fix(wifi): disable brcmfmac power save to prevent occasional drops - #8
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The brcmfmac driver (CM4 onboard WiFi) ships with power saving on; the chip occasionally sleeps and fails to recover, requiring a manual nmcli reconnect (verified on hardware: 'Power save: on', journal shows 'Couldn't initialize supplicant interface: Name owner lost'). Ship /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/wifi-powersave-off.conf (wifi.powersave=2) in the image so all connections have power save disabled, and document the symptom/root cause/fix in MAINTAINING.
fabiiw05
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Jul 25, 2026
Power save (fixed in #8) was not the only WiFi drop. On a WPA2/WPA3- transition, band-steering AP (one SSID, several BSSIDs across 2.4/5 GHz), NetworkManager's background scan roams to another BSSID and brcmfmac fails SAE external auth on the transition BSSID (kernel: brcmf_cfg80211_external_ auth: External authentication failed: status=1). The link then dies -- or stays "connected" while passing no traffic -- until a manual nmcli reconnect. Verified on hardware; power_save was already off. Install a WiFi recovery watchdog (customize.sh): /usr/local/sbin/uconsole-wifi-watchdog driven by uconsole-wifi-watchdog.timer (every 30s). If wlan0 is disconnected, or connected but the default gateway is unreachable across two probes, it forces a NetworkManager reconnect. It only acts when an autoconnect wifi profile exists (never fights a deliberate disconnect) and uses only NetworkManager + iproute2 + iputils (all in base). Document both drop causes and the per-device 5 GHz band-pin mitigation in MAINTAINING (EN/JA). The band pin is network-specific, so it stays a device tweak, not an image default. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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Summary
WiFi on the uConsole (CM4, brcmfmac) occasionally dropped and required a manual
nmclireconnect.brcmfmacships with power saving on (Power save: on). The chip occasionally sleeps and fails to recover; the journal showsCouldn't initialize supplicant interface: Name owner lost(verified on hardware)./etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/wifi-powersave-off.conf(wifi.powersave=2) at image build time so power save is disabled for all connections, current and future.MAINTAINING.mdandMAINTAINING.ja.md.Verification
bash -n scripts/customize.shpassesiw dev wlan0 set power_save off+ the NM config file applied;iw dev wlan0 get power_savereportsoffand survives NM restart