No more WiFi after today OS update

@amarok asked if you get a network connection when plugging the phone on a laptop through USB. So far I have not seen that this is somehow possible. It immediately gets an ethernet connection when you plug an ethernet adapter.

If there is a way to provide the phone access to network through a laptop please tell us.

Moreover, serial connection does not work with L5 connected to L13. dmesg | grep tty does not show any new tty created after plugging the phone.
Unless I miss something.

I have never managed to get an update through the PureOS Store GUI app, from the terminal you can try entering

sudo apt update && apt list --upgradeable

This will give some details if there are any updates available. If updates are available you can then get those updates by entering

sudo apt upgrade

If that fails to update then enter

sudo apt full-upgrade

By default the Librem 5’s ethernet over USB is configured to pickup it’s settings via DHCP. Your host machine (laptop) should run a DHCP server on ethernet for the USB connection when configured correctly for connection sharing.

For example, I have a laptop running Debian Buster with Gnome DE and assuming I want to share the laptop’s WiFi connection with ethernet devices plugged into the laptop, the quick and dirty method for setting up the laptop for connection sharing on Debian is as follows…

  1. From a terminal on laptop enter nm-connection-editor
  2. From the window that opens create a new connection by clicking the “+” button at the bottom
  3. Choose “Ethernet” from the drop down list then click “Create”
  4. Click “IPv4 Settings” tab
  5. Choose “Shared to other computers” from the “Method” drop down
  6. (optional) Change/Set the “Connection name”
  7. Click “Save”

Connecting the phone to the laptop via USB, the phone should now be assigned an IP address in the 10.42.0.0/24 range and will be able to access the internet through the laptop.

It should show up as /dev/ttyACM0

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Found a USB ethernet dongle so I can talk to the thing again.

Here’s some output of some suggested diagnostic commands, using 5.11.0-1-librem5.

It looks to me like it’s recognizing the WiFi device fine, it agrees that it should be enabled, and then it just decides that there’s no WiFi device reguardless.

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The firmware versions being reported by the card are questionable to me. Looking at my own logs for both 5.9 and 5.11 kernels, the card always reports firmware version 1.2.20.0 The RSI FW Version in my logs for 5.11 is 0000.1.2.0.0502 , the Driver version matches what I see here for 5.11

I would contact support and query if those firmware version are expected.

You could look at the output of sudo journalctl -r | grep 1\.2\.\20\.0 | more if there is some output it should hopefully be related to the redpine firmware version, the ‘-r’ means the log is displayed in reverse so newest entries first, so if there is output it should show you when the last time the card came up with the 1.2.20.0 firmware and you’ll be able to check if the timestamp coincides with when the card stopped working. The ‘| more’ will just stop it dumping the output in one hit, you can press space to move forward in the output or press “q” to return to the terminal command prompt.

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That doesn’t look right - seems like something went wrong with the firmware on your card. Please contact support.

BTW. You don’t need a Ethernet dongle to access the phone, it already shows up as a Ethernet device when you connect it to a PC via USB - and there’s also a USB serial console.

Thanks for the information. For serial and shared internet with laptop I have the following issue. The cable that came with the phone does not work. I connected it to L13 USB-C and nothing happens. No reaction at all. However this cable works with the charger and does charge the phone.

I tried with another C-to-C cable and everything worked immediately: serial connection, internet-sharing and charging from the laptop. Back to original cable, nothing. Not even the red charging led lights up. So could the original cable that came with the phone be faulty? What a pity… it looks so sturdy.

About the upgrade.
purism@pureos:~$ sudo apt update
Get:1 https://repo.pureos.net/pureos amber InRelease [5,784 B]
Get:2 https://repo.pureos.net/pureos amber-updates InRelease [5,843 B]
Get:3 https://repo.pureos.net/pureos amber-security InRelease [5,845 B]
Get:4 https://repo.pureos.net/pureos amber-phone InRelease [5,839 B]
Fetched 23.3 kB in 8s (3,019 B/s)
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
All packages are up to date.
purism@pureos:~$ apt list --upgradeable
Listing… Done
purism@pureos:~$ uname -r
5.9.0-1-librem5
purism@pureos:~$

How is this possible if there exist upgrades?

