Early 2021 upgrades

[samueldr]

Pfffff... Lots of things here to unpack.

• First, this obsoletes Graphics for U-Boot #13.
• This affects Use nix flakes #15 by changing a lot of the foundations.

Note that #21 would still be needed if someone wants to run the mainline kernel... EXCEPT if they use Tow-Boot as their initial boot firmware, and use EFI boot. As Tow-Boot ships this patch in the built-in DT.

Then, we're basically updating everything.

---

The biggest change is how we are not bunding the initial boot firmware (e.g. U-Boot) in the build anymore. This is now left as an exercise to the reader, but really, I suggest looking at my project:

• Tow-Boot

It is meant to be simpler than "bare" U-Boot to use and setup.

---

Please leave comments!

Though I'll be merging this soon.

[samueldr]

Going only from memory, I don't have the old firmware setup rolling around, it looks like 5Ghz Wi-Fi performance is better? Maybe? I'm running on 5.11.

I don't remember if it was working or not previously. But right now I had a stable connection all over my home on 5Ghz. 2.4Ghz is still a mess, but that's because it's a mess on all devices around my home.

[samueldr]

Somewhat breaking change.

Unless you're using an initial boot firmware which includes the required trustzone fixes (see #3) you will need to add this to your configuration:

  systemd.tmpfiles.rules = [
    "w /sys/power/mem_sleep - - - -  s2idle"
  }

[zhaofengli]

Nice work on Tow-Boot! I tried it and it's genuinely the best U-Boot build for Pinebook Pro. I really hope that you will share it with the wider Pine64 community (if you haven't already) 😄

The changes look great, but the new firmware broke Wi-Fi on my PBP. With the new firmware:

[   22.403808] brcmfmac: brcmf_fw_alloc_request: using brcm/brcmfmac43456-sdio for chip BCM4345/9
[   22.426674] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware: BCM4345/9 wl0: Feb 11 2020 11:54:51 version 7.45.96.61 (be7af2d@shgit) (r745790) FWID 01-a41d86bd es7.c5.n4.a3
[   23.181377] ieee80211 phy0: brcmf_netdev_set_mac_address: Setting cur_etheraddr failed, -52
[  102.532217] ieee80211 phy0: brcmf_netdev_set_mac_address: Setting cur_etheraddr failed, -52
[  120.031235] ieee80211 phy0: brcmf_escan_timeout: timer expired
[  140.255303] ieee80211 phy0: brcmf_escan_timeout: timer expired

It worked after I swapped it out for the old one (everything else stayed the same):

[   18.129502] brcmfmac: brcmf_fw_alloc_request: using brcm/brcmfmac43456-sdio for chip BCM4345/9
[   18.194260] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware: BCM4345/9 wl0: Jun 16 2017 12:38:26 version 7.45.96.2 (66c4e21@sh-git) (r) FWID 01-1813af84
[   28.696984] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlan0: link becomes ready

I tested with both 5.10 and 5.11, and the new firmware exhibited the same problem.

[samueldr]

audibly groans...

I guess we have to figure out firmware sources, who uses which firmware for it, and compare them. I really hate those situations where there's no clear answer, and people just get firmware files from unknown locations, with unknown vintage, with unknown details about what it actually changes.

[zhaofengli]

Hmm, the plot thickens... Just got some time to try again, and apparently I can connect to Wi-Fi manually with wpa_supplicant, but NetworkManager times out with "association took too long" (the password is saved and correct). The Setting cur_etheraddr failed appears to be from NetworkManager's MAC randomization feature for scanning, and doesn't actually prevent me from connecting manually.

Edit: And yes, I tried disabling MAC randomization in NetworkManager.

[samueldr]

Odd, since on mine I didn't need to. I don't think I changed anything while connecting to the networks... whenever I did that initially.

But I'm not surprised either, since on another tablet/computer with a rtl8723bs it was needed.

May 14 19:16:13 luann NetworkManager[997]: <warn>  [1621034173.2572] platform-linux: do-change-link[2]: failure changing link: failure 52 (Invalid exchange)
May 14 19:16:13 luann NetworkManager[997]: <warn>  [1621034173.2573] device (wlan0): set-hw-addr: failed to set MAC address to 72:1C:1D:E4:45:D1 (scanning) (NME_UNSPEC)
May 14 19:16:23 luann NetworkManager[997]: <warn>  [1621034183.4180] sup-iface[ccc877e2417345ec,1,wlan0]: call-p2p-cancel: failed with P2P cancel failed

Looks like it does fail hard to set the MAC address though.

[plabadens]

After half a day building firefox on qemu-aarch64, I've tested this branch a bit (along with Tow-Boot). Some comments:

• I'm really happy that we now have proper deep sleep support. It makes a huge difference in terms of workflow.
• Tow-Boot looks great and does the job. Not much more to say there.
• There are no major networking issues for me using NetworkManager, but I do get the exact same error while scanning.

  May 18 21:19:27 ocelot NetworkManager[986]: <warn>  [1621365567.8808] platform-linux: do-change-link[2]: failure changing link: failure 52 (Invalid exchange)
  May 18 21:19:27 ocelot NetworkManager[986]: <warn>  [1621365567.8809] device (wlan0): set-hw-addr: failed to set MAC address to 96:B2:FB:42:C5:F7 (scanning) (NME_UNSPEC)
  May 18 21:19:28 ocelot NetworkManager[986]: <warn>  [1621365568.0037] sup-iface[c880cc48c96a2f7a,2,wlan0]: call-p2p-cancel: failed with P2P cancel failed
  

Thanks for the work you've put into this. This is becoming a very usable platform for light notetaking on the go.

[samueldr]

@plabadens could you state whether you were using the patched _lts or _latest? And can you use uname -a to explicitly show the in-use kernel version? (Since this is automatically trying patches on top of whatever version is in Nixpkgs.)

I'm mostly curious about the exact situations things are verified to work :).

[plabadens]

I'm on _latest based on NixOS/nixpkgs@83d907f. Here's my uname -a output:

Linux ocelot 5.11.21 #1-NixOS SMP Fri May 14 08:50:20 UTC 2021 aarch64 GNU/Linux

Also, bluetooth seems busted somehow, but I need to investigate further.

[westurner]

Is there an at least somewhat distro-portable integration test script that tests all of the requisite modules?

• pip install pytest-cov
  https://pytest-cov.readthedocs.io/en/latest/reporting.html
• pip install testinfra
  testinfra is the default verifier in Ansible molecule ($ molecule verify); for verifying [post-configuration] system state as parametrizable pytest unit tests: https://testinfra.readthedocs.io/en/latest/examples.html#parametrize-your-tests
• python3 -m pip install --user "molecule[ansible,docker,lint]
  molecule + tox + [testinfra,]
  https://molecule.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ci.html#tox

[plabadens]

Also, bluetooth seems busted somehow, but I need to investigate further.

After deleting all leftover state in /var/lib/bluetooth, this is no longer an issue, and pairing works normally.

[samueldr]

Given that I have re-installed my system using Tow-Boot and this branch, successfully, and tested it a bit more. And given other users have verified there is no serious regression, or even any regression.

Let's merge this!