piCore WiFi

Under Construction

There are several options to obtain the needed extensions to get WiFi working.
The easiest is to connect the RPi with an Ethernet cable to Internet.
You can than use `tce-load -wi <extension-name>` to install them.

Below the steps to first download the needed extensions to an USB-stick and install them from there.

The needed files depend on the type of RPi and if you have a 32-bit (armhf) or 64-bit (aarch64) piCore OS.

You will need additional USB and possible driver extensions to get external Wifi adapters to work.

• Obtain the .tcz and .tcz.md5.txt and .tcz.dep (if available) files of the following extensions, and their dependencies (like specified in the .dep file):
  • The generic list
    • firmware-rpi-wifi.tcz
    • wireless_tools.tcz
    • wpa_supplicant.tcz
    • wifi.tcz
      
      
• The next extension needs to match the kernel version and for the RPi5 you need to use the 16K version.
  If using the tce commands you can use the KERNEL keyword to get the correct version.
  • RPi3
    • wireless-6.6.47-piCore-v8.tcz
    • wireless-KERNEL.tcz
  • RPi5
    • wireless-6.6.47-piCore-v8-16k.tcz
    • wireless-KERNEL.tcz
      
  • and put them on a FAT32 usb-stick.
    
    

• Insert the USB-stick in the RPi and mount the USB-stick to a mount-point (e.g. /mnt/sda1).
  • verify with 'dmesg' the device path (e.g. /dev/sda1).
  • verify with 'ls' if a proper mount-point exist.
    • ls /
    • ls /mnt
  • create a mount-point if one doesn't exist or if an additional one is needed.
    • mkdir -p /mnt/sda1
  • verify with 'mount' if the mount-point is not already in use.
  • sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1/
    

• Copy all needed files to the optional directory in tce
  • Adapt the source path to match the correct location of your files.
  • cp /mnt/sda1/64bit/16.x/* /mnt/mmcblk0p2/tce/optional/
    
    

• tce-load -i firmware-rpi-wifi.tcz 
  tce-load -i wifi.tcz

• sudo vi /mnt/mmcblk0p2/tce/onboot.lst
  add:

  firmware-rpi-wifi.tcz
  wifi.tcz

• sudo vi /opt/.filetool.lst
  add:

  etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

  
  
  

• Manually execute 'sudo wifi.sh' select and configure an access point.
  This will create a 'wifi.db' file.

Once the wifi.db file is created you can connect to this WiFi access-point automatically at bootup by adding below line in the bootlocal script.

• sudo vi /opt/bootlocal.sh
  add:

  wifi.sh -a &> /home/tc/wifi.log &

• backup
  
  

• According the RN's it might be needed, and it looks to have solved my instability issues with both the RPi3 and RPi5.
  • sudo mount /dev/mmcblk0p1 /mnt/mmcblk0p1
  • sudo vi /mnt/mmcblk0p1/cmdline.txt
    add:
    

    brcmfmac.feature_disable=0x82000