Linux Kernel 4.9 and a (not so) happy Jornada 720

Thanks for the detailed path info, hpcboy!

Will try this and report back how it goes...

Using the new Ambicom WL54-CF card....Power light is green.

Ran script (see earlier post by 'dev_null' :

 
$ su -  

# /home/user/scripts/unencrywifi.sh 

Get error message:

 

Cannot find device "wifi0" 

Error for wireless request "Set ESSID" (8B1A) : 

       SET failed on device wifi0 ; No such device. 

Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.3.5 

 

Cannot find device "wlan0" 

Failed to get interface index: No such device 

 

exiting. 

btw, after installing modules, I logged out and back in.....

Just did:

 

# lsmod 

Module                  Size               Used   By 

 

As you can see, no modules listed!

Any suggestions?



Edited by ArchiMark 2020-11-03 10:07 PM

What does modprobe MODULE_NAME give? How about adding the -f option?

I don’t want to hijack the ongoing troubleshooting section, but I must say here that I’m very happy with the stuff Stefan put together for us to run a more updated OS on the Jornada. I finally managed to find a compatible WiFi prism card on eBay (I got a Linksys WPC11 v3). This is a PCMCIA card, so no need for a CF adapter. Stefan instructions worked great to have it running on WPA. For some reason I was not able to update the card firmware using prism2_srec. It failed saying something about the driver not being compiled with a certain flashing parameter. Since I didn’t compile the driver (it came with the kernel), my next attempt was to load the firmware on the card’s RAM instead of reflashing. That turned out to be working great! The only downside is that I need to send the firmware again every time the card is inserted, as RAM is erased on a power cycle. No worries, I wrote a script that takes care of that for me. Next step was setup wpa supplicant as per Stefan’s instructions. Once I ran that, my Jornada connected to my WPA home network automagically! This is the first time that this ancient 20 year old device connected to a WPA network during its existence! Thanks to Linux and Stefan’s hard work. This means no more guest network setup around the house for the Jornada. Also, I noticed a HUGE speed improvement using this card on WPA, either due to the main network being better than guest network, or actually the card having a better antena, or both. As a test, I logged in to my home Linux server from the Jornada with -X forwarding over ssh. Previously this was a painful task that took several minutes to open any window. With this new card, things opened almost instantly. I was able to open Firefox on the ssh session and browse in full screen! Very nice indeed.


Edited by ntware 2020-11-04 4:03 AM






Attachments
----------------
354C94EF-8B8D-4A2B-BAA3-C04C0776066A.jpeg (260KB - 88 downloads)

Wow!

Congrats!

Looks great and makes me think there's hope on the horizon....

Hope I can get my card working soon....

Another thing I am very curious of is power management. How does power consumption compare between CE and Debian?

Also any update on updating the keymapping? There are several symbols essential to operate linux.


Edited by hpcboy 2020-11-04 4:38 AM

Hi Mark! Try to load it manually with this command:

modprobe libertas

@hpcboy
There is currently no update on the keymap. Power consumption is quite low if you shut down the monitor and pcmcia slot if you dont use it, but no comparison to the real sleep mode in WinCE ...


Regards
Stefan

Hi Stefan, hpcboy,

Did as you suggested....

 
# tar -C /lib/modules/3.16.81/kernel/drivers -xvf modules31681.tar 

Then after it finished, I logged out and back in.

Then did

 

# modprobe libertas 

modprobe: FATAL: module libertas not found in directory /lib/modules/3.16.81 

Looks like system looks for libertas in directory /lib/modules/3.16.81, right?

So, did

 

# tar -C /lib/modules/3.16.81 -xvf modules31681.tar 

*** I see when it's extracting files, it shows:

 

modules/3.16.81/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/libertas/libertas.ko 

Then after it finished, I logged out and back in.

Then did

 

# modprobe libertas 

modprobe: FATAL: module libertas not found in directory /lib/modules/3.16.81 

Any suggestions???

Thanks!

Hi guys, I just wanted to add a few more information on my setup to help whoever is trying to do the same thing. I created 3 quick scripts to setup my WiFi card in WPA (by the way, I'm writing this message on my Jornada connected on my home WPA network).

