Connection Problems with on QCA9880-BR4A

[Michal Kazior]

On 11 November 2016 at 13:07, Felix <kramerfe at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I am running a Debian Jessie server on the backports kernel
> 4.7.0-0.bpo.1-amd64. An Ubiquiti SR71 with its AR928X is working just fine
> under ath9k.
>
> The mikrotik R11e-5HacT with its  QCA9880-BR4A is recognized after some
> errors trying to load inexistent files with the standard firmware-5.bin from
> the Jessie Backports (10.2.4.70.54):
> ...ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: firmware: failed to load
> ath10k/pre-cal-pci-0000:02:00.0.bin (-2)
> ...ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for
> ath10k/pre-cal-pci-0000:02:00.0.bin failed with error -2
> ...ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: firmware: failed to load
> ath10k/cal-pci-0000:02:00.0.bin (-2)
> ...ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for
> ath10k/cal-pci-0000:02:00.0.bin failed with error -2
> ...ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: firmware: failed to load
> ath10k/QCA988X/hw2.0/board-2.bin (-2)
> ...ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for
> ath10k/QCA988X/hw2.0/board-2.bin failed with error -2
> There are many reports on working devices with these errors on the web so I
> suppose they can be ignored.

Correct. These are just overly verbose messages from the kernel as
ath10k probes latest-to-oldest firmware files in fallback fashion.


> The device seems to work (iw scan shows better results than the SR71), but
> after connection to the AP via wpa_supplicant, dhclient is unable to
> retrieve an IP-adress.

Did you check tcpdump on the interface to see if it is getting any
traffic? Did you try ping6 ff02::1%wlanX ? Are you using WPA, WEP,
8021X? VLANs? 4addr mode?


> I have tried the newer firmware (10.2.4.70.58) and
> the older ones as well as those from candela without success. On older
> firmwares additional errors up to firmware crash on iw set bitrates appear.

Interesting. Are you using multiple interfaces on ath10k? Is the
interface you're running "set bitrates" on really associated?

What is the AP saying about the client association state? Is it
running hostapd? Does it receive any traffic from the client
(tcpdump)?


Michał