ath12k: recommended regulatory country source for embedded AP products?

[Vitor Soares]

++ Francesco Dolcini

On Mon, 2026-08-17 at 16:04 +0100, Vitor Soares wrote:
> 
> 
> Hello,
> 
> Adding a few Qualcomm contacts in Cc who may be able to help here, or point me
> to the right people.
> 
> 
> Thanks,
> Vitor Soares
> 
> On Wed, 2026-07-29 at 10:29 +0100, Vitor Soares wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I'm integrationg the Silex SX-PCEBE module (Qualcomm WCN7850, ath12k) on the
> > ARM-based Toradex Aquila SoM family, using a recent mainline kernel (7.2-
> > rc).
> > 
> > Hardware/firmware: wcn7850 hw2.0 (PCI),
> > WLAN.HMT.1.1.c7-00108-QCAHMTSWPL_V1.0_V2.0_SILICONZ_UPSTREAM-3
> > (fw_version 0x1103006c).
> > 
> > I'm trying to understand the intended way to set the regulatory country for
> > ath12k on embedded products where the country is configured by the
> > integrator
> > of
> > our SoM or at deployment time by the end user.
> > 
> > My current understanding is that ath12k registers the wiphy as self-managed,
> > but
> > userspace regulatory hints, e.g. "iw reg", are ignored in
> > ath12k_reg_notifier()
> > unless CONFIG_ATH_REG_DYNAMIC_USER_REG_HINTS=y, which in turn depends on
> > CONFIG_CFG80211_CERTIFICATION_ONUS.
> > 
> > The SMBIOS coounty-code path, looks intended for fixed regional SKUs,
> > However,
> > it is not available on our ARM platform.
> > 
> > So, I have 2 related questions:
> > 
> > 1 - Is the expected ath12k model for this type of product to enable 
> > ATH_REG_DYNAMIC_USER_REG_HINTS and use userspace regulatory hints before
> > starting hostapd, with the regulatory responsibility on the
> > product/integrator?
> > 
> > 
> > Or is there another mechanism you would recomment for this use case?
> > 
> > 2 - Since ath12k is a self-managed regulatory device and the firmware owns
> > and
> > enforces the regulatory database, is the CFG80211_CERTIFICATION_ONUS gate
> > intended to apply to this case as well?
> > 
> > In other words, should a userspace-selected country for a self-managed
> > ath12k
> > device be treated the same as dynamic user regulatory hints for non-self-
> > managed
> > devices, or is this dependency inherited from the common ath regulatory
> > model?
> > 
> > Without a country, the ath12k falls back to world "00", where 5 GHz AP
> > operation
> > is blocked by NO_IR.
> > 
> > Thanks,
> > Vitor Soares
> > 
>