How to manually switch wifi driver on OpenWrt

[lleachii]

OK, thank you that verifying nothing was wrong with the device.

@lleachii

@LarryPowel

$ iw list
nl80211 not found.

I spent a lot of time searching Google about this 'nl80211 not found'

Then we can proceed to this.

@LarryPowel

The problem seems to be the nl80211 driver being missing from what I can tell.

However, these packages are installed but there must be something missing in my config that is not using it

This is how I would match the packages (I'm aware you said you were making your own image, so do as you were doing on the second step):

• In the official firmware, run the command: opkg list-installed - this will show you the packages
• I would then use https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/ - to add them (this is where you would add them to your custom build) - if you have other packages. Otherwise, if there's no official packages you want to add on (or in the case of the Firmware Selector, is removed as you'll notice) it would be the same one on the downloads page.
• Done

Why check with the Firmware Selector?

To see if an official builder makes the image correctly. Test on your build machine and let us know your success.

See: https://firmware-selector.openwrt.org/?version=22.03.4&target=ramips%2Fmt76x8&id=glinet_gl-mt300n-v2

---

I also noticed:

@c0zzy

/lib/modules/4.14.63/mt7628.ko

Not sure what this is referencing, but this liekly will not work on current version of OpenWrt.

[LarryPowel]

Sounds good, thank you.

I've not used the firmware selector but I'll take a look at that. I think it means building a base image which I can also do using image builder, then add on from there.

As you know, I am running two identical routers, one with the official image and the other using mine.

I did compare the packages but was not able to determine which packages I had to add and remove to fix the problem.were in fact needed or which had to be removed on my build to get the correct wifi drivers/packages.

I'll work through that as best I can then update this post.

[LarryPowel]

It's finally solved.

There was a small conflict where I had to remove wpad-openssl in order to install wpad-mini.
I also had to install the necessary packages for wireless connectivity, including kmod-cfg80211, wpad-mini, mt76, kmod-mac80211, kmod-mt76-core and kmod-mt7603.

Then I loaded the necessary kernel modules using the modprobe command to enable the wireless card to function correctly. I checked the output of various commands, including lsmod, iwconfig, and ifconfig, to troubleshoot issues with the wireless interface and connectivity.

Once I got it running, I rebuilt my own build removing some of the packaged that should not be installed and adding the ones above.

Other than the packages, your suggestion to add the wwan interface into the network file again ended up resolving the issue.

I then set option metric so that wifi becomes the default route when enabled and gets dropped when wifi is shut down.

Thank you for your help and willingness to continue helping even if we didn't understand each other in the beginning. Very much appreciated.