Update brcmfmac43455-sdio for rpi3b+/a+

[Jonathan Cave]

The firmware identified is used on Raspberry Pi devices that are reference devices for Ubuntu Core. The firmware currently carried in Bionic is quite old:

brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware version = wl0: Mar 1 2015 07:29:38 version 7.45.18 (r538002) FWID 01-6a2c8ad4

For comparison Raspbian has:

brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware version = wl0: Feb 27 2018 03:15:32 version 7.45.154 (r684107 CY) FWID 01-4fbe0b04

Could the newer firmware be made available in bionic updates?

[Seth Forshee (sforshee)]

For SRU we need a justification -- fixing specific bugs, important new functionality, etc. Having "quite old" firmware is not sufficient justification. If you wish for newer firmware to be included in bionic please specify what bugs or features necessitate the update.

We also have to be sure that the firmware has been licensed in a way that allows distribution in our linux-firmware package. We can be sure that the firmware in upstream linux-firmware has been, but we've found in the past that sometimes the licensing situation with raspi firmware files is unclear. Please specify which specific firmware files are required, and if not from upstream linux-firmware what license they have for distribution. Thanks!

[Jonathan Cave (jocave)]

Thanks for the info, I wasn't aware of what policy was for firmware.

As far as I can tell this firmware is all non-free, for example it appears to come from this repo https://github.com/RPi-Distro/firmware-nonfree and be in a non-free package in debian: https://packages.debian.org/sid/firmware-brcm80211. You would have to let me know what constitutes upstream for linux-firmware.

At this time I'm just investigating why we see regular failures on some of our devices when attempting to connect to APs in our certification lab, but haven't been able to identify any cause or solid reproduction scenario as yet. Given I spotted this information I thought I would raise it in case it was an omission.

[Seth Forshee (sforshee)]

On Fri, May 10, 2019 at 03:19:01PM -0000, Jonathan Cave wrote:
> Thanks for the info, I wasn't aware of what policy was for firmware.

It's the same as for the rest of the distro.

> As far as I can tell this firmware is all non-free, for example it
> appears to come from this repo https://github.com/RPi-Distro/firmware-
> nonfree and be in a non-free package in debian:
> https://packages.debian.org/sid/firmware-brcm80211. You would have to
> let me know what constitutes upstream for linux-firmware.

This is upstream:

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/

There are updates to brcmfmac firmware files since bionic, but I'm not
sure which specific files raspi2 uses.

> At this time I'm just investigating why we see regular failures on some
> of our devices when attempting to connect to APs in our certification
> lab, but haven't been able to identify any cause or solid reproduction
> scenario as yet. Given I spotted this information I thought I would
> raise it in case it was an omission.

We've had repeated requests for raspi2 firmware files, but most of the
time there isn't a clear license for distribution.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for linux-firmware (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]