The first script setup the card updating its firmware to version 1.8.0. The nice thing about this process is that the update goes only to the card's RAM, so if something goes wrong, you can remove the card and insert it again, and the original firmware in flash will be loaded.

setup_card.sh:

 
#!/bin/bash 

prism2_srec -r wlan0 rf010800.hex 

obs: I have the rf010800.hex file on the same folder where the script runs. Make sure you got the correct firmware for your card. You can download Prism firmware at Stefan's website

wpa_start.sh:

 

#!/bin/bash 

#edit /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf to setup WiFi config 

wpa_supplicant -i wlan0 -D wext -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -B 

obs: You ned to write your WiFi information on wpa_supplicant.conf file for it to work. Here are the contents of my wpa_supplicant file:

 

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant 

ctrl_interface_group=root 

 

eapol_version=1 

 

ap_scan=1 

network={ 

        ssid="my_network_SSID" 

        scan_ssid=1 

        proto=WPA 

        key_mgmt=WPA-PSK 

        pairwise=TKIP 

        group=TKIP 

        psk="my_network_password" 

} 

And finally, here is the single liner that starts dhcp daemon so that your device can receive an IP on the network:

dhclient wlan0

Edited by ntware 2020-11-04 5:46 PM

UPDATE

Rebooted and tried....

 
# depmod 

# modprobe libertas 

libertas: Unknown symbol cfg80211_scan_done (err 0) 

libertas: Unknown symbol regulatory_hint  

libertas: Unknown symbol cfg80211_disconnected 

libertas: Unknown symbol wiphy_register  

libertas: Unknown symbol wiphy_new 

libertas: Unknown symbol cfg80211_put_bss 

libertas: Unknown symbol cfg80211_inform_bss_width 

libertas: Unknown symbol ieee80211I_bss_get_ie 

libertas: Unknown symbol cfg80211_ibss_joined 

libertas: Unknown symbol cfg80211_michael_mic_failure 

libertas: Unknown symbol cfg80211_connect_result 

libertas: Unknown symbol wiphy_unregister 

libertas: Unknown symbol cfg80211_get_bss 

libertas: Unknown symbol __ieee80211_get_channel 

libertas: Unknown symbol ieee80211_channel_to_frequency 

libertas: Unknown symbol wiphy_free 

libertas: Unknown symbol ieee80211_get_num_supported_channels 

modprobe: ERROR: could not insert 'libertas': Unknown symbol in module, or unknown parameter (see dmesg) 

When I look at end of dmesg, I see the above text.

????

Stefan was nice with his words. Honestly, power management on Linux is and always will be terrible. Every time I'm done using it I rather shutdown the OS than suspend. It will eat up your battery in less than 24h if you just "suspend". The main issue with it is that StrongARM cpu has a specific jump point in ROM for when it wakes up, so we can't ever send the whole system to deep sleep in Linux, otherwise when it wakes up it will try to jump to WinCE in ROM and not to Linux on the CF. Therefore, the only "sleep" that we have in Linux is to turn off the display and PCMCIA slot. The CPU keeps running at full speed. There is no way to change that as it is built in the silicon.

The only way to work around it would be if we could replace the Jornada's ROM board with a custom flash board that has Linux burned in it. Then, instead of booting Linux from the CF, it would boot Linux straight from the flash board (just like WinCE) when you turn on the machine. This would make it possible to put the CPU in deep sleep, and when it comes back alive, it would jump to its location in ROM (flash board) as usual, and Linux would be happily waiting in there for it.

Edited by ntware 2020-11-04 5:58 PM

Hello!
Mark, I think I found a solution: we need the Generic IEEE 802.11 Networking Stack enabled to get the libertas driver working. I uploaded a new kernel image: http://www.sp-net.at/nextcloud/s/5qBbkaXaZtiypbP?path=%2Fkernel3.16...

Please test it!

I hope the card arrives fast so that i can debug/test it ...


Regards
Stefan

Maybe we should split the topics and make different threads. I think all together here is a bit confusing.

I think about something like:

- One thread for general informations about the kernel and Devuan/Debian
- One for questions about the kernel
- One for questions about Devuan/Debian
- One for How-to's
- ?


Regards
Stefan

Hi Stefan,

Thanks for your help!

On the page you link to, there's 2 files, modules and zImage.

Do I need to use both files or ?

Thanks.

Installed new zImage....

Then booted Devuan....

Then extracted modules into /lib/modules/3.16.81 since that is where error messages say it can't find the modules in.

Then did modprobe libertas, but nothing shown after that.

Then tried extracting modules into /lib/modules/3.16.81/kernel/drivers

Then did modprobe libertas, but nothing shown after that.


????