Should I force by

sudo apt full-upgrade
??
I do not want to mess everything especially wifi, although I checked
sudo dmesg | grep redpine
and gives 1.2.20.0 as FW version.

Should be spelled “upgradable”…unless the misspelled version is baked-in somewhere in Linuxland.

I have this firmware. Currently on 5.9; still no WiFi.

@antonis, You can try:
apt-get --simulate upgrade

Yes. upgradable too does not produce anything to be upgraded, although the same command
apt list --upgradable
gives me packages on L13 to be upgraded (so it is the proper syntax)

Could it be that 5.11 has been removed due to the problems mentioned here about wifi? I would not rule this out. Maybe @dos knows something more? In any case I will wait until you get back your wifi.

I just run the simulation. Nothing to be upgraded. It only reports that libcallaudio-0-0 was automatically installed and is no longer required.

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Thanks for telling us how to do this. I didn’t realize it was necessary to create a new connection on an already connected computer.

The network manager panel can also be accessed through it’s GUI, by the way…FYI for others.

Yes it works flawlessly. Actually my laptop shares an Ethernet connection with L5 right now. So nm on panel of laptop shows 2 active Ethernet connections. This is great Loki. Thanks for the tip.

I think that this must be added to the community wiki. Access through serial too with minicom. Works great! Right now L5 gets and Ethernet connection from laptop and I execute commands on L5 from minicom through serial! What a great phone!
I hope @amarok the wifi issue will be resolved soon.

One more interesting thing: when in serial connection with the phone applications get launched on the phones screen. So
purism@pureos:~$ firefox&
executed here, starts firefox on the phone screen.

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Too bad there’s not an easy factory settings default button.

Could you post the output of ls -al /var/lib/apt/lists/? You might have hit https://tracker.pureos.net/T960

Here it is:

purism@pureos:~$ ls -al /var/lib/apt/lists/
total 80492
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Mar 20 18:59 .
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 Mar 15 19:15 …
drwxr-xr-x 2 _apt root 4096 Jan 22 06:57 auxfiles
-rw-r----- 1 root root 0 Jan 22 06:57 lock
drwx------ 2 _apt root 4096 Mar 20 18:59 partial
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 5784 Mar 13 01:13 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber_InRelease
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 40314812 Mar 8 16:23 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber_main_binary-arm64_Packages
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 4234936 Jan 21 2020 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber_main_dep11_Components-arm64.yml.gz
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 3442755 Jan 21 2020 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber_main_dep11_icons-48x48.tar.gz
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 6857916 Jan 21 2020 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber_main_dep11_icons-64x64.tar.gz
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 23657740 Mar 8 16:23 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber_main_i18n_Translation-en
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 5839 Mar 20 16:42 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-phone_InRelease
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 283843 Mar 8 04:40 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-phone_main_binary-arm64_Packages
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 358384 Mar 8 10:18 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-phone_main_dep11_Components-arm64.yml.gz
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 77840 Mar 8 10:18 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-phone_main_dep11_icons-48x48.tar.gz
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 99967 Mar 8 10:18 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-phone_main_dep11_icons-64x64.tar.gz
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 144371 Mar 2 10:40 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-phone_main_i18n_Translation-en
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 5845 Mar 20 17:33 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-security_InRelease
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 1496011 Mar 17 04:44 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-security_main_binary-arm64_Packages
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 51631 Mar 17 10:29 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-security_main_dep11_Components-arm64.yml.gz
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 41160 Mar 1 04:15 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-security_main_dep11_icons-48x48.tar.gz
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 67108 Mar 13 22:10 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-security_main_dep11_icons-64x64.tar.gz
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 928535 Mar 13 10:40 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-security_main_i18n_Translation-en
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 5843 Mar 20 16:42 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-updates_InRelease
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 168988 Feb 3 04:40 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-updates_main_binary-arm64_Packages
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 3085 Feb 3 10:18 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-updates_main_dep11_Components-arm64.yml.gz
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 4716 Feb 3 10:18 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-updates_main_dep11_icons-48x48.tar.gz
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 6125 Feb 3 10:18 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-updates_main_dep11_icons-64x64.tar.gz
-rw-r–r-- 1 root root 89997 Aug 26 2020 repo.pureos.net_pureos_dists_amber-updates_main_i18n_Translation-en
purism@pureos:~$

Hey, in that situation, are you seeing updates available and downloading them, and single-tapping instead of double-tapping the button to install and restart? (You do have to double-tap, which is an issue that is being tracked.)

