
 
Didn't do any speed tests as I'm somewhat far from the router (the box lost connection randomly, but my laptop does that too). General web browsing and system upgrades were on par with ethernet. Need to do final tests but I feel we're 95% there... a BIG thank you @jock!!

@victroniko
 
Ty for all tests, combinations, ideas you are experimenting/experiencing.
 
People such as you and other great persons ( and this post is full of clever minds) are ALWAYS welcome.
 
Cheers

@victroniko
I see promising results, very well!
 
"queuing unknown CIS tuple" are not really errors, you can safely ignore them.
For what I know, p2p0 and wlan0 interfaces appears with most of these android-derived wifi drivers.
I have some boards with ssv6051 wifi chip and I have to connect using p2p0 interface because wlan0 always crashes kernel, don't know really why, I never spent time into.
 
About the autoloading of the esp8089 module at startup, you can create a file in /etc/modprobe.d/esp8089.conf and put this content into:
options esp8089 crystal_26M_en=2 so when the module is autoloaded, it is also given the appropriate module parameter.
 
As another hint, to test the firmwares and things avoid the Network Manager. It is slow and has latency, and does not always reacts immediately. Use the command line tools to scan the networks, for example (always use sudo, or do it as superadmin, otherwise you get cached data):
sudo iwlist wlan0 scan You may also scan the p2p0 interface and see what changes. Usually you won't get more than 10-12 access points in the list.
 
I could not find any evidence in the source code that the files should be placed in esp8089 subdirectory, so I'm not totally convinced about the firmware placement in /lib/firmware/esp8089. Double check that this is really what the kernel module wants: loading the kernel module and doing a successful scan should be enough. Every kernel module developer decides where the files are put, some wants their own subdirectory, some others don't. dmesg should tell you if the firmware was in the right position or not, always read its output very carefully!
 
Once you get sane and predictable results with iwlist, you may proceed to use the Network Manager to connect to a network. From the command line you can also use the handy nmtui tool
 
Always reboot between tests, even though I read that rmmod (prefer modprobe -r to unload a module, anyway) crashes the kernel and freezes the system, so there is no other chance
 
Good luck!
 

Last night I wiped NAND and installed Focal minimal-legacy image, also without a hitch . But armbian-config does not come by default. No biggie, just install manually and problem solved... Then I wanted to install a minimal desktop via armbian-config, and realized the option is not even there: It only offers to install full XFCE desktop+extras.
 
So what I did was to install LXDE by hand (plus few goodies: lxtask, pasystray, network-manager-gnome etc). Overall the system feels faster, and with @jock's media script/bundle  & @nokirunner 's tip about glamor, it's almost silky-smooth now. The only hitch was that lightdm refused to start at all, so I just installed lxdm, enabled autologin in the config and called it a day.
 
But that's just regular Armbian stuff... I'm at work now, when I return home i'll try my luck again with ESP8089.
 
 
 
Yep saw it, added to my arsenal of RK tools  thank you!
 
 
Okay, will do that.
 
 
Noted, thank you. I was vaguely suspecting NM's behaviour was strange, and also completely forgot about nmtui & iwlist. Spoiled by the GUI haha... I'll do this later too.
 
 
 
I was also confused, but it just worked  need to test again on this fresh install though. Also the esp8089.ko driver you compiled for me doesn't print anything to the kernel log at all. So it's difficult to debug if it loaded correctly, or complains about firmware error/mismatch/etc...
 
Thanks again!