NetworkManager Compatibility with NXP SDIO Wi-Fi (mwifiex) Driver – Device is Unmanaged (AM62x )

laxmanbradfit07

Hello NXP Team,

We are using an embedded board (#AM62ax) with the following Wi-Fi hardware and BSP stack:

Wi-Fi Chipset: NXP/Marvell SDIO Wi-Fi (log output below suggests 88W8997/88W8801 or similar)
Bus Interface: SDIO (mmc2)
Kernel Driver: Vendor-provided MWLAN (not mainline mwifiex_sdio)
Firmware: Loads nxp/sduart_nw61x_v1.bin.se at boot
Wi-Fi Interfaces: wlan0 (STA), uap0 (AP)
Dmesg highlights:

[ 5.149095] mmc2: new ultra high speed SDR104 SDIO card at address 0001
[ 5.674110] wlan: Register to Bus Driver...
[ 6.064747] Wlan: FW download over, firmwarelen=1004248 downloaded 916048
[ 6.468878] WLAN FW is active
[ 6.523621] Register NXP 802.11 Adapter wlan0
[ 6.537666] wlan: version = SDIW612---18.99.2.p66.17-MM6X18437.p3-GPL-(FP92)
[ 6.553290] wlan: Driver loaded successfully

Issue:

We are attempting to manage Wi-Fi via NetworkManager (using nmcli and libnm APIs) to enable dynamic Wi-Fi interface control (scan, connect, AP mode) from our application layer.

Problem observed:

nmcli device status shows wlan0 as “disconnected”, and nmcli device wifi can scan networks.
But when attempting to connect, we receive:
csharp
CopyEdit
Error: Connection activation failed: The device is unmanaged because the link is not initialized by udev.
dmesg reports “IOCTL failed” and "Block woal_cfg80211_del_key in abnormal driver state".
After several scan/connect attempts, the driver/firmware resets and wlan0 disappears.

Manual method works:

If we bring up Wi-Fi using manual scripts (wpa_supplicant, iw, hostapd), everything works as expected—association, scan, and AP mode.

Questions:

Is the NXP/Marvell SDIO MWLAN/mwifiex driver officially supported for NetworkManager management?
If not, is there a recommended path for robust dynamic Wi-Fi management on this hardware?
Are there BSP/driver updates or configuration changes needed to enable NM support, or should we restrict to manual scripts as per current documentation?

Board logs and more details available if needed.

Thank you for clarifying,

Laxman.

jimmychan

Yes, we recommend to use manual scripts (wpa_supplicant, iw, hostapd) for the Wifi connection.