WiFi gone after reboot

MNT Pocket Reform
1

Hello. My very active Linux days are a bit in the past, so please forgive …

I installed git and gcc on Pocket Reform today, via WiFi. Afterwards, I rebooted the machine, and WiFi was gone.

I believe I recall seeing some messages about a new boot.scr right before I rebooted, but didn’t pay attention (my bad definitely).

What can I do to analyse the issue, and get WiFi back?

2

There was mention of WiFi issues after installing certain packages recently: MNT Pocket Reform Essentials

Maybe that’s it?

1 Like
3

Yes, very probable. In the initial system image that was flashed on the Pocket Reforms, we didn’t have a hook in place that would update the reform-qcacld2 package automatically when there is a kernel package upgrade, and gcc and other compilers automatically pull in a kernel upgrade (via libc-dev). In the meantime we have a (somewhat hacky) hook that updates reform-qcacld2 in lockstep, but you need to upgrade this package manually once (or do apt update && apt upgrade once after initial setup to just upgrade everything.

Long story short, you need to upgrade the package reform-qcacld2 to get WiFi back. Some ways to do that:

  • tether via USB to a phone
  • tether via Bluetooth to a phone
  • use the iX industrial Ethernet port if you have an adapter cable
  • use a USB Ethernet dongle on one of the USB-C ports
  • download the .deb from the repo Index of /reform-debian-repo/pool/main/r/reform-qcacld2/ on another computer and ship it to Pocket Reform via a MicroSD card or USB stick and install it using sudo dpkg -i reform-qcacld2*.deb.
4 Likes
4

Thank you, Esther and Lukas - note to self: always read the entire available documentation. I’ll keep this in mind.

Upgrading the package manually did the trick. Thanks!

2 Likes