USB wifi and Bluetooth dongles under GUIX

USB wifi and Bluetooth dongles under GUIX

[Daniel Hatton]

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On switching distros to GUIX a couple of weeks ago, I had what I guess 
is the not uncommon experience that my laptop's internal wifi and 
Bluetooth interfaces needed proprietary firmware and therefore wouldn't 
work with Linux-libre.  No problem, I thought: I bought USB wifi and 
Bluetooth dongles that were known Linux-libre-compatible.  I have three 
residual problems which I'm hoping the community can help with, please:

- The wifi connection drops with even the lightest of physical touches 
on the body of the dongle (Atheros AR9271), and because the dongle 
sticks out a long way from the laptop case, it gets touched a lot.  Has 
anyone had any joy with a Linux-libre-driven USB wifi dongle that 
doesn't have these properties?
- One or both of the dongles is frequently stopping the machine from 
resuming successfully from sleep.  I can find instructions online for 
how to configure systemd to handle awkward USB devices during 
sleep/wake; are there equivalent instructions for shepherd, please?
- I've tried following the instructions in the GUIX reference manual for 
how to configure the system to activate Bluetooth at boot time, but with 
no joy: I still have to activate Bluetooth manually after logging in to 
Gnome.  Any advice on this, please?

-- 

Kind regards,

Dan Hatton

		Dr. Daniel C. Hatton

E-mail:		<dan.hatton@btinternet.com>

SIP:		<dan.hatton@sip.linphone.org>
Signal:		dch.28

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Re: USB wifi and Bluetooth dongles under GUIX

[Andreas Enge]

Hello Daniel,

Am Thu, Sep 19, 2024 at 12:53:48PM +0100 schrieb Daniel Hatton:
> - The wifi connection drops with even the lightest of physical touches on
> the body of the dongle (Atheros AR9271), and because the dongle sticks out a
> long way from the laptop case, it gets touched a lot.  Has anyone had any
> joy with a Linux-libre-driven USB wifi dongle that doesn't have these
> properties?

yes, but unfortunately I cannot suggest a particular brand. I have bought
a random, rather large and rather cheap external Atheros dongle years ago,
and it just works. I have even somewhat twisted the metal part of the USB
plug, and it still works.

dmesg says this:
[80900.045953] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0cf3, idProduct=9271, bcdDevice= 1.08
[80900.045976] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=16, Product=32, SerialNumber=48
[80900.045986] usb 1-2: Product: USB2.0 WLAN
[80900.045993] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: ATHEROS
[80900.046000] usb 1-2: SerialNumber: 12345
[80900.050769] usb 1-2: ath9k_htc: Firmware ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw requested
[80900.051561] usb 1-2: Direct firmware load for ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw failed with error -2
[80900.051594] usb 1-2: ath9k_htc: Firmware htc_9271.fw requested
[80900.344754] usb 1-2: ath9k_htc: Transferred FW: htc_9271.fw, size: 51008
[80900.595747] ath9k_htc 1-2:1.0: ath9k_htc: HTC initialized with 33 credits
[80900.909903] ath9k_htc 1-2:1.0: ath9k_htc: FW Version: 1.4
[80900.909921] ath9k_htc 1-2:1.0: FW RMW support: On
[80900.909929] ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x809c
[80900.909935] ath: EEPROM indicates we should expect a country code
[80900.909940] ath: doing EEPROM country->regdmn map search
[80900.909943] ath: country maps to regdmn code: 0x52
[80900.909948] ath: Country alpha2 being used: CN
[80900.909953] ath: Regpair used: 0x52
[80900.917053] ieee80211 phy1: Atheros AR9271 Rev:1
[80900.921398] ath9k_htc 1-2:1.0 wlp0s20f0u2: renamed from wlan0

I have tried bluetooth, but just enabling it in the service part of my
system definition did not make it work, and I was not motivated enough to
spend time debugging.

Similarly for the sleeping function.

Andreas

Re: USB wifi and Bluetooth dongles under GUIX

[Daniel Hatton]

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On 20/09/2024 17:21, Andreas Enge wrote:

> yes, but unfortunately I cannot suggest a particular brand. I have bought
> a random, rather large and rather cheap external Atheros dongle years ago,
> and it just works. I have even somewhat twisted the metal part of the USB
> plug, and it still works.
> 
> dmesg says this:
> [80900.045953] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0cf3, idProduct=9271, bcdDevice= 1.08

Thanks.  Yep, 0cf3:9271 is the same model I've got.  It works, just a 
bit flaky and rather obtrusive.

-- 

Kind regards,

Dan Hatton

		Dr. Daniel C. Hatton

E-mail:		<dan.hatton@btinternet.com>

SIP:		<dan.hatton@sip.linphone.org>
Signal:		dch.28


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Re: USB wifi and Bluetooth dongles under GUIX

[Efraim Flashner]

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On Fri, Sep 20, 2024 at 05:30:26PM +0100, Daniel Hatton wrote:
> On 20/09/2024 17:21, Andreas Enge wrote:
> 
> > yes, but unfortunately I cannot suggest a particular brand. I have bought
> > a random, rather large and rather cheap external Atheros dongle years ago,
> > and it just works. I have even somewhat twisted the metal part of the USB
> > plug, and it still works.
> > 
> > dmesg says this:
> > [80900.045953] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=0cf3, idProduct=9271, bcdDevice= 1.08
> 
> Thanks.  Yep, 0cf3:9271 is the same model I've got.  It works, just a bit
> flaky and rather obtrusive.

I occasionally use a ~15 cm USB extender and then plug the wifi stick
into that. I've found that it's just long enough that I can tuck it
behind the screen where I'm less likely to tap it.

-- 
Efraim Flashner   <efraim@flashner.co.il>   רנשלפ םירפא
GPG key = A28B F40C 3E55 1372 662D  14F7 41AA E7DC CA3D 8351
Confidentiality cannot be guaranteed on emails sent or received unencrypted

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Re: USB wifi and Bluetooth dongles under GUIX: SOLVED

[Daniel Hatton]

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On 19/09/2024 12:53, Daniel Hatton wrote:

> - The wifi connection drops with even the lightest of physical touches 
> on the body of the dongle (Atheros AR9271), and because the dongle 
> sticks out a long way from the laptop case, it gets touched a lot.  Has 
> anyone had any joy with a Linux-libre-driven USB wifi dongle that 
> doesn't have these properties? > - One or both of the dongles is frequently stopping the machine from
> resuming successfully from sleep.  I can find instructions online for 
> how to configure systemd to handle awkward USB devices during 
> sleep/wake; are there equivalent instructions for shepherd, please?

The two problems above are now SOLVED, by ditching the Atheros AR9271 
dongle and replacing it with a ThinkPenguin TPE-N150USB, which appears 
to have the same chipset but doesn't exhibit the problems.

> - I've tried following the instructions in the GUIX reference manual for 
> how to configure the system to activate Bluetooth at boot time, but with 
> no joy: I still have to activate Bluetooth manually after logging in to 
> Gnome.  Any advice on this, please?

This is also now SOLVED, as discussed in the thread culminating in 
<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/help-guix/2024-11/msg00143.html>.



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