Re: Raspberry Pi Zero W almost useless

[Matthew Widup <widupmm%proton.me@localhost>]

I use one of these https://www.ebay.com/itm/113774031117?mkcid=16&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-127632-2357-0&ssspo=HZuLHORZQWm&sssrc=4429486&ssuid=rkGEi8qyQi6&var=&widget_ver=artemis&media=COPY

which is nearly as small as possible, and ridiculously cheap.  I don't normally advocate buying cheap things.

Granted I don't use it with a Pi.  I use it with my Pinebook Pro (actually multiples of them).  But it should work for the Pi just the same.


Sent with Proton Mail secure email.

On Thursday, January 25th, 2024 at 4:05 AM, Ramiro Aceves <ea1abz%gmail.com@localhost> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I have upgraded my raspberry pi Zero W board operating system to
> NetBSD-10.0_RC3 using sysupgrade for the sets. Previously I manually
> upgraded the kernel, firmware and dtbs (a bit tricky). No problem at
> all with that, but do you know if there are plans in the future to do
> kernel, dtb and firmware easier upgrades without having to vndconfig
> the installation image, mounting it and copy manually the files? Just
> curious...
> 
> 
> I see that WIFI bwfm driver works the same as bad as in 10.0_RC1. I
> have read that WIFI drivers are not very stable but I do not know
> whether what I am experiencing is normal or not. My system is doing
> nearly "nothing", at 30 minutes interval cron runs a wget command to
> download a little 2 byte file from https://ipv4.cloudns.net/ just to
> inform the DDNS system of my actual IP address. From time to time I
> loose network and I cannot longer have ssh access. In order to
> overcome that, I wrote a service that reboots the operating system
> when network does not work (better than nothing). The service
> registers in a file the uptime just before issuing the reboot command:
> 
> netbsd-raspa# cat /root/network_conn_test.log |grep day
> 
> 4:01AM up 3 days, 12:10, 0 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
> 12:43PM up 4 days, 23:43, 1 user, load averages: 1.00, 1.00, 0.91
> 4:01AM up 1 day, 15:18, 0 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
> 11:28AM up 1 day, 7:27, 1 user, load averages: 0.24, 0.32, 0.16
> 2:01AM up 2 days, 22:33, 0 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.02, 0.00
> 3:01AM up 1 day, 1 hr, 0 users, load averages: 0.03, 0.05, 0.02
> 5:01AM up 2 days, 2 hrs, 0 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
> 2:01AM up 2 days, 20:59, 0 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
> 2:01AM up 1 day, 0 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
> 5:01AM up 4 days, 2:59, 0 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.04
> 5:02AM up 2 days, 0 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
> 2:43PM up 1 day, 9:41, 0 users, load averages: 0.02, 0.05, 0.02
> 4:01AM up 2 days, 10:57, 0 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
> 9:25AM up 1 day, 5:23, 0 users, load averages: 0.08, 0.11, 0.05
> 4:01AM up 3 days, 11:27, 0 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
> 2:01AM up 2 days, 22 hrs, 0 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
> 5:01AM up 2 days, 3 hrs, 0 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
> 12:01PM up 1 day, 7:49, 1 user, load averages: 0.10, 0.14, 0.13
> 
> System do not last more than 4 days without loosing network. Sometimes
> it breaks in a few minutes:
> 
> netbsd-raspa# cat /root/network_conn_test.log |grep min
> 3:28AM up 2 mins, 0 users, load averages: 0.38, 0.24, 0.10
> 9:30AM up 5 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.03, 0.08, 0.04
> 12:18PM up 49 mins, 0 users, load averages: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
> 4:11AM up 2 mins, 0 users, load averages: 0.20, 0.16, 0.07
> 12:04PM up 3 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.23, 0.21, 0.09
> 1:28PM up 20 mins, 1 user, load averages: 0.22, 0.40, 0.25
