Add blobby kernel to APT repo

[joshbowyer]

So forgetting that I had my repo set to Prawn, I did an apt upgrade which wiped my blobby kernel (with BCM4354 wifi driver). It would be nice to have that blobby kernel with that driver built in the repo (once installed manually, thereby preserving your FSF endorsement) one could apt-mark linux-$(version) kernel package and an upgrade would only look for updates to linux-$(version)-blobby, thereby not nuking the internal wifi for those that use it. I looked through the pulls and it looks like this is mostly ready?

[joshbowyer]

@austin987 tagging for visibility

[austin987]

IMO it's ready, pending a decision by SolidHal. At least I'm happy to work towards it, if they're okay with it.

[cracket]

Sorry for hijacking this issue discussion, but I'm trying to understand how to use PrawnOS with blobby wireless driver BCM4354 in Asus C100 (installation, configuration etc.). Is there any howto or docs which I can follow? @austin987

[austin987]

I don't have an Asus C100, so I can't say (and FYI, PrawnOS doesn't support blobby wireless).

[petm5]

I got the internal wifi card working on my Asus C201 with the blobby kernel by enabling the BCM4354 driver as a loadable module in the kernel config and setting it to support the SDIO bus. I then had to add the firmware files to /lib/firmware/brcm: brcmfmac4354-sdio.bin from the package firmware-linux-nonfree and brcmfmac4354-sdio.txt which I downloaded from https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/overlays/board-overlays/+/master/overlay-veyron/chromeos-base/chromeos-bsp-veyron/files/firmware/brcmfmac4354-sdio.txt

[cracket]

@peter-marshall5 where did you get the binary/build image for blobby kernel? I took kernel binary (16MB kernel partition) along with /lib/modules contents and /lib/firmware contents from kali linux installation for asus c100 (4.19.44) and overwritten SD card with PrawnOS. Now I'm testing it on SD card. However there is issue - c100 hangs when higher load occurs - for example when I run synaptic. I had similar issue with old kali installation but it was fixed somewhere in 2018 or 2019 update. I am not sure if this is because of kernel or GPU drivers. Internal wifi works fine too.

[petm5]

@cracket I actually compiled the PrawnOS kernel myself by running make BLOBBY_BUILD=1 TARGET=armhf kernel_config to configure the kernel and then make BLOBBY_BUILD=1 TARGET=armhf to build PrawnOS with the blobby kernel. I also had to uncomment line 90 in scripts/BuildScripts/KernelScripts/buildKernel.sh so that it would build loadable modules (I had configured the kernel to build the wi-fi driver as a module to make debugging easier) and I had to add the line make -C $KERNEL_BUILD ARCH=$KERNEL_ARCH INSTALL_MOD_PATH=$outmnt modules_install after line 129 in scripts/BuildScripts/ImageScripts/installKernelToFs.sh so that it would put the modules in /lib/modules.

However, you can set the configuration to build the wifi driver directly into the kernel. It may also be possible to include the firmware directly into the kernel, similarly to the libre firmware for the HTC wifi dongles.

[cracket]

@peter-marshall5 thank you for hint - it saved me a lot of work. Just curious if you were able to make bluetooth working? I'm searching now all c100 available distributions and looks like all have issues with broadcom bluetooth.

[petm5]

@cracket I'm glad I was able to help. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get bluetooth working when I enabled the bluetooth drivers in the kernel. However I didn't play around much with this since I don't use bluetooth on my chromebook.

[ghost]

hi @peter-marshall5 can you explain further in detail how you used the blobby kernel to enable the BCM4354 driver as loadable module in the kernel config to support SDIO bus? I am a beginner with no clue how to add blobs to make internal wifi work. I managed to hotspot my android phone and did the following my chromebook is still not picking up the card user@prawnos: sudo apt-cache brcm80211 user@prawnos: firmware-brcm80211 user@prawnos: sudo apt-get install firmware-brcm80211 then restart and type nmcli show devices nothing.. I also tried this fork project ShrimpOS (that includes the wifi blob) but it wont boot because it has two partitions.

[petm5]

@dnowen To add support for the internal wifi card to PrawnOS, you will need to compile it yourself on a Debian system. This process is fairly involved and there is a chance of running into errors.

