Intel BE200 Wi-Fi module fails to probe on NanoPi R5C with kernels 6.18.x / 6.19.x (Armbian v26.2.1)

[Coffee Roaster]

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!

 

 

[Werner]

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

[Coffee Roaster]

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