–upgradeable or --upgradable, both are recognised and accepted as valid. No doubt to some people one may be considered a misspelling of the other, as to which one, that probably depends largely on where in the world you come from.

With my pedantic head on, using --upgradeable is truer to the documentation, although IIRC, apt suggests using --upgradable in it’s output to see available upgrades when they are available.

Although you have the same main issue (i.e. no WiFi) looking at the symptoms/logs, I suspect the root cause will be very different. For example, nat has output from rfkill, you don’t, when you searched your logs for “redpine” you said that the output had mentions of the terms “failed” and “disconnected”, nat’s logs don’t contain these terms.

You are not creating a new connection, it just seems that way due to the way NetworkManager and your OS handle and present the detail to you. All you are doing is enabling/configuring connection sharing, under the hood, you are enabling IP forwarding for ethernet interfaces, adding some iptable rules for forwarding and NAT masquerading and bringing up dnsmasq as a DHCP and DNS server. It’s nothing specific to the Librem 5.

It offered the option to download, when I tapped the button it threw an error stating that the repos were not released as yet. This error normally means that the system clock is out of sync by some margin. I double checked date, time and timezone were all correct (they were), so I went with apt-get and all updated and upgraded fine. I’ve never used any GUI application to upgrade, I prefer command line tools for that as I appreciate the additional information and feedback they provide so it’s not really an issue for me, those new to the system may have a different take.

If you have hit the issue from the issue tracker link that dos provided (https://tracker.pureos.net/T960), you can remove the contents of the /var/lib/apt/lists directory or the directory entirely then run sudo apt update which will rebuild it.

For the cautious, you can just move it rather than removing it…

pushd /var/lib/apt
sudo mv lists lists.old

Then try updating again…

sudo apt update
apt list --upgradeable

If all went well, you can then remove the lists.old

rm -rf lists.old

and then return to what ever directory you were in before you started…

popd

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Thanks for the explanation(s)! Every day is so educational here! :slightly_smiling_face:

2 Likes

@Loki I asked support and they told me that for the phone 5.9 is the officially release kernel. 5.11 is not released for amber. So this explains why I see no updates. Are you sure that you have not moved your phone to byzantium?

@dos you have written many times about the Ethernet and Serial exposed to a laptop when L5 connects with it. And indeed it works. But NOT with the provided cable. At least for me it does not work. It works with other cables (say one that came with a Samsung phone). The cable is not faulty because if I use it to connect a Samsung it works and Samsung gets mounted.

So it seems that my cable, the one that came with L5, is not designed for Erthernet and Serial but only for charging and filetransfer IF L5 supported that (which does not at the moment). Can you verify this? Can you verify that when you say that Ethernet and Serial works, works or does not work with the provided cable?

amber-phone is on 5.11 since a few days ago: https://software.pureos.net/package/bin/amber-phone/linux-image-librem5

For the cable there’s no difference whether it’s Ethernet or file transfer. It looks like you simply don’t get any data connection with that cable when used with L5. I use USB-A to C cables here and the provided cable stays with the charger, but I can try to check it later.

Yes the Samsung cable is USB-C to USB-A and it works (both Ethernet&Serial). I do not want to take your time but I am curious if it is my L5-cable that does not work or this is how it is for everyone. Thanks.

About 5.11 I am afraid to try to upgrade (sees that support was not well informed—no problem). I do not want to mess up my wifi, which right now it works. I am waiting for @amarok and @Loki to bring their wifi back to life before I proceed. If you have any advise please advise me. Thank you.

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