Hello all. I have an Evergreen (I think) L5 with Byzantium I bought a few months ago on eBay, and the Wifi and Bluetooth have never worked, not even once, not even a little. (Edit: HKS are turned off/up). I have seen on some of the other forums solutions (some of which are several years old) which appear to apply to previous versions of the phone (mine has a SPARKLAN chip; I know because I opened it to see if the antenna wires were disconnected or something). Wifi options do not appear in settings, and Bluetooth option in settings is permanently greyed out.
I would not classify myself as tech-savvy, but I have a brother in law who is an electrical engineer, and he can’t get it to work either (he even tried an Intel Wifi and Bluetooth chip he had). We (he) tried to install the RS9116 firmware, which didn’t work, and then tried the earlier 1.2.20 version, and that didn’t work, and he lost interest.
The phone sorta works as a phone, but there’s numerous bugs and general issues that I assume I need wifi to download updates to correct (I cannot send texts without first receiving texts from that number, for example). If this is a hardware issue, I cannot imagine both chips were bad, so if anyone can help, I’d be much obliged.
You can also share a network connection with another computer that does have working internet.
But a reflash is a must for a device you bought from a random seller, as @FranklyFlawless said. You’ll also get mostly updated default software that way.
That is the firmware for the previous make of WiFi card. So this will have zero chance of working.
If you really have the Sparklan card then it would be helpful to know whether the previous owner upgraded and whether it ever worked. (If it was bought with the Sparklan card then it should just work. Otherwise if it’s an older phone that the previous owner upgraded then there is a certain amount of work to get the firmware sorted out.)
It is possible that Purism Support would be able to tell you, given appropriate information, what the phone was originally sold with (hence whether it has been homebrew upgraded).
I have a USB ethernet dongle. Plug it in the bottom of the phone, works out-of-the-box. So that may be an option for you if you want to pursue other random software fixes before getting the WiFi sorted out. Many docks will also have an ethernet port built-in, and that would be an alternative to a dongle.
Also though … if for no other reason than security … it is imperative to reflash a phone (reset any phone) that you just bought on the internet (as is already noted above multiple times ).
Well, that’s disappointing, to say the least. Does anyone perhaps know where I can find the appropriate SparkLAN firmware? Is it included in the current flash? I haven’t had time to mess with it, because I really am a farmer, and I switched back to my Light Phone II because it has more functionality and is less buggy, and if any of you have used a Light Phone II, you must know how absurd that is.
I just wanted a phone I could access the internet with other than at lunchtime and in the evenings when I’m back at the house. I appreciate everyone’s help, but I can see why the previous owner sold this one; I imagine a hacker would have sold me one that worked flawlessly.
As L5s have been shipping with the SparkLAN card for some time now, and therefore with the required firmware installed, I imagine that the current builds posted for flashing contain all you need.
In my comment #8 to you, I linked a thread in which @dos (Purism developer) said that the presence of the firmware (or not) can be checked in the L5’s file system:
If, after you have reflashed the OS on the L5, you find firmware files in /usr/share/firmware-librem5-nonfree/firmware/brcm, then you’re good to go. If not, then you’ll need to download and install it.
Sorry, it isn’t that simple. This is because all builds of PureOS aim to exclude any blackbox firmware.
So the procedure really does depend on the history of the phone.
If it started life with the older make WiFi card then, as @FranklyFlawless says, it will be necessary to
create the firmware jail, and then
put the correct firmware in it (i.e. the firmware for the SparkLAN card).
If it started life with the SparkLAN card then Purism would have shipped the phone with both of those two bullet points taken care of - and something else may be going wrong.
Any vaguely recent build though, regardless of WiFi card, will know how to mount the firmware jail and load the firmware from the jail into the card - when that is necessary (and it is only necessary at the current time for the SparkLAN card).
Ha ha. Yes, if one of your government agencies is after you, you are probably correct.
But, as I did write, security is not the only reason to need to start from a clean slate when you buy a random phone off the internet from a random stranger.
Said stranger may have been a tinkerer. All manner of settings might be in unusual states. All manner of optional software may have been installed. You need to start from a known state. If I worked in Purism Support (NB: I don’t) then the first thing I would ask you to do is to reflash.
In order to reflash you don’t need working WiFi on the phone (or indeed any internet at all on the phone). You do however need a desktop / laptop (or at a stretch other options) that is running Linux and which does have a working internet connection.
It probably wouldn’t do any harm to ask the seller about the history of the phone and its WiFi card. I understand that the seller may choose not to respond / is under no obligation to respond / may no longer exist / etc.
False Jail it is an OpenSource THING which makes sense if this FOSS-BLOB-Firmware is hosted in /lib/firmware directly, so an opensource user here could recommend a simple Command that would solve the whole problem without going to an useless False Jail. However there are True Jail but this is not the case right now.
I’m in the United States, and I think government agencies are after everyone (not just little old me). The seller was a reseller, who didn’t know anything about these phones.
Might do that if it isn’t working after this; did the flash, followed the steps, solid red light, now I wait…
will it turn itself on? Am I supposed to turn it on after the the light is solid red? The steps are not entirely clear on this point.
After reflashing Byzantium, the script should indicate success, the Librem 5 should turn solid green, then show the LUKS prompt. The default passphrase is 123456.
You may need to post some of the terminal output from the host computer (redacting anything that is sensitive). That way we can see whether the flash did succeed.
Provided that the flash finished, whether it succeeded or failed, it should be OK to reboot the phone. (And if it didn’t work, you can safely have as many attempts as you need.)
The question is though: Were you previously using the encrypted file system (requires a passphrase to be entered at boot before the login PIN) or the unencrypted (plain) file system? And which did you choose to reflash to?
).