On Sat, Mar 09, 2019 at 04:44:39PM -0500, Mark wrote:
>
> On my Dell laptop I only have a wireless NIC. It also is using the Atheros
> AR9485 Network Adapter.
>
> I have rebuilt the kernel with cfg8011, ath, ath9k_common, ath9k, mac80211
> as modules.
>
>
> Funny thing is if I boot using a Fedora 24 live thumb drive it is able to
> use the wireless network card with the same kernel modules.
>
> Not sure what Fedora did to get it to work. I have seen this NIC has been
> an issue on Debian and Ubuntu forums but no one has an answer except for
> rebuilding the drivers from the kernel backport.
>
> Trying to rebuild from backport is another problem especially with the
> current kernel. I will not go into the issues I have had with that.
>
> I think I will try Gentoo next.
>
Wifi drivers are a bit of a minefield. On the laptop I purchased a
few weeks ago I'm using ath10k, so not the same, but three comments -
1. I'm keeping the wifi, amdgpu, wired ethernet as modules (saves
building the firmware into the kernel). And yes, I realise many
recent laptops don't have wired ethernet, but looking for that was
one of my requirements before purchasing. In the end, the wired
ethernet works, but I seem to have to keep pushing the connector in,
it doesn't lock properly because there is a hinged panel and the
contacts are perhaps a millimetre or so too far away. Such is
progress : "Thes case is thin, what more do you want ?". Until this
machine I'd assumed firmware for wired ethernet was just "nice to
have", but on this one it doesn't work without the firmware.
2. The ath10k needs firmware, probably your 9k also does.
3. I had to install a bluetooth-related module as well as ath10k and
the things it pulled in. I think that also needed firmware. I'd
assumed I didn't need to enable the bt modules because I don't want
to connect to anything using bt, but I was wrong.
What I ended up doing was copy the host config (I used Manjaro
pre-release because Arch didn't boot - in Manjaro /proc/config.gz)
and then build kernels based on that. For the moment I've stopped
trying to sort that out - still got about 2800 modules, but I've
also omitted something : wifi works but the temperature sensor on
the ath10k no longer reports in /usr/bin/sensors (and after I spent
about an hour tweaking my alias for sensors to get values for the
ath10k, video and cpu).
To be clear: while still on Manjaro I built kernels with their
many-module config, changing things such as ahci to built-in until
I got a config that would boot without an initrd (probably towards
3500 modules at that point). And yes, trying to match the loaded
modules shown by lsmod to the kernel config options seems to have
become very painful - too many lack the module name in the help.
And then I installed LFS (actually a copy of my most recent system
from a similar desktop, so I could concentrate on the kernel before
the native build) and discovered what firmware was needed.
Modern laptops are fun, even after working around the decisions of
manufacturers who think everyone wants to run windows 20. For
a developer's definition of 'fun'.
tl;dr - enable all modules that lsmod shows as in-use, including bt
modules, and then look for firmware. But hopefully if a module
needs firmware the log (and maybe dmesg) will report at least one
missing file.
ĸen
--
It is said that there are two great unsolved problems in computer
science: naming, cache invalidation, and off-by-one errors.
-- Ben Bullock
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