Unable to detect wifi hardware on an owasys microcontroller running debian 9.

saltyparrot

Initially after SSHing into the microcontroller I was able to get the wifi on with this line.

 ip link set mlan0 up                                                       

Subsequent running of iwconfig would display mlan0 in the list of the devices.
Next day after the microcontroller has been switched of for the night I am unable to replicate that set up.

Output of runnng lsmod:

Module                  Size  Used by
musb_dsps              20480  0
musb_hdrc              98304  1 musb_dsps
udc_core               28672  1 musb_hdrc
usbcore               204800  1 musb_hdrc
phy_am335x             16384  2
phy_am335x_control     16384  1 phy_am335x
phy_generic            16384  1 phy_am335x
usb_common             16384  5 phy_am335x,udc_core,musb_hdrc,musb_dsps,usbcore
c_can_platform         16384  0
c_can                  20480  1 c_can_platform
mcp251x                20480  0
snd_soc_tlv320aic31xx    36864  1
can_dev                24576  2 mcp251x,c_can
musb_am335x            16384  0
omap_wdt               16384  0
sd8xxx                552960  0
mlan                  430080  1 sd8xxx
cfg80211              266240  1 sd8xxx
ppp_generic            36864  0
slhc                   16384  1 ppp_generic
owa4x_gpio             16384  0
ip_tables              24576  0
x_tables               32768  1 ip_tables

output of running iwconfig -a does not list mlan0, which it did first time around:

eth0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.8.244  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.8.255
        inet6 fe80::eb2:b7ff:fed8:9bd6  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        inet6 fdf4:7177:49ee:0:eb2:b7ff:fed8:9bd6  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x0<global>
        ether :b2:b7:d8:9b:d6  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 456  bytes 40141 (39.2 KiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 346  bytes 59107 (57.7 KiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0
        device interrupt 51

eth0:0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.10.1  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 0.0.0.0
        ether :b2:b7:d8:9b:d6  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        device interrupt 51

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 1000  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

this is what I get if I run dmesg:

[    5.939860] mlan: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel.
[    6.398869] systemd-journald[107]: Received request to flush runtime journal from PID 1
[    6.418469] wlan: Loading MWLAN driver
[    6.480709] wlan: Driver loaded successfully

I suspect "loading out-of-tree module taints kernel" may be an issue but I do not know how to proceed further.
In all other logs there is no mention of anything relating to wlan/mlan.

I have tried unloading the modules in question and restarting the whole networking:

sudo rmmod sd8xxx
sudo rmmod mlan
modprobe sd8xx
modprobe man
/etc/init.d/networking restart

This still has not fixed the problem.

Besides reflashing the whole system and hoping it works just like the first time I do not really know how to proceed with trying to fix this issue or even what further debugging to undertake.

Thanks for your help.