The whole computer hard resets when trying to load ath12k driver in a KVM VM

Sat Sep 20 06:09:53 PDT 2025

Okay, I was able to prevent whole system crashes with `pci=noaer` when booting host kernel (Ubuntu 24.04 6.14.0-29-generic).
Would be nice if it was not necessary, any idea why things escalate so much?

With older OpenWrt snapshot (r30806-070d8eb4d5) derived from 6.12.40 kernel I was getting these two cases alternating on odd/even boots of the VM:

> [    7.393886] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: BAR 0 [mem 0x89400000-0x895fffff 64bit]: assigned
> [    7.402838] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: MSI vectors: 16
> [    7.407763] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: Hardware name: qcn9274 hw2.0
> [    7.542240] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: link down error during global reset
> [    7.570471] mhi mhi0: BHI offset: 0xffffffff is out of range: 0x200000
> [    7.577614] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: failed to set mhi state: INIT(0)
> [    7.578488] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: failed to start mhi: -34
> [    7.579312] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: failed to power up :-34
> [    7.615653] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: failed to create soc core: -34
> [    7.617815] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: unable to create hw group
> [    7.655683] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: failed to init core: -34
> [    8.123971] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: probe with driver ath12k_pci failed with error -34
> [    7.158610] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: BAR 0 [mem 0x89400000-0x895fffff 64bit]: assigned
> [    7.172045] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: MSI vectors: 16
> [    7.177707] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: Hardware name: qcn9274 hw2.0
> [    7.291634] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: link down error during global reset
> [    7.320049] mhi mhi0: Requested to power ON
> [    7.368077] mhi mhi0: Power on setup success
> [    7.538116] mhi mhi0: Wait for device to enter SBL or Mission mode
> [    8.036845] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: qmi dma allocation failed (29360128 B type 1), will try later with small size
> [    8.046735] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: memory type 10 not supported
> [    8.050328] kmodloader: done loading kernel modules from /etc/modules.d/*
> [    8.053813] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: chip_id 0x0 chip_family 0xb board_id 0xff soc_id 0x401a2200
> [    8.063240] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: fw_version 0x150c0673 fw_build_timestamp 2025-04-24 15:13 fw_build_id QC_IMAGE_VERSION_STRING=WLAN.WBE.1.5-01651-QCAHKSWPL_SILICONZ-1
> [    8.086352] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: failed to fetch board data for bus=pci,qmi-chip-id=0,qmi-board-id=255 from ath12k/QCN9274/hw2.0/board-2.bin
> [    8.087598] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: failed to fetch board.bin from QCN9274/hw2.0
> [    8.093428] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: qmi failed to load bdf:
> [    8.094398] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: qmi failed to load board data file:-12
After upgrading to the current latest OpenWrt snapshot (r31110-41aaebad98) derived from 6.12.47 kernel I got this:

> [    7.208812] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: BAR 0 [mem 0x89400000-0x895fffff 64bit]: assigned
> [    7.224830] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: MSI vectors: 16
> [    7.230381] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: Hardware name: qcn9274 hw2.0
> [    7.342952] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: link down error during global reset
> [    7.371390] mhi mhi0: Requested to power ON
> [    7.417659] mhi mhi0: Power on setup success
> [  164.087661] mhi mhi0: Device failed to enter MHI Ready
> [  164.090720] mhi mhi0: MHI did not enter READY state
> [  164.091615] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: failed to set mhi state: POWER_ON(2)
> [  164.093214] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: failed to start mhi: -110
> [  164.094584] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: failed to power up :-110
> [  164.127713] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: failed to create soc core: -110
> [  164.132306] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: unable to create hw group
> [  164.167670] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: failed to init core: -110
> [  164.632064] ath12k_pci 0000:04:00.0: probe with driver ath12k_pci failed with error -110
And now most of the time I'm stuck on the situation like the odd boot before, even after cold boot of the host machine with "mhi mhi0: BHI offset: 0xffffffff is out of range: 0x200000".
Very rarely I get above "mhi mhi0: Device failed to enter MHI Ready" hang instead, can't figure out the pattern, maybe it is just racy or something.

Unfortunately, I don't really understand what any of this means, so not sure where to go from here.

Will soon have a second QCN9472-based module from a different vendor and would appreciate any help in getting both of them to work.

