We get signal!

[torkell]

*ding ding* Round three!

So this post has some clues, and reading back over it I have a vague recollection of seeing something similar before. The tl;dr is the kernel headers need to be processed to make them usable by userspace, and something about how that works has gone wrong.

Let's see if the instructions here work...

osmc@osmc:~/src$ wget https://cdn.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/v4.x/linux-4.19.55.tar.xz
osmc@osmc:~/src$ tar xf linux-4.19.55.tar.xz
osmc@osmc:~/src$ sudo rm -r /usr/src/rbp2-headers-4.19.55-6-osmc/include/linux/*
osmc@osmc:~/src$ sudo cp -ar linux-4.19.55/include/linux/* /usr/src/rbp2-headers-4.19.55-6-osmc/include/linux/
osmc@osmc:~/src$ cd rtl8812au/
osmc@osmc:~/src/rtl8812au$ make

That took a good 20 minutes and spat out plenty of warnings but seems to have actually built something! Memo to self: next time, add -j4 to make it use all four cores.

osmc@osmc:~/src/rtl8812au$ sudo make install
install -p -m 644 88XXau.ko  /lib/modules/4.19.55-6-osmc/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/
/sbin/depmod -a 4.19.55-6-osmc
osmc@osmc:~/src/rtl8812au$

Well, it did something... but I don't think it actually loaded the driver. Certainly it's not in lsmod or ifconfig -a. Hmm...

osmc@osmc:~/src/rtl8812au$ sudo modprobe 88XXau
osmc@osmc:~/src/rtl8812au$ dmesg | tail
[   12.641865] Console: switching to colour dummy device 80x30
[   27.421305] random: crng init done
[   27.421335] random: 7 urandom warning(s) missed due to ratelimiting
[   41.099403] logitech-hidpp-device 0003:046D:404D.0004: HID++ 4.1 device connected.
[ 2543.899806] cfg80211: Loading compiled-in X.509 certificates for regulatory database
[ 2543.936878] cfg80211: Loaded X.509 cert 'sforshee: 00b28ddf47aef9cea7'
[ 2543.958637] 88XXau: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
[ 2543.978195] platform regulatory.0: Direct firmware load for regulatory.db failed with error -2
[ 2543.978226] cfg80211: failed to load regulatory.db
[ 2544.237245] usbcore: registered new interface driver rtl88xxau
osmc@osmc:~/src/rtl8812au$ ifconfig -a
eth0: flags=-28605<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST,DYNAMIC>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.137.240  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.137.255
        ether b8:27:eb:4a:e3:88  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 83625  bytes 108947299 (103.9 MiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 42020  bytes 9260750 (8.8 MiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 1000  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

wlan0: flags=4098<BROADCAST,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        ether d0:37:45:35:d6:5d  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

Win!

Now to configure it, I think the route to take through the UI is My OSMC -> Network... and there it is! Actually connecting is rather anti-climatic after all that: select the wifi network, enter the passphrase, and it happily connects and finds an IP address. It doesn't seem to have detected a default gateway though - possibly that's because it's still got an ethernet connection via Nyx. So let's try disabling that... and it now updates with the router as the default gateway.

So, I now have OSMC running on a Raspberry Pi 2 with USB 802.11ac wifi. It'll probably all fall apart as and when I update and the kernel changes but I can deal with that when it happens.

Next challenge is getting the TV Hat to work!