[Solved] I think *I* messed up my wifi.

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eyefire
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[Solved] I think *I* messed up my wifi.

Post by eyefire » Mon Jul 02, 2018 9:47 am

I was having wifi issues. I covered the wifi chip with Kapton tape and filed down the solder points on the analog volume board, also covered that with Kapton tape, and everything worked great.

Then, for some dumb reason, I did an OS update. and now wifi is gone. I assume this is because the wifi chip is not part of the pi distro.

Any way to fix this or is it just time to re-image the SD card?

Thanks!
Last edited by eyefire on Mon Jul 09, 2018 2:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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kite
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Re: I think *I* messed up my wifi.

Post by kite » Tue Jul 03, 2018 2:17 am

Yep, the wifi module is not included in the standard pi kernel, it's an optional thing (still in the pi kernel source though, but needs to be compiled). I should probably make a note of this somewhere to warn people about it!

In order to compile it you need network (to download all the required files) so perhaps that's not the easiest method.. in order of simplicity, you can do the following:

1. Re-image (super easy)

2. Image a NEW SD card and boot in to it, then do `find / | grep 8723bs` which will find a file like rtl8723bs.ko .. you can then copy it to /boot so you can then plug it in to a PC and retrieve this file. You then can put it into your ORIGINAL SD card, boot, and then copy the file from /boot into the same path as you originally got it from (the only bit in the file path that will change will be the kernel version). Then run `depmod -a` and reboot. If it doesn't work you may need to run the Circuit-Sword `update.sh` script (which will add some other files for wifi back in). - WARNING: This might not actually work, because the .ko file was compiled for a slightly older kernel version!! There is a slim chance that it will, but any instability will be because they are non-compatible versions..

3. Checkout the kernel source, add the RTL8723BS package to the menuconfig, compile that module only, install that module (this isn't particularly easy! Do not follow these steps, but they are the kind of steps you would need to follow: https://github.com/kiteretro/Circuit-Sw ... kernel.txt)

:)

There may be some way that I can pre-compile these modules for various versions and the update script will install them.. you will still need network though so it's a bit of a catch 22..
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eyefire
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Re: I think *I* messed up my wifi.

Post by eyefire » Tue Jul 03, 2018 8:58 am

There may be another option?

I have a new 64gig SD card i wanted to upgrade to anyways. Would it be possible to image this new card, boot off it, then mount my old sd in a usb to sd card reader and copy my old retro pi files over?

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Re: I think *I* messed up my wifi.

Post by eyefire » Tue Jul 03, 2018 9:31 am

One more question, would it be possible to connect to some kind of USB -> LAN adapter then backup the pi directory?

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Re: I think *I* messed up my wifi.

Post by kite » Tue Jul 03, 2018 9:50 am

Yes you can do both, you could also use a USB wifi adapter, just make sure wifi is enabled with the button combo
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Re: I think *I* messed up my wifi.

Post by eyefire » Tue Jul 03, 2018 11:16 am

oh, of corse. hah. I have a bunch of wifi adapters for another pi project. That will solve my problems.

Thanks again kite!

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Re: I think *I* messed up my wifi.

Post by eyefire » Wed Jul 04, 2018 10:43 am

Just a follow up in case anyone else ends up in a similar situation.

I tried a number of USB wifi adapters. Nothing seemed to work automatically (and they used up my one USB port on the circuit sword, so I could not use a keyboard at the same time).

Instead of getting out a hub I ended up taking the SD card and placing it in another Pi3 I had laying around and plugging that into the LAN, then used SFTP to connect from my desktop.

All files are backing up now, then I will transfer them back over to the new, larger, SD card with Kite's image on it.

Thanks again for the help.

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Re: I think *I* messed up my wifi.

Post by noebl1 » Sat Jul 07, 2018 9:28 am

Thanks for this, I was trying to figure out why Wifi died after I updated it too. It wouldn't work for me copying the file over. I think I'm going to reimage, restore my backed up folder and then install any kernel headers and required things before updating so I can rebuild kernel as needed.

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