ath10k fail to load firmware

[Perry_Yuan at Dell.com]

Dell - No Restrictions - Confidential

HI Stanislaw:
Now we have got the available firmware for DW1820 wireless card ,but we  found  one new problem .
I built   upstream  4.6.4  and 4.7  kernel  code  and install the kernel images , the wireless driver can work , which means I  can get  IP address and  ping  external network successfully .

But it cannot  work with  RHEL 7.3 test kernel   kernel-3.10.0-473.el7.x86_64.rpm . This kernel will  occur panic  frequently .
Even  system can get IP address from AP . but it cannot ping external  network .
So I would think the backport driver have some issue .
I have found some differences  with upstream 4.7 kernel code  where you  do backport   . I will  provide the kernel panic log later .



keep up the good work
Perry  Yuan
Dell | Client Software Group | Platform Sftwr Senior Engineer
office +86 21 22030689, mobile +86 18521512823
perry_yuan at dell.com
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-----Original Message-----
From: Stanislaw Gruszka [mailto:sgruszka at redhat.com]
Sent: Tuesday, July 19, 2016 3:28 PM
To: Michal Kazior <michal.kazior at tieto.com>
Cc: Kalle Valo <kvalo at qca.qualcomm.com>; ath10k at lists.infradead.org; Yuan, Perry <Perry_Yuan at Dell.com>
Subject: Re: ath10k fail to load firmware

On Tue, Jul 19, 2016 at 09:18:01AM +0200, Michal Kazior wrote:
> On 19 July 2016 at 09:09, Stanislaw Gruszka <sgruszka at redhat.com> wrote:
> > Perry from Dell has ath10k device, which do not work with current
> > linux-firmware. It's on RHEL kernel, however wirelss stack and
> > drivers are from 4.7-rc1 (I did not update to 4.7 final yet, since I
> > do not see ath10k fix, which could possibly help here). Partial
> > dmesg is in the attachment.
>
> hw.3 qca6174 chips tend to require very specific board data for proper
> calibration.
>
>   [ 3838.601884] ath10k_pci 0000:01:00.0: failed to fetch board data
> for
> bus=pci,vendor=168c,device=003e,subsystem-vendor=1028,subsystem-device
> =0310
> from ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/board-2.bin
>   [ 3838.601920] ath10k_pci 0000:01:00.0: board_file api 1 bmi_id N/A
> crc32 ed5f849a
>
> Your board-2.bin doesn't contain the matching board data and the
> driver then falls back to the older board API1 which is pretty much
> doomed to fail on qca6174 hw.3.
>
> @Kalle: Perhaps ath10k needs to fail early with an adequate message
> for qca6174 hw.3 if board API2 lookup fails (e.g. hw_params flag
> because this seems to be quite closely coupled with hardware itself).
>
> @Stanislaw: You either need to grab a more recent board-2.bin
> (https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmware/tree/master/QCA6174/hw3.0),

@Perry, could you replace board-2.bin from above link on /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/ and check if that work ?

> ask Kalle & wait, or cook up your own (if you really need it working
> *now*) by getting Windows driver and dissecting it (the .inf file
> contains enough information for you to map board data also referred to
> as eeprom-something in the Windows blob).

I think we can wait till firmware will be updated upstream, however Dell would like to know if what we provide in new RHEL7 release will work on their hardware.

Thanks
Stanislaw