Fwd: AX500 support quirks

[Patricio Ferraggi Ares]

Hi,

So I decided to give it a go, I prefer to dive more into Linux and
have a distro that I enjoy using than the one that plays it safe and
has "everything" working but I hate it.
My Linux partition is just for my personal use (my windows partition
is for paying the bills) at the end so why not enjoy it.

I am currently running:

Distro: Arch Linux
Kernel: 5.16.3-arch1-1
Linux firmware: linux-firmware 20220119.0c6a7b3-2
System firmware: 3.4.0

The wifi works out of the box, always connects and I haven't had any
issues whatsoever.

BT still a different story:
Some boots I can't connect to devices, some boots I can't find
devices, some boots BT works fine.
When it doesn't work I get errors like:

Reading QCA version information failed (-110)
hci0: Frame reassembly failed (-84)

What would recommend my next step would be for trying to solve this
issue? I assume getting the last firmware from kalle's git would be a
good idea? if so is this the appropriate git
https://github.com/kvalo/ath11k-firmware?
It would be nice if you guys could give me a few steps to follow.

I tried the following thing:

I cloned https://github.com/kvalo/ath11k-firmware. Took the files from
that repo regarding the QCA6390 and copied them to the lib folder as
described here:

# Install firmware
cd ../ath11k-firmware
sudo mkdir -p /lib/firmware/ath11k/QCA6390/hw2.0/
sudo cp QCA6390/hw2.0/1.0.1/[LATEST_VERSION]/*.bin
/lib/firmware/ath11k/QCA6390/hw2.0/
sudo cp QCA6390/hw2.0/board-2.bin /lib/firmware/ath11k/QCA6390/hw2.0/

I also had to xz the files since now arch-linux is compressing firmware files
https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/72899

Unfortunately when trying that I lost wifi and bt altogether. It might
be caused because Arch is using a different compression algorithm or
something. I went back to my original files for now.

Thanks for hearing me out. Have a nice week.

