ath10k driver and firmware upgrade

[Kalle Valo]

Hi Nick,

"Shu, Nick" <Nick.Shu at spirent.com> writes:

> I have a question about upgrade the diver and firmware for my wifi ac
> pcie card. I read through the docs in your /ath10k website and did the
> driver and firmware update. After that, here is what I read back from
> system:
>
> root at coast198:/home/spirent# ethtool -i wlan0
> driver: ath10k_pci
> version: 3.11.0-12-generic
> firmware-version: 999.999.0.636
> bus-info: 0000:03:00.0
> supports-statistics: yes
> supports-test: no
> supports-eeprom-access: no
> supports-register-dump: no
> supports-priv-flags: no
>
> So, I can see the firmware has been updated (I used
> firmware-2.bin_999.999.0.636 for STA, right?).

Like Ben said, if you still see 00:03:07:12:34:56 you should use
firmware version 10.1.467.2-1.

> But how can I find out have drivers been changed?

I added some tips to the wiki:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
To check that you are really using ath10k from backports make sure that
compat module is loaded and ath10k_pci module uses it:

$ lsmod | grep compat
compat                 36104  6 iwldvm,iwlwifi,ath10k_pci,ath10k_core,mac80211,cfg80211

To check version of backports project:

$ dmesg | grep backport
[   23.210662] Loading modules backported from Linux version next-20140221-0-gfaa2e6f
[   23.210665] Backport generated by backports.git
backports-20140221-0-g8e94650
----------------------------------------------------------------------

http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath10k/backports

> I did following to change the driver:
> 1. Download the tarball from "backports-3.13.2-1" to my PC.
> 2. FTP it to my Linux box (test server running on Ubuntu 13.10 server).
> 3. Unpack it to my working directory.
> 4. Run "make defconfig-ath10k"
>         "make"
>         "make install".
> 5. But auto install failed because of some initramfs issue (no key? from error message), so I manually "rmmod" all drivers ( ath10k_pci.ko, ath10k_core.ko, mac80211.ko, ath.ko, cfg80211.ko, compat.ko) and then "Insmod" all drivers back.
> 6. Run "update-initramfs -u" and reboot.
>
> Did I do everything correct?

The initramfs issues look odd, I haven't seen those before. But
otherwise this looks good.

> I used "dhcpcd wlan0" to get a valid IP address from a Netgear wifiac
> ac access point, but from access point manager, the MAC for my card is
> still "00:03:07:12:34:56". From your last email, you said this default
> MAC was caused by wrong driver and firmware, so why it's still there
> after I changed driver and firmware? Do I miss something?

The problem is that firmware 999.999.0.636 doesn't support all hw
versions, that's why you need to use firmware from 10.1 branch.

-- 
Kalle Valo