Buildroot - RPI3 - Find the BCM43438 firmware to enable wireless

Question

i'm a beginner. i use a RPI3 and a buildroot build system and try to enable wireless.

I followed several links without success.

In particulary, i followed this link : https://delog.wordpress.com/2014/10/10/wireless-on-raspberry-pi-with-buildroot/

and verify my linux kernel wireless options are activated, but no results.

However, the options i used on the buildroot . config file seems to be good :

debian-host:/build/buildroot# egrep -i "wireless|wpa|80211"  .config
# BR2_PACKAGE_WIRELESS_REGDB is not set
BR2_PACKAGE_WIRELESS_TOOLS=y
BR2_PACKAGE_WIRELESS_TOOLS_LIB=y
BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT=y
BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_NL80211=y
BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_AP_SUPPORT=y
BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_WIFI_DISPLAY=y
# BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_MESH_NETWORKING is not set
BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_AUTOSCAN=y
BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_EAP=y
BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_HOTSPOT=y
BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_DEBUG_SYSLOG=y
BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_WPS=y
BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_CLI=y
BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_WPA_CLIENT_SO=y
BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_PASSPHRASE=y
# BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_DBUS_OLD is not set
# BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_DBUS_NEW is not set
BR2_PACKAGE_WPAN_TOOLS=y

I installed a minibian an another rpi3, i noticed a firmware was used and i installed it by a :

apt-get install firmware-brcm80211

If the firmware is not installed, I noticed that iwlist wlan0 scan have empty results. On my RPI3-buildroot-system, after booting, lsmod show no modules. I need to load manually by modprobe or by /etc/modules. So i load the same modules used on minibian, so i did (i loaded bluetooth mods also)

uname -a
Linux pi3 4.9.13-rt12-v7 #1 SMP Mon Mar 20 14:04:21 CET 2017 armv7l GNU/Linux

pwd
/lib/modules/4.9.13-rt12-v7/kernel/drivers

find . -name "*brcm*.ko"
./net/wireless/broadcom/brcm80211/brcmfmac/brcmfmac.ko
./net/wireless/broadcom/brcm80211/brcmutil/brcmutil.ko

modprobe 8192cu
modprobe brcmfmac
modprobe brcmutil
modprobe hci_uart
modprobe bnep

and the lsmod show :

lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
8192cu                581125  0
hci_uart               19956  0 
btbcm                   7992  1 hci_uart
bnep                   12051  0 
bluetooth             364941  3 hci_uart,btbcm,bnep
brcmfmac              222136  0 
brcmutil                9156  1 brcmfmac
cfg80211              543530  1 brcmfmac
rfkill                 20944  2 bluetooth,cfg80211
ipv6                  405794 18 [permanent]

but

iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0     Interface doesn't support scanning.

I don't arrive to have the same result as my minibian distro with my apt-get ..

What is the way to retrieve the buildroot process to have the same result that on my minibian ?

I've forget something ?

Thanks for helping me.

Answer 1

When using make menuconfig, enable rpi-wifi-firmware under Target packages > Hardware handling > Firmware to include the firmware files.

Answer 2

For WiFi on the Raspberry Pi, you need to enable the following packages in your defconfig file :

BR2_PACKAGE_WPA_SUPPLICANT=y
BR2_PACKAGE_RPI_WIFI_FIRMWARE=y

If you want to reference any other things, I have an older buildroot external tree here for the Raspberry Pi.