El jue, 27 ene 2022 a la(s) 19:33, Mark Herbert
(mark.herbert42 at gmail.com) escribió:
>
> Hi Patricio,
>
> As I see it there are DIY distributives like Gentoo or Arch that are
> targeted to the people who has no issues to patch and compie new
> kernel.  So they do not care much to backport any new drivers to old
> kernels. Who want it - will do it.
>
> And distributions like Ubunto or Fedora  that are targeted to out-of-the
> box usage.  There the developers try to backport everything, compile
> standard kernel with all the features and so on.
>
> SO maybe you need to choose the correct distribution.  Do you want to
> make a distribution highly optimized for your hardware and your usage
> (and willin to spend some time and effort for this) - or do you prefer
> to have general distribution that will work on any hardware including
> the one you have.  Linux can offer you  a choice.
>
> I've choosen Gentoo (after slackware (started from 0.98 long long ago,
> redhat,suse, debian) - just because I have enough knowledge and
> experience to build system for my hardware and usage. From other side I
> understand that if I take my ssd from 9310 and plug it in Ryzen based
> laptop it will not even boot as all my binaries are compiled to use
> every single Intel feature availabe on intel Tigerlake.
>
> So just select a proper distribution for your needs and tour skills. As
> for new features of new hardware - they will sooner or later land into
> mainstream and all the concervative distributions - but it will take
> time. As for AX500 the proper support is not in the mainline yet. I bet
> Ubuntu gives you WiFi + BT but your energy saving features are crap (CPU
> never goes below PC3 state ), and hibernate/suspend makes you trouble
> (or you do not use it or do not care if it does not wake up 50% of
> times).  And you have 2 choices - wait when all the recent development
> from this mailin list land to mainstream or take the latest code from
> Kalle's git and do it yourself.
>
> On 1/27/22 16:58, Patricio Ferraggi Ares wrote:
> > Hi Mark, thanks for answering back. Generally, I would agree with you
> > that newer hardware requires distros that update frequently to get
> > those drivers in, but in this situation, I find it very strange is the
> > other way around.
> >
> > More updated distros like arch-based ones have no functioning BT,
> > while older distros like ubuntu-based ones have both working BT and
> > WiFi. It might be the case that the arch distros I tried simply did
> > not enable the modules you mentioned.
> > I am not sure what is going on.
> >
> > I will give a try your recommendations and see if can make some progress.
> >
> > Thanks
> >
> > El jue, 27 ene 2022 a la(s) 14:28, Mark Herbert
> > (mark.herbert42 at gmail.com) escribió:
> >> I use Gentoo with very custom kernel (ath11k master-pending backported +
> >> more bleeding edge and experimental features). So it is hard for me to
> >> say why bnary distributes have it all so different.
> >>
> >> When I got my 9310 in August 2021 it was completely unisable because of
> >> ath11k no matter of distribution, but now the situation is quite
> >> different - thanks to Kalle and team.
> >>
> >> The only issue now is to wait till those new features will land into
> >> mainstream distributions which sometimes prefer to stay on so called
> >> "stable"  kernels for ages. They maybe stable if your hardware is  from
> >> stone age, but for new hardware like 9310 "stable"  kernel is stabe in
> >> only one aspect - it is not working and will never do.  In all
> >> distributions there are usually packages with newer "experimental"
> >> kernels that are available but will not be installed by default, but you
> >> can install the packages and enjoy working system.
> >>
> >>
> >> For ath11k /dell 9310 the best will be 5.17 which is in rc1 now, but I
> >> guess 5.16.3 released today will also be fully usable. Just need to get
> >> new firmware from Kalle's git as the firmware in linux firmware package
> >> is absolute junk more that 1 year old.
> >>
> >> As for bluetooth - it is working perfectly, but it is not an USB module
> >> as intel. It is hci_uart , so you need to have uart bt support built is
> >> as well as ath3k bt firmware loading and btqca extensions. And aldo the
> >> firmware is required (available in regular linux-firmware )
> >>
> >> Here is my log of bt initialization. All working well.
> >>
> >> [    4.930758] hci_uart_qca serial0-0: failed to acquire enable gpio
> >> [    4.932732] Bluetooth: hci0: setting up ROME/QCA6390
> >> [    4.936750] Bluetooth: hci0: Frame reassembly failed (-84)
> >> [    5.254533] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA Product ID   :0x00000010
> >> [    5.256045] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA SOC Version  :0x400a0200
> >> [    5.257636] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA ROM Version  :0x00000200
> >> [    5.259263] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA Patch Version:0x00000d2b
> >> [    5.260790] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA controller version 0x02000200
> >> [    5.262228] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA Downloading qca/htbtfw20.tlv
> >> [    6.210557] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA Downloading qca/htnv20.bin
> >> [    6.438691] Bluetooth: hci0: QCA setup on UART is completed
> >>
> >> On 1/27/22 15:29, Kalle Valo wrote:
> >>> Patricio Ferraggi Ares <pattferraggi at gmail.com> writes:
> >>>
> >>>> My name is Patricio, I am a fellow software developer and user of the
> >>>> Dell XPS 9310 (AX500 version). First of all, I wanted to thank you for
> >>>> all your hard work bringing support for this model, thanks to you, I
> >>>> have been able to use my laptop with Linux almost since I got it.
> >>>>
> >>>> This is not a bug report in any way, I just would like to gain some
> >>>> knowledge on the subject and you might be the perfect person for my
> >>>> questions.
> >>>>
> >>>> I noticed that although all distros use the Linux kernel, support for
> >>>> this hardware is not the same across all Linux distros. To be more
> >>>> specific, Ubuntu-based distros have had working wifi and Bluetooth for
> >>>> almost a year now, although there are some problems like resuming from
> >>>> deep sleep,  both wifi and Bluetooth work right away on installation,
> >>>> at the moment I am using Pop OS with Linux kernel 5.15.5 as my main
> >>>> driver. On the other hand, arch-based distros dont' have working BT,
> >>>> as you can see here and here. The wifi is working but Bluetooth
> >>>> sometimes doesn't turn on and when it does it cannot properly connect
> >>>> to devices. This happens across multiple arch-based distros and kernel
> >>>> versions, even if I try kernel versions that work fine in PopOS, they
> >>>> don't in Arch.
> >>>>
> >>>> So finally, my questions:
> >>>>
> >>>> Why is there this inconsistency of support between distros when
> >>>> theoretically, they are all Linux?
> >>>> Why is it that if Arch is always updated, in this particular case
> >>>> their hardware support is lacking compared to ubuntu?
> >>> This is something you need to ask Ubuntu, or check from their git
> >>> history or package changelogs. But in general distros make changes to
> >>> the kernel, some of them even quite drastic, so behaviour between
> >>> distros can be different. My guess is that Ubuntu had custom changes to
> >>> ath11k, maybe they backported patches?
> >>>
> >>>> And finally, do you have a working configuration with wifi and
> >>>> Bluetooth? if that is the case could you tell me your distro, kernel,
> >>>> firmware, system firmware versions?
> >>> I also use Dell XPS 13 9310 with QCA6390 as my daily driver (no pun
> >>> intended) and I have no issues with wifi. BIOS is 3.1.0 from 07/22/2021.
> >>> I'm a debian guy so I have Debian 10 and use connman, but
> >>> network-manager should work as well. I compile my own kernel from my
> >>> ath.git master branch[1], but with QCA6390 I would expect stock v5.16
> >>> release to work fine. For WCN6855 I recommend to use v5.17.
> >>>
> >>> Firmware version is WLAN.HST.1.0.1-05266-QCAHSTSWPLZ_V2_TO_X86-1.
> >>>
> >>> I don't use Bluetooth so can't comment on that.
> >>>
> >>> [1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/kvalo/ath.git/
> >>>