The Librem 5 linux-purism-librem5 kernel package 5.11.6-r1 includes a change
that causes the WiFi driver to ignore firmware on the WiFi chip and load
firmware from the rootfs. This firmware was not available in pmaports until
device-purism-librem5 v1.18, installed by a new subpackage
device-purism-librem5-nonfree-firmware.
If you are upgrading an existing pmOS edge install on the Librem 5, you will
not have WiFi after installing this new kernel and rebooting, unless you
also install the device-purism-librem5-nonfree-firmware package manually
after upgrading the kernel.
Recommended steps to take:
$ sudo apk upgrade -a
<linux-purism-librem5 upgraded to 5.11.6-r1 here>
$ sudo apk add device-purism-librem5-nonfree-firmware
If you reboot before installing device-purism-librem5-nonfree-firmware and no
longer have functional WiFi, you can still install this package using usb
networking by manually downloading the required apks from a mirror on
https://mirrors.postmarketos.org, and using
scp to push it to the device:
$ curl -O http://mirror.postmarketos.org/postmarketos/master/aarch64/device-purism-librem5-nonfree-firmware-1.18-r0.apk
$ curl -O http://mirror.postmarketos.org/postmarketos/master/aarch64/firmware-siliconlabs-rs9116-2.0.0-r0.apk
$ scp device-purism-librem5-nonfree-firmware-1.18-r0.apk firmware-siliconlabs-rs9116-2.0.0-r0.apk 172.16.42.1:/tmp/
$ ssh 172.16.42.1
librem5 $ sudo apk add /tmp/device-purism-librem5-nonfree-firmware-1.18-r0.apk /tmp/firmware-siliconlabs-rs9116-2.0.0-r0.apk
The relevant change in pmaports is here: merge request !2059