First, you will need to clone the github repository: git clone https://github.com/SolidHal/PrawnOS

You will then need to enter the project directory:

cd PrawnOS

After that, you need to run this to configre the kernel:

make BLOBBY_BUILD=1 TARGET=armhf kernel_config

A text-based menu will appear with lots of submenus and options. It's sometimes easy to get lost in here. Use the up and down arrows and enter key to navigate to "Device Drivers", then "Network Device Support", then "Wireless LAN". Navigate to "Broadcom Devices" so that it's highlighted and press "y" to enable it. Then go down to "Broadcom FullMAC Driver" and press "y" to enable that. Finally, make sure that "SDIO bus interface support for FullMAC driver" is enabled (I think it is by default). Now navigate to Exit with the right arrow and press Enter to return to the previous menu repeatedly. Make sure that "Yes" is selected and press enter when asked "Do you wish to save your new configuration?" Congratulations, you have configured the kernel to support the internal wifi card.

Now you can either build the entire PrawnOS image or just compile the kernel and add it to a prebuilt image. To compile the entire image, run: sudo make BLOBBY_BUILD=1 TARGET=armhf and then use a disk image writer to write the resulting image (PrawnOS-Shiba-armhf.img, not PrawnOS-Shiba-armhf.img-BASE) to a USB drive.

To compile the kernel only, run: make BLOBBY_BUILD=1 TARGET=armhf kernel. When it finishes, write a prebuilt PrawnOS image to a USB drive. Then run sudo dd if=build/armhf/linux-*/vmlinux.uimg of=/dev/sdX1, substituting "/dev/sdX" with the device path for your USB drive. Note the "1" after the device path to tell dd to write to the first partition. This is most likely "/dev/sdb" but you can check by running lsblk to see the attached drives and their device paths. Make sure that you select the right device as the first partition will be overwritten with the kernel that you compiled.

After compiling either the entire image or just the kernel, you should be able to mount the second partition of the USB drive. Run sudo mount /dev/sdX2 /mnt substituting "/dev/sdX" with your USB drive again. Note the "2" after the device path to make Linux mount the second partition. Then run the following commands: wget https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/overlays/board-overlays/+/master/overlay-veyron/chromeos-base/chromeos-bsp-veyron/files/firmware/brcmfmac4354-sdio.txt to download the first firmware blob. Then run sudo mkdir /mnt/lib/firmware/brcm and sudo cp brcmfmac4354-sdio.txt /mnt/lib/firmware/brcm/ to copy the firmware blob into PrawnOS. For the next firmware blob, it should already be on your computer if you have the package "firmware-linux-nonfree" installed and you can run sudo cp /lib/firmware/brcm/brcmfmac4354-sdio.bin /mnt/lib/firmware/brcm/ to copy it into PrawnOS.

If you did everything correctly, you should be able to insert the USB drive into your Chrome device and press Control+U on the "OS verification is off" screen to boot into PrawnOS. Typing "ip link" should show a device named "wlan0" if the wifi card is working.

I didn't know about ShrimpOS until now. It would have saved me a lot of work early on when PrawnOS didn't have built-in support for Panfrost or the blobby kernel. You mentioned that ShrimpOS was unable to boot on your device. This might be because you have a device with an ARM64 CPU, in that case images for ARMHF devices won't boot since they use a different format. If this is the case, you will need to replace "TARGET=armhf" with "TARGET=arm64" in all of the make commands. It also could be that you forgot to enable booting unsigned kernels and booting from USB in ChromeOS after factory resetting your device.

[ghost]

@peter-marshall5 To add support for the internal wifi card to PrawnOS [...]

wow this is perfect! exactly what I needed thank you so much. Ill edit this post if everything goes well. (im on the c201p, so no arm64 afaik)

[austin987]

FWIW, I forked PrawnOS for precisely this reason (https://github.com/austin987/crawfishos/), and have binary builds available for c201p (I don't have access to arm64 hardware, never tried to test/build for that).

[ghost]

FWIW, I forked PrawnOS for precisely this reason (https://github.com/austin987/crawfishos/), and have binary builds available for c201p (I don't have access to arm64 hardware, never tried to test/build for that).

@austin987 wow! I did not see this either. Thank you! All I needed was wifi to get started so I will check this out for sure if I can boot it. I also was referred to this Cadmium for the C201P...however there are no releases for veyron_speedy yet. And I am now realizing I cannot build these myself, I am getting tons of errors on the old Thinkpad I have with debian distro. I think because it needs to be built on an arm ? I dont know but it may be of use to someone with more knowledge than me...

