Replicant: First steps to wifi support
I don't know too much about smartphones and their underlying technology but the Replicant project seems to have made some very serious recent progress concerning official wifi support: http://redmine.replicant.us/boards/9/topics/13932?r=13982
If some of you happen to know more than me about smartphone driver programming, please help out to make this a reality as fast as possible as it would be a very crucial step for the whole project (I guess).
I don't get it. It says that you would have to install some nonofficial replicant image built by technoetic:
https://wiki.tehnoetic.com/doku.php?id=tehnoetic_wifi_replicant
Why not just hand over the free firmware for the wifi chip, since it's now obviously available?
Besides, why does the whole post never talk about firmware but just about some more convenient ways to set up a wifi connection?
I am a member!
The free firmware is the one packaged by Trisquel and it's linked in this section: https://wiki.tehnoetic.com/doku.php?id=tehnoetic_wifi_replicant#copy_free_firmware
However, without the ath9k_htc support in Replicant kernel, there is no driver to work with that firmware. To be able to build the ath9k_htc free driver in Replicant's Linux, reverting some older patches was needed, as detailed in the section:
https://wiki.tehnoetic.com/doku.php?id=tehnoetic_wifi_replicant#tehnoetic_wifi_patches
and committed to the Tehnoetic repository at git.replicant.us:
https://git.replicant.us/tehnoetic/kernel_samsung_smdk4412/tree/ath9k_htc
It takes several hours and about 50GB available space to build Replicant, so for user's convenience, until these patches are reviewed and merged in the Replicant code, we provide an image already built by Tehnoetic for the Galaxy S2.
http://tehnoetic.com/download/replicant-4.2-i9100-nonofficial-tehnoetic.zip
Using the same patch set we have been able to also build Replicant for Galaxy S3 and WiFi is more stable there. It seems that S3 hardware can handle better the power consumption peaks of the ath9k_htc-based WiFi dongles.
We'll soon upload the image for S3 and include Fil's accessibility scripts in the tutorial (which also work for the S3). As future development, we'll try to have Tehnoetic WiFi working on the upcoming Replicant 6.0 too.
For convenience, we intend to offer our customers Tehnoetic S2 and Tehnoetic S3 phones preinstalled with one of the Replicant variants below:
* Replicant 4.2
* Replicant 4.2 w/ Tehnoetic WiFi patches
* Replicant 4.2 w/ Tehnoetic WiFi patches and Fil's scripts
I think the main issue that has been solved by the poster on the Replicant forums is the following: "Warning! This modified nonofficial Replicant version is experimental and until this moment we haven't been able to get WiFi working after a reboot without reformatting /data partition.". Apparently, this seems to be the real news.
Ah wait... now I get it.
I was confused because tct was talking about atheros, while
http://redmine.replicant.us/projects/replicant/wiki/GalaxyS2I9100
this page states that the galaxy 2 has some broadcom chip in it.
Well, I think what's this post all about is the following:
you now can buy a usb wifi dongle, and with this, you finally can connect to wifi without proprietary software.
Am I correct?
I think this is a good step, however, I really think it should be stated in a more clear way.
My first guess was that the firmware for the original wifi chip got reverse engineered and is now usable without proprietary software, so I was quite disappointed, to be honest.
I'm the OP on Replicant's forum.
I'm sorry for your disappointment, and I'm sorry for the confusion.
To state things more clearly:
There is NO support for WiFi using the internal Broadcom chip (AFAIK).
There IS support though, using an external dongle and ath9k_htc free driver.
The whole point in my original post was to share my enthusiasm in having discovered that WiFi use is much easier than expected, and that it is more stable than people at Tehnoetic thought it was (e.g. no need to fully wipe /data after a crash).
I didn't mean to mislead people in thinking it has full support, and if I did, I make amends.
In a way, I understand your disappointment. On the other hand, I think it is still a big step forward, as it makes WiFi a reality in Replicant, like it has never been before.
I hope things are clear now. If not, just ask. I'll do my best to disperse any doubt!
Happy hacking!
Fil
P.S. I've added a notice above my original post in Replicant's forum, to make it clear it talks about an external dongle.
Hello Fil,
thank you for the clarification!
My disappointment was mainly due to a misunderstanding, it's not that your work / your results are disappointing in any way.
I do agree that it's a very good progress. At least we have the option of using a wifi dongle now.
This post was a bit misleading. I expected to see development on a free firmware for the Broadcom chip.
Apologies for misleading comments and thank you very much for your clarifications, Fil. I realize that having wifi dongle support is not "the real thing" yet but it's far better than nothing. Keep up the good work, guys!