P.S. I have checked QCN9074 module with ath11k driver again earlier this week, it still works fine in the OpenWrt VM with the instructions I have mentioned in the previous email despite being "not supported" 🙂

Sincerely, Nazar Mokrynskyi
github.com/nazar-pc

22.08.25 03:05, Nazar Mokrynskyi:
> Thanks for the response, looks like I'm in completely unsupported territory, but I'd love to see that changed 😅
>
> There were some tricks needed, here is a forum thread with the complete journey: https://forum.openwrt.org/t/qcn9074-doesnt-initialize-on-x86-64/163288?u=nazar-pc
> But more specifically, this seemed to be the missing piece: https://forum.openwrt.org/t/qcn9074-doesnt-initialize-on-x86-64/163288/47?u=nazar-pc
> For those who don't want to re-read a long thread on the forum, libvirtd domain config needed this piece of configuration:
>
>> |<features> <ioapic driver="qemu"/> </features> <devices> <iommu model="intel"> <driver intremap="on" caching_mode="on"/> </iommu> </devices>|
> Both "intremap" and "caching_mode" were key for device to initialize, and the rest for those two parameters to work at all.
> With that, I was able to create AP with QCN9074 on the hardware I mentioned earlier.
>
> But it certainly didn't crash the whole physical machine with any configuration.
> Well, most of the time at least, I did managed to crash the machine a couple of times with either ath11k or ath10k when VM didn't shut down cleanly (hard reset of the VM), etc.
>
> Sincerely, Nazar Mokrynskyi
> github.com/nazar-pc
>
> 22.08.25 02:46, Jeff Johnson:
>> On 8/20/2025 2:47 PM, Nazar Mokrynskyi wrote:
>>> Some additional details.
>>>
>>> The system is x86-64: Gigabyte MZ32-AR0 Rev 1.0 motherboard (with M23_R40 BIOS) and AMD Epyc 7302P CPU.
>>>
>>> Host OS is Ubuntu 24.04 with HWE kernel 6.14.
>>>
>>> As guest:
>>> * initially tried OpenWrt 24.10.2 with kernel 6.6.93, WiFi backports seem to be from 6.12.6
>>> * then tried the latest snapshot (r30806-070d8eb4d5), which uses 6.12.40 kernel and according to the kernel module version carries WiFi backports from 6.16
>>>
>>>> # lspci -mnn -s 46:00.0
>>>> 46:00.0 "Network controller [0280]" "Qualcomm Technologies, Inc [17cb]" "QCN62xx/92xx Wireless Network Adapter [1109]" -r01 -p00 "Qualcomm Technologies, Inc [17cb]" "QCN62xx/92xx Wireless Network Adapter [1109]"
>>> The module is QCN9274 2x2 5G+6G from Commtek (but missing on their website) with M.2 E-key connector.
>>> Looks very similar to Compex WLW7002E56 in terms of size and features.
>>>
>>> This should be most of the details that might be relevant.
>>>
>>> Sincerely, Nazar Mokrynskyi
>>> github.com/nazar-pc
>>>
>>> 21.08.25 00:15, Nazar Mokrynskyi:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> I have a QCN9274-based Wi-Fi module that I want to use with OpenWrt under KVM VM (libvirtd, vfio).
>>>> I used various Qualcomm modules this way with ath10k and ath11k in the past successfully, but ath12k seems to be buggy.
>>>>
>>>> Two cases:
>>>> * if host already loaded ath12k, then starting a VM with the PCIe device passthrough triggers immediate hard reset of the machine
>>>> * if I bind the device to vfio-pci on the host, I can boot the VM, but it inevitably hard resets the machine when ath12k starts loading (presence of the correct board file does not matter, it doesn't seem reach that stage)
>>>>
>>>> In the second case, which I'm primarily interested in, the the following lines are the only thing I can capture before host hard resets:
>>>>
>>>>> 0000:01:00.0: MSI vectors: 1
>>>>> 0000:01:00.0: Hardware name: qcn9274 hw2.0
>>>> And when machine reboots, BIOS prints:
>>>>> Warning: PCI-Express PERR/SERR error detected.
>>>> I'm not really sure what this is, but I think it should be trivial to reproduce.
>>>> Looks like either driver or onboard firmware issue?
>>>> Open to do more testing and provide additional info.
>>>>
>>>> All information I have so far is on the forum here: https://forum.openwrt.org/t/qcn9274-crashes-the-system-during-driver-load/239491?u=nazar-pc
>> Curious how you managed to get this to work in the past with ath11k since that
>> is not supported. Some discussions on ath11k here:
>>
>> https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=216055
>> https://lore.kernel.org/all/fc6bd06f-d52b-4dee-ab1b-4bb845cc0b95@quicinc.com/