Hello there, fellow HA user here. I’ve recently installed hassos on a RPI 3 B+, long story short, I need to support an USB dongle: the TP-LINK TL-WN722N. I tried plugging it in and it didn’t work.
After a few loops I noticed that the kernel module (ath9k_htc) responsible for this hardware is installed and loaded, but it can’t load the firmware needed for it to work. Such firmware is nowhere to be found on a hassos installation. The firmware should be located at /lib/firmware/ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw . This file can be obtained directly from linux-firmware.
Now I tried installing it in a couple different ways to no avail. Buildroot does restrict the hassos installation quite a bit. So here’s my question: is there a way to add this firmware to a hassos installation without rebuilding hassos?
I tried copying this file in the hassos-overlay partition, but it didn’t work since this overlay uses bind mounts through systemd files, hence it is an “emulated” overlay.
For someone who might be interested:
In the end I couldn’t find an easy way to obtain the firmware in the build without rebuilding, fast-forward I switched back to hassbian for the second time.
I’ve been successful at rebuilding the buildroot image with the new firmware but I couldn’t get it to work properly with Network Manager for the purpose I needed (AP). I was successful at setting it up with hostapd but the amount of changes to create a functioning image would counter the initial purpose of hassos (systemd, dhcpcd, wpa_supplicant, dnsmasq etc.). Nevertheless I do think hassos should at least permit the administrator to enable/disable systemd units.
If, for any reason, you want to try the same approach here are the flags I used: