Atheros AR9271 not working with zero 3w - diferent OS

#1

HI Everyone.

I have a Radxa zero 3w (8Gb, 64 eMMC on board).

When I connect the usb wifi dongle to the usb 3.0 port, the dongle is not recognized.
I tried to install the atheros firmware without any luck.

I tried with different OS with the same no luck result:

  • Radxa Official OS, kernel 5.10.160 and Debian 11
  • Armbian OS, kernel 6.1.75, Debian 12
  • DietPi, kernel 5.10.160 and Debian 12

To ensure that the dongle is working fine, I tried it with a Raspberry Pi 5 (8Gb), with the official raspberry pi OS 64 bit-Debian 12, and the dongle is recognized without problems and work as expected and stable.

Is there anthing I can do to allow the dongle working on the Radxa zero 3w?

Thank ou for your help.

#2

Maybe the driver is not turned on.

#3

Thank you @Nasca for the fast response.
I checked on my Radxa if driver is enabled by doing:

  • lsmod | grep ath9k => empty result
  • modprobe ath9k => FATAL result

, that telling me that modules for my usb dongle are not enabled.

ThenI checked if they are enable in my current kernel by running:

  • zcat /proc/config.gz | grep ATH9K => “# CONFIG_ATH9K is not set” and “# CONFIG_ATH9K_HTC is not set”

If I am not wrong, all of this returned form the command, are saying that drivers are not in the kernel.
So I think the only way to get them is to recompile kernel by enabling the drivers in the kernel config.

If I am on the right track, could you please help me to identify where to find the correct kernel (5.10.160-38-rk356x for arm64) in the radxa github? and if is it better to make it as a module or in the kernel?

Any help and suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thank you.

#4

you can refer to this guide to recompile the kernel

#5

  1. you need to pull the kernel source by the cmd “./bsp linux rk356x -r99”

  2. then, add the configs you need to the file bsp/linux/rk356x/kconfig.conf

  3. finally, recompile the source by the cmd “./bsp linux rk356x -r99 --no-prepare-source”

#6

Hello @Nasca.

Thank you for your help.

I will try to follow the way you described, then I will give an update.

Thank you for your help.

#7

–Update

Hello @Nasca. Many thanks for your help, I was able to make my ATHEROS AR9271 dongle to work properly within the zero 3w.

I write here a step-by-step, so to help other members of the community in case of they go to the same process.

  1. following the shared doc to prepare the environment
    https://docs.radxa.com/en/zero/zero3/low-level-dev/kernel to prepare the environment.

sudo apt update

sudo apt install -y git qemu-user-static binfmt-support

// I skept the Podman stuff since it was not able to find the
podman-docker

git clone --recurse-submodules https://github.com/radxa-repo/bsp.git

cd bsp
. /bsp
./bsp linux rk356x -r99
(I ran everzthing on the zero 3w, and this step required hours)

  1. modiy the kconf.conf file

sudo nano bsp/linux/rk356x/kconfig.conf

add this lines at the end then save
# Enable support for Atheros AR9171 and ATH9K drivers
CONFIG_ATH9K=y # Enables the ATH9K driver, which supports Atheros 802.11n wireless cards.
CONFIG_ATH9K_HTC=y # Enables the support for Atheros HTC-based USB adapters (such as AR9171).
CONFIG_ATH9K_PCI=y # Enables PCI and PCIe support for Atheros wireless adapters.
CONFIG_ATH9K_COMMON=y # Shared functionality for the ATH9K driver.
CONFIG_ATH_COMMON=y # Common Atheros driver code used by multiple Atheros drivers.

(don|t know if needed but I did)
sudo apt install firmware-atheros

  1. recompile the source

./bsp linux rk356x -r99 --no-prepare-source

  1. install the two deb packages

sudo dpkg -i /home/rock/bsp/linux-image-5.10.160-99-rk356x_5.10.160-99_arm64.deb

sudo dpkg -i /home/rock/bsp/linux-headers-5.10.160-99-rk356x_5.10.160-99_arm64.deb

  1. reboot

sudo reboot now

After all the above steps, the zero 3w rebooted correctly and can detect and use the wifi dongle :wink:

Thank you for your help.

1 Like
#8

Thank you for sharing.