No wifi on Inovato Quadra

[n8henrie]

Hello -- bringing in conversation from https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/5726#issuecomment-1817668480 as requested.

 

@viraniac -- I've attached the  dmesg output from a fresh flash of the quadra SD image -- which is just armbian checked out at `90c05ba` with this patch applied: https://www.inovato.net/build/quadra.patch . Build instructions from the founder are at https://forum.inovato.com/post/building-armbian-from-source-12449428?pid=1333459893

 

Curiously the dmesg output almost looks truncated to me -- doesn't start with `Booting Linux on physical`, and I see a few xradio message but no results for 819. I've rebooted and get similar output with `journalctl -b -k`, so I guess this is the full output? Let me know if further info would be helpful, and thank you again for your time and attention.

quadra-working-wifi.txt

 

EDIT: The inovato founder says they are not intentionally limiting the dmesg output: https://forum.inovato.com/post/dmesg-output-truncated-missing-beginning-12780349?pid=1336369022

Edited November 21, 2023 by n8henrie

[SteeMan]

This really should be directed to the Inovato forums.  Per the Inovato forum post on building (https://forum.inovato.com/post/building-armbian-from-source-12449428):

 

"IMPORTANT NOTE: If you have any questions or problems with this process, by all means use the Armbian Forums to search for information, but please DO NOT ask questions if you can't find your answer.  They don't support the Quadra firmware: We do. So please use the Support category on this forum."

[Gunjan Gupta]

@n8henrieWhat was the kernel used in inovato image? If I remember it correctly, they also have a 5.15 and 6.1 version. Can you check their 6.1 version? See if the wifi works there or do you get same error there as well

 

BTW, I have asked the @Tenkawa to test xradio again on inovato quadra. I personally don't have the box. I live in India and can't get the same so all of the testing was done by Tenkawa. He does say that he get better performance on edge kernel. So try creating an image from edge branch as well and give it a try. That image will have 6.6 kernel

[Gunjan Gupta]

@SteeManThere is some background context of why he posted here. He is having problem with inovato quadra support in our build framework that I added a couple of months back. I asked him to check once on inovato's official image as I wanted to make sure that the onboard wifi is xradio one as I read somewhere that some Tanix TX6 boxes have different onboard wifi. As Quadra is said to be a rebranded TX6, I wanted to confirm the same. Sorry for causing the confusion

[n8henrie]

Thanks to all for thoughts and replies! I have several threads going at the Inovato forum as well, I was mostly optimistic about getting a pure-Armbian build with working WiFi. The Inovato founder reports that he was unable to get WiFi working on pure Armbian (https://forum.inovato.com/post/is-support-now-in-mainline-armbian-12778776?pid=1336353539), which contrasts with the comments in this Armbian PR that makes it seem like WiFi was working. I did not have working WiFi when building Armbian checked out to the commit in the PR, so I was reaching out to see if there were any further details.

 

@SteeMan yes, I don't mean to intrude -- I was asked to move conversation either to Discord or here so as to not clutter the PR at GitHub, and I chose here as I'm more facile with forums than Discord. Hope that's okay!

 

@Gunjan Gupta All of my builds have been on 6.1 (as I was curious about a build with ZFS support eventually). Specifically 6.1.45 in the case of armbian with Inovato's patches (90c05bac23ceabb54f897342ce20d38e21bc8e1f  with https://www.inovato.net/build/quadra.patch) and 6.1.62 in the case of Armbian main (inovato-quadra, minimal, console-only, no other options modified that I can recall). I will try with edge! I'm away from the device for the next week but will reply back soon.

 

Thank you both, I greatly appreciate your time!

Edited November 22, 2023 by n8henrie
clarification

[Gunjan Gupta]

Its weird that xradio is working for orangepi zero but is not working for Quadra. Waiting for @Tenkawa, to test and comeback on the same.

[SteeMan]

15 hours ago, n8henrie said:

I was mostly optimistic about getting a pure-Armbian build with working WiFi.

My point as a moderator was to make sure proper expectations are in place.  Within the Armbian framework this board is status "Community Support" which means it is not supported by Armbian, but Armbian provides framework and hosting resources for the board.  The code is maintained by 'community' members, but that doesn't mean there is anyone currently maintaining this board.  In fact the board is currently listed as not having an active maintainer, so no one has stepped up and is willing to commit to helping maintain this board within the community.

 

I realize that others in this thread are working to help resolve this wifi issue, but that doesn't change the fact that there should be no expectation of support for this board from Armbian developers.  Which was why I wanted to make sure you were engaged with Inovato support as they currently are the proper and only place to get support for this board.

[n8henrie]

3 hours ago, Gunjan Gupta said:

Its weird that xradio is working for orangepi zero but is not working for Quadra.

Agreed! I'll get back about the edge build when I can.

 

@SteeMan I help maintain several small projects and understand completely. I'm a guest here and intend to follow the rules, make no demands, and be thankful for any suggestions!

[n8henrie]

WiFi is working with the edge kernel!

[Gunjan Gupta]

Nice to hear edge worked for you. Apart from the fifteenhex repository used by Inovato, I have also found another Xradio XR819 driver which looks kind of cleaner but also need some work as its tightly coupled to some sunxi bsp drivers. I am going to try bringing that up as well. But it will take some time as there are other boards to support and there is not a lot of interest around xradio anymore. 

[hexdump]

@Gunjan Gupta - there was some effort to adjust an existing mainline driver to support xr819 as well two years ago or so - it started about here: https://oftc.irclog.whitequark.org/linux-sunxi/2021-06-22#30028495 and then moved on over the next days etc. - seaching for cw1200 seems to bring up more - maybe it might be more useful to look into this direction instead of bsp sources ... maybe it is interesting/helpful to read through that a bit

 

update: this seems to be some tree with the changes discussed on irc back then: https://github.com/jernejsk/linux-1/commits/h616-test

 

best wishes - hexdump

Edited November 27, 2023 by hexdump