Wifi dissapeared after image update on iMX7ULPEVK

[pmic]

When starting the i.MX7ulp evk (evaluation board) with the supplied sd-card everything was working fine on the wifi side, I could connect and had proper internet connection. Some other things weren't so great and I realized the image was from may 2018, so I decided to flash the sd-card with the newest image from the NXP website being this one:

Linux imx7ulpevk 4.19.35-1.1.0+g0f9917c56d59

Flashing went fine. The board booted properly. It seems the things that didn't work before were working now. Except for the wifi. The board features the QCA9377 for wifi and bluetooth support.

ifconfig doesn't show any wlan0 device.

iwconfig isn't installed and says "command not found"

in dmesg I can't find any reference to the device not being installed or being installed.

The image on the sd-card is imx-image-full-imx7ulpevk.sdcard from the package file downloaded directly from nxp. I can't really understand why an earlier image worked, and this one doesn't. I think there are 3 options:

- I flashed the wrong image, and should try another one supplied

- When flashing it this way there's extra steps to set it up, which I so far couldn't find anywhere

- The package is missing support which was featured earlier (which I seriously can't imagine, but who knows)

Output when following the standard linux wlan0 setup:

imx7ulpevk:/dev# wpa_supplicant -B -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -D
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
Could not read interface wlan0 flags: No such device
nl80211: Driver does not support authentication/association or connect commands
nl80211: deinit ifname=wlan0 disabled_11b_rates=0
Could not read interface wlan0 flags: No such device
wlan0: Failed to initialize driver interface
root@imx7ulpevk:/dev#

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Regards,
Mic

[kunalkotecha1 · Accepted solution]

Hi pmic,

It is because the newer Linux BSP is for the i.MX7ULP EVKB. i.MX7ULP EVKB has  Murata 1-DX CYW43430 Wi-Fi support instead of QCA9377. So, the BSP has firmware file for CYW43430 instead of QCA9377. You might be using the previous revision of i.MX7ULP EVK so older BSP used to have the firmware file for QCA9377.

For further details, please refer to the Release note and i.MX Linux Reference Manual. Please find the attached documents for your reference.

Regards,

Kunal

[pmic]

Thank you very much for your helpful reply.

I would like to take this opportunity to express my annoyance over the lack of information with regards to these kind of changes. Of course it might be in some releasenote somewhere, but for somebody holding the board for the first time and trying to kick it off with the supplied software, this can be a major holdup.

I would also like to note that it's a big no-no in my book not making a new image backwards compatible with all older boards that are already in the field, is it really that hard to just leave the old driver in there as well?....

Boards like this are sold for "rapid development". The first experience has only slowed me down so far.