Wireless on R8000P

I just installed Openwrt 21.02.2 on my R8000P. Working fine so far, BUT:
The wireless seems not to be detected. From different discussions I read that the BCM4365E wifi chipset seems to be supported by the brcmfmac, but there are no kernel modules available?
Also, running lspci gives no output?

Anyone with hints what needs to be done to get this running?

Dirk

AFAIK there's a brcmsmac and brcmfmac kmod packages + firmwares available.

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fwiw

https://forum.openwrt.org/t/installing-on-netgear-r8000p/106802

Thanks @bill888 for that link. I already read that one and it was a great help to get to the point where I opened this new topic. Unfortunately, the question I put here is not answered in the referred thread as well. Moreover, that old thread moves over to different models throughout the discussion.

The problem remains: There are packages for the firmware brcmfmac, but no kmod packages for it to install. As stated earlier: lspci lists no devices also, so that I cannot refer to the wireless devices in the wireless config (which I think I would need to, as this is the way my other, different device is working)

So, again: Anybody who can give me a hint to either get to the missing modules or what needs to be configured on the R8000P to get its wireless up and running?

you sure ?

@frollic yes, I am sure:

seems, for the target bcm4908 there are no kmod-bcrm* packages. I just also checked the download section on openwrt.org for the target: no such files. But I don't know, why

@frollic: yes, I am sure.

seems, for the target bcm4908 there are no kmod-bcrm* packages. I just also checked the download section on openwrt.org for the target: no such files. But I don't know, why

Unless Broadcom does not allow firmware to be distributed in a release, I'm surprised, the modules were not included in the release. I did find kmod-bcma *.ipk here:
https://downloads.openwrt.org/releases/21.02.1/targets/bcm4908/generic/kmods/5.4.154-1-94c793f41c431abdb7e95a50e5a78a2c/

21.02.2 has them also.

@shep right, the kmod-bcma is the only one; but as you see, there is no kmod-brcmfmac or kmod-brcmsmac available. Looks like those were omitted for that target for some reason

@DPauli The 22.03.0 image was just a couple weeks ago, which appears to have support for the R8000P. Any chance you've been able to get Wi-Fi to work on your R8000P? There now appear to be kmod-brcm packages available.

Index of /releases/22.03.0/targets/bcm4908/generic/kmods/5.10.138-1-4cce254dbed1507b53719e9c06735c0d/ (openwrt.org)

@Atamido I tried the new version on the R8000P and found some kmods that look like they would support the broadcom wifi hardware.

Unfortunately, they don't (or at least, I found no way to get it working). Seems like, the BCM4365E chipset seems to be still unsupported. lspci shows nothing and so, the router is still capable only handling wired connections.

That's really a pity as this device is powerful enough to handle even 1Gbit connections and quite cheap to get. But without wireless support, it is pretty useless for me.

This is less a failure of OpenWrt and more a failure of Broadcom for not providing driver source code. NetGear is also not entirely blameless either.

The only time Broadcom source code was release was when it was discovered that Linksys was running Linux on some of their Broadcom based WRT54 routers. The Free Software Foundation took them to court and they settled. The linux part is available on the R8000P but not the propriatary firmware. That said, one path would be to exact the firmware from a NetGear image or see if you can get it from another source.

An easier option is to consider NetGear/Broadcom policies and vote with your money - buy something else.

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