It seems on the blog that frame injection is indeed a bit unstable. Maybe running airmon-ng check kill will help? Also there’s a tip and trouble shoot section there but you might have already tried them.
PS: I ordered a CM5 board too but it is taking way too long to arrive.
Hey Dave, I got the cm5 today, and after some tinkering frame injection is working! Although I haven’t have success with angryoxide yet due to unknown reason, I was able to creating fake access point and with mdk4. The only downside is that I have to keep reloading the kernel module to properly enable monitor mode. I wrote some aliases to make reloading the kernel module and enabling, disabling monitor much quicker. I would say this is quite acceptable level of success!
PS: I am on 6.12.67.
I just created an account here to say “Thank you!” this was the exact fix I was looking for!
Weird that the update sent all the files to /boot/firmware instead /boot..
I had to:
- Remove the drive from uConsole
- Plug the drive into another machine
- Mount it
- Copy the files from /boot/firmware to /boot
- Copy the files from /boot/firmware/overlays/ to /boot/overlays/
- Umount the drive
- Put it back into the uConsole.
After that it booted right up!
Now I just need to figure out how to get meshtasticd installed into kali-linux… 
Hi, bro, you’re doing great things! Maybe you can help me figure out my problem? I installed Kali on a uconsole + hackergadgets upgrade kit vs. AIO V2, CM5 on an SSD. Everything was fine, but when I’m working in the terminal, the computer freezes for a few minutes, then runs a couple of commands and freezes again.
Not sure I don’t use Kali I just made the image compatible. Kali isn’t really made to be a daily driver, it’s supposed to be a distro you boot use the tools you need and then go back to your normal OS. Kali has tons of stuff installed and is really bloated. I would say you’re better off installing the tools you need on something like Debian Trixie.
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I’m using your bookworm image, and everything works! I just thought Kali had a ton of pre-installed software, and I wanted to play with it.
rex you are such a beautiful person, and your work is amazing!
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Not sure why everyone keeps saying “kali is bloated”. Sure it has a bunch of stuff installed, but it has less running processes than a stock debian install. Until recently they had a dedicated developer just for arm devices.
After all that is said though, kali is based on debian-testing, so stuff may break.
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Thank you! Appreciate you brother, you’re one beautiful soul!
When I update your kali image, it fails to properly update and doesn’t boot properly. How should I fix it?
If you have a micro hdmi cable you can plug that in, it’s likely the kernel got overwritten so the screen driver is gone
You can fix that by reinstalling rex’s kernel package clockworkpi-kernel
Then I should check that when I use kali next time…
Hi
CM5 uConsole - Kernel Panic on NetworkManager restart & APT Upgrade Breaks Bootloader/Kernel
Hardware Configuration:
- Device: ClockworkPi uConsole
- Compute Module: Raspberry Pi CM5 (Wireless version) [pi5] + NVMe
- OS / Distro: Kali Linux (Rex’s community port for CM5) [pi5]
- Storage: MicroSD Card
CRUCIAL UPGRADE BUG (APT Upgrade Breaks Boot):
- Major Issue: Running a standard system update completely destroys the installation. Every time I execute
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y, the system becomes completely unbootable (stuck on a green power LED with a black screen, no HDMI output, no display backlight). - Cause: The official Kali ARM repositories overwrite the custom
kalipi-kernel,kalipi-bootloader, and custom overlays provided in Rex’s image with generic Raspberry Pi 5 packages. The new kernel fails to initialize the uConsole hardware. The only way to recover the device after an upgrade is to completely re-flash the MicroSD card with a fresh image. Even pinning the packages viaapt-mark holdis problematic because the system throws candidate/installation errors forkalipi-kerneldue to its state.
Description of the Wireless & Kernel Issue:
Even on a completely fresh, un-upgraded installation, the wireless stack is heavily broken and triggers a hard kernel deadlock:
-
Initial Boot & Peripherals: On a fresh image, the internal DSI display and keyboard were uninitialized. I patched this in Windows via
config.txtusingdtoverlay=clockworkpi-uconsole-cm5anddwc2,dr_mode=host[pi5]. -
Wi-Fi Authentication Loop: The desktop environment detects the wireless interface (
wlan0), but attempting to connect to a 2.4GHz WPA2 network via the GUInm-appletresults in an endless prompt loop asking for the password. -
NetworkManager Properties Missing Error: Bypassing the GUI and using
nmclito connect (sudo nmcli device wifi connect "SSID" password "KEY") throws this specific error:text
Error: 802-11-wireless-security.key-mgmt: property is missingKód používajte opatrne.
Using
nmtuicauses the available network list to go completely blank. -
Kernel Panic / Hung Task Deadlock: Attempting to force a restart of the wireless service using
sudo systemctl restart NetworkManagercompletely freezes the operating system. The CPU cores enter a permanent deadlock (blocked for more than 121 seconds), turning the uConsole into a brick until a hard power-down is forced.
Console Logs & Call Traces:
1. Wireless Status (iwconfig):
text
wlan0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=-31 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
2. Kernel Stack Trace (Hung Task Dump during NetworkManager restart):
text
INFO: task sudo:28223 blocked for more than 121 seconds.
Not tainted 6.12.67-v8-16k+ #4 (or similar 6.x re4son kernel)
"echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/hung_task_timeout_secs" disables this message.
task:sudo state:D stack:0 pid:28223 tgid:28223 ppid:1 flags:0x00000005
Call Trace:
__switch_to+0xf0/0x150
__schedule+0x394/0x860
schedule+0x5c/0x140
__schedule_preempt_disabled+0x2c/0x50
__mutex_lock_constprop.0+0x2ac/0x988
__mutex_lock_slowpath+0x1c/0x30
mutex_lock+0x50/0x58
rtnl_dumpit+0x94/0xd0
netlink_dump+0x134/0x378
netlink_dump_start+0x25c/0x350
rtnetlink_rcv_msg+0x280/0x3b8
netlink_rcv_skb+0x68/0x140
rtnetlink_rcv+0x20/0x30
netlink_unicast+0x330/0x3b8
...
Job session-2.scope/stop running (1min 21s / 1min 30s)
Conclusion:
This image is currently unusable for daily tasks because 1) standard apt upgrade destroys the kernel/bootloader configuration entirely, and 2) the Broadcom brcmfmac wireless stack triggers a hard kernel panic when interacting with NetworkManager security properties.
Is there a newer repository layout, a working apt-preference blacklist configuration to block the upgrade overwrite, or an updated kernel tree (6.6.y / 6.12.y) that actually works reliably on the CM5? Any advice would be highly appreciated.
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