Hi Philip,
On Wednesday, 31 May 2023 18:06:19 BST Philip Webb wrote:
> 230531 Mark Dymek wrote:
> > are you installing Gentoo or is this on a running system ?
> > because the minimal installer only uses wpa_supplicant .
> > i couldn’t get wi-fi to work when i was installing Gentoo.
> > once i had everything installed though it worked.
>
> That's interesting, but it doesn't take me much further (smile).
> Yes, this is in the early stage of installing in a new machine.
> Wifi works easily with System Rescue + Mint (running from USB stick).
> The minimal installer -- presumably you mean Stage 3 --
> didn't include 'wpa_supplicant' & I emerged it later.
>
> Your experience suggests there mb some pkg missing, which I need.
> Do you -- or anyone else -- have any idea what it might be ?
>
> Perhaps there's still some firmware missing,
> but I'm having difficulty identifying what it could be
> or where I would find it.
>
> Any more substantial advice is very welcome.
It seems you have the correct module for the mediatek driver installed, since
lshw on gentoo shows it being used. What is not shown is the firmware.
Do you see now the wireless link when you run 'ip link show', or is it still
absent?
The 'rfkill list' command (from sys-apps/util-linux) will list if by mistake
you have left your wireless adapter switched off - laptops have a hardware
button on the keyboard for this; e.g.
~ # rfkill list
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: yes
If so, press the keyboard button to unblock it.
Now, to bottom out the firmware issue. You need to specify the firmware path
in your kernel, as explained here. By default this would be under /lib/
firmware:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Linux_firmware Hopefully, the requisite firmware file blobs will be present in the latest
stable 'sys-kernel/linux-firmware' package once you install it. dmesg will
reveal if these are/not being loaded. For example, this is what I get on an
old laptop with Intel wireless:
[ 13.276068] Loading firmware: iwlwifi-5000-5.ucode
[ 13.519131] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: loaded firmware version 8.83.5.1 build
33692 5000-5.ucode op_mode iwldvm
[ 13.622473] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUG disabled
[ 13.622483] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEBUGFS disabled
[ 13.622486] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: CONFIG_IWLWIFI_DEVICE_TRACING disabled
[ 13.622489] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0: Detected Intel(R) WiFi Link 5100 AGN,
REV=0x54
[ 13.664327] ieee80211 phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-agn-rs'
[ 13.730477] iwlwifi 0000:04:00.0 wlp4s0: renamed from wlan0
What do you do if the latest linux-firmware package does not have the firmware
blob(s) your wireless card requires, because it is rather new hardware? Well,
you could keyword the trunk version hoping it contains what you need:
** 99999999 *l^bstd [compress-xz compress-zstd initramfs
+redistributable savedconfig unknown-license] ["initramfs? ( redistributable )
?? ( compress-xz compress-zstd )"]
Or, you could compare what firmware files are loaded in Mint/SR ISOs and copy
these over to your Gentoo system for now, or you could fish around the
mediatek website for appropriate firmware files.
Finally, set up a symlink from '/etc.init.d/net.wlp5s0' to '/etc/init.d/
net.lo', (or whatever your card is detected as if not wlp5s0) - see here:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Handbook:AMD64/Networking/Introduction and bring up your wireless network service:
rc-service -v net.wlp5s0 start
NOTE: Besides wpa_supplicant, other packages required like 'net-misc/netifrc',
'net-misc/dhcpcd' should be installed, if they have not been brought in as
dependencies already.
Please post back your dmesg and any terminal output if you are still having
problems bringing up this wireless interface.
PS. I saw this page which may or may not be still relevant with the latest
stable kernels, but you may want to take a look either way:
https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/User:Chess/MT7921e