[cracket]

@austin987 were you able to configure kernel for bluetooth?

[petm5]

@dnowen Wow, I didn't know about Cadmium either. I'm going to try building it and running it on my Chromebook to test the graphics performance since the Panfrost driver isn't exactly stable yet.

[austin987]

Never tried, I don't use bluetooth.

[ghost]

@peter-marshall5 let me know how it goes because I cant get audio now on Crawfish either, wifi works though which is good

[petm5]

I just built Cadmium successfully and it booted on my C201. I can post my image if you want it. Wifi works out of the box but I'm not sure aout sound and Bluetooth yet.

[ghost]

I just built Cadmium successfully and it booted on my C201. I can post my image if you want it. Wifi works out of the box but I'm not sure aout sound and Bluetooth yet.

@peter-marshall5 that would be great if you can post your image (maybe to your git?). Thank you! From what I gather from the developer, he said it should all work, he just didnt do a build release yet.

[petm5]

Github wouldn't let me upload files larger than 25mb so I uploaded it to my Google drive: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1axI_FQr6F2ciA0-Euprm2_Q9VzxCMb87/view?usp=sharing

Sound and bluetooth weren't working out of the box on Cadmium but maybe you need to install to the internal storage for it to work. I got sound working on my PrawnOS install by running a script I found online one time that changes some ALSA mixer settings. I had to modify it a bit to make it target the internal sound card. I'll try to find it and link it.

[ghost]

Sound and bluetooth weren't working out of the box on Cadmium but maybe you need to install to the internal storage for it to work. I got sound working on my PrawnOS install by running a script I found online one time that changes some ALSA mixer settings. I had to modify it a bit to make it target the internal sound card. I'll try to find it and link it.

Thanks, downloaded the image..unfortunately it didnt work for me after I ran ./install-to-emmc and connected to wifi it failed to find 'apt' command... Guess ill stick with Crawfish and try to get sound working

[yoonsikp]

New Kernel build if anybody is interested

https://github.com/yoonsikp/PrawnOS/releases/tag/v5.15.6

[Wooty-B]

@yoonsikp line 39: Unknown device! Can't determine emmc devname. Please file an issue with the output of fdisk -l.

I don't have internal WiFi or an ethernet dongle and fdisk doesn't come prepackaged with PrawnOS. Please advise!

EDIT: On an Asus C201p 4GB RAM + 16GB eMMC; installed PrawnOS after wiping with CromeOS Recovery USB.

EDIT2: @yoonsikp So this may be an issue with an update to the FlashKernelPartition.sh script. There was an extra ";" after "exit 1" on line 39 that made me think it was an error with detection of the emmc storage, however after removing the second semicolon and re-running the script I was able to successfully install the kpart and now have WiFi up and running.

Not sure if if an issue should be opened on the FlashKernelPartition.sh script, but suggest someone else testing this against the latest build.

[Wooty-B]

@peter-marshall5 What happens when you try and install ca-certificates-java under Cadmium? I always receive a segmentation fault breaking all Java packages. Thanks!

EDIT: I tried your instructions to build a blobless-kernel. I have copied over the firmware files from a Cadmium install into /lib/firmware as well as directly using the wget command, but get the following error in dmesg:

brcfmac mmc1:0001:1: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac4354-sdio.google,veyron-speedy-rev9.bin failed with error -2 brcfmac mmc1:0001:1: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac4354-sdio.bin failed with error -2

My firmware folder and all files inside have 755 permissions, and it appears to be a file not found message. Thanks!

EDIT2: @peter-marshall5 We're you able to get sound working? I'd love the link and info for getting this enabled. When I was using Cadmium sound was working for me but I can't seem to find any info for enabling this under PrawnOS. Thanks!

Got sound working using the Cadmium Issue tracker, the error above for WiFi is unrelated from my research and is also an issue with Cadmium so should not be discussed here. Please disregard. Thanks!

[SolidHal]

Closing this issue as I have no plans to expand "official" support for the blobby kernel. The blobby kernel is offered for users that really want to build their own images, and for developer testing, but is not supported.

I'm happy to accept a PR to fix the issue where the blobby kernel gets updated by a non-blobby kernel package.