> netbsd-raspa#
> 
> 
> It is difficult to download big files from the internet. If you try to
> download a for example 1 GB file, it is very probable that it breaks
> before 1/3 of the file transfer. That can be solved using wget -c
> option but it is very annoying.
> 
> It is very difficult to find a useful task for this board using
> NetBSD. For example I would like to setup a minidlna server to watch
> films but I have done that and it breaks after a few minutes. If you
> setup a lighttpd WEB server it will be anoying for the user if it
> reboots on the middle of WEB surfing...
> 
> I do not see anything useful in dmesg. Only the messages that follow
> the forced reboot issued by mi service:
> 
> ...
> ...
> 
> [ 1.410723] bwfm0: Found NVRAM file:
> brcmfmac43430-sdio.raspberrypi,model-zero-w.txt
> [ 1.410723] bwfm0: CLM file default: brcmfmac43430-sdio.clm_blob
> [ 1.410723] bwfm0: CLM file model-spec:
> brcmfmac43430-sdio.raspberrypi,model-zero-w.clm_blob
> [ 3.132473] bwfm0: CHIPACTIVE
> [ 3.232559] bwfm0: address b8:27:eb:ed:85:47
> [ 3.232559] bwfm0: wl0: Oct 23 2017 03:55:53 version 7.45.98.38
> (r674442 CY) FWID 01-e58d219f
> [ 14.405464] wsdisplay0: screen 4 added (default, vt100 emulation)
> [ 1197.386358] syncing disks... done
> [ 1197.436478] unmounting file systems...
> [ 1197.436478] unmounted tmpfs on /var/shm type tmpfs
> [ 1197.436478] unmounted procfs on /proc type procfs
> [ 1197.436478] unmounted ptyfs on /dev/pts type ptyfs
> [ 1197.436478] unmounted /dev/ld0e on /boot type msdos
> [ 1.000000] Copyright (c) 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003,
> [ 1.000000] 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013,
> [ 1.000000] 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023,
> [ 1.000000] 2024
> [ 1.000000] The NetBSD Foundation, Inc. All rights reserved.
> [ 1.000000] Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1993
> [ 1.000000] The Regents of the University of California. All
> rights reserved.
> 
> [ 1.000000] NetBSD 10.0_RC3 (RPI) #0: Tue Jan 16 08:28:51 UTC 2024
> [ 1.000000]
> mkrepro%mkrepro.NetBSD.org@localhost:/usr/src/sys/arch/evbarm/compile/RPI
> [ 1.000000] total memory = 448 MB
> [ 1.000000] avail memory = 429 MB
> [ 1.000000] timecounter: Timecounters tick every 10.000 msec
> [ 1.000000] Kernelized RAIDframe activated
> [ 1.000000] armfdt0 (root)
> [ 1.000000] simplebus0 at armfdt0: Raspberry Pi Zero W Rev 1.1
> [ 1.000000] simplebus1 at simplebus0
> [ 1.000000] simplebus2 at simplebus0
> [ 1.000000] simplebus3 at simplebus0
> [ 1.000000] cpus0 at simplebus0
> [ 1.000000] cpu0 at cpus0: 700 MHz ARM1176JZ-S r0p7 (ARM11J V6ZK core)
> [ 1.000000] cpu0: DC enabled IC enabled WB enabled LABT
> [ 1.000000] cpu0: L1 16KB/32B 4-way (128 set) VIPT Instruction cache
> [ 1.000000] cpu0: L1 16KB/32B 4-way (128 set) write-back-locking-C
> VIPT Data cache
> [ 1.000000] vfp0 at cpu0: VFP11, rounding, exceptions
> [ 1.000000] fclock0 at simplebus2: 19200000 Hz fixed clock (osc)
> [ 1.000000] fclock1 at simplebus2: 480000000 Hz fixed clock (otg)
> [ 1.000000] bcmicu0 at simplebus1
> ..
> ..
> ...
> 
> I am trying to use something different from Raspbian, I really like
> very much the simplicity and organization of NetBSD operating system,
> I have been playing and studying it during the last months and I love
> it but I think I cannot use it for something really useful in this
> Raspberry Pi Zero W board. Adding an ethernet adaptor even if it works
> makes no sense to me, the adaptor will have the cost and the size of
> the Zero W itself.
> 
> Do you think I have something wrong in my system or the bwfm driver is
> in such bad condition? Can I tweak something when loading the driver
> to improve the situation? Do you have an estimation of when the
> FreeBSD Wifi driver migration will be finished for that driver?
> 
> I appreciate very much your work.
> 
> Thanks
> Ramiro.