qca6174 missing firmware or subsystem id?

[Valo, Kalle]

Jiří Prchal <jiri.prchal at aksignal.cz> writes:

> Hi,
> I've got this miniPCIe wifi module which comes with Asus motherboard:
>
> $lspci -vnn
> 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [168c:003e] (rev 32)
> 	Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [1043:86cd]
> 	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 125
> 	Memory at f7000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2M]
> 	Capabilities: <access denied>
> 	Kernel driver in use: ath10k_pci
> 	Kernel modules: ath10k_pci
>
> But I have problem to get it working. It look that wlan is there, but doesn't receive any SSID.
>
> $ip a
> 4: wlp2s0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN group default qlen 1000
>     link/ether c8:ff:28:0e:5e:e1 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
>
> $iw dev wlp2s0 scan
>  returns nothing.
>
> I have Ubuntu 16.04 with this kernel:
> $uname -a
> Linux dole 4.4.0-42-generic #62-Ubuntu SMP Fri Oct 7 23:11:45 UTC 2016 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
>
> I've tried both distro and git FW (probably the same), but it still
> complies about firmware-5.bin. I thing there is missing subsystem ID
> in board-2.bin as I mentioned there was added some other subID 2
> months ago.
>
> $dmesg | grep ath
> [    1.997246] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: pci irq msi interrupts 1 irq_mode 0 reset_mode 0
> [    2.252840] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/cal-pci-0000:02:00.0.bin failed with error -2
> [    2.260813] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/firmware-5.bin failed with error -2
> [    2.260816] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: could not fetch firmware file 'ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/firmware-5.bin': -2

So ignore this firmware-5.bin warning, ath10k will automatically fall
back to using firmware-4.bin. I know it's confusing, we just haven't
found a good enough way to silence this warning yet.

> [    4.461429] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: qca6174 hw3.2 (0x05030000,
> 0x00340aff sub 1043:86cd) fw WLAN.RM.2.0-00180-QCARMSWPZ-1 fwapi 4
> bdapi 2 htt-ver 3.26 wmi-op 4 htt-op 3 cal otp max-sta 32 raw 0
> hwcrypto 1 features wowlan,ignore-otp,no-4addr-pad

Your ath10k is too old so that it doesn't print the crc32 checksum of
the board file you have so I don't know what version of the board file
you exactly have. But I just checked, the latest one from
ath10k-firmware.git should support your board with subsystem id
1043:86cd:

$ strings QCA6174/hw3.0/board-2.bin | grep 86cd
bus=pci,vendor=168c,device=003e,subsystem-vendor=1043,subsystem-device=86cdm

The checksums of the latest board file are:

FileCRC32: 6fc88fe7
FileMD5: 4807903c956dbd8b87f5d83c559c2211

You can check what you are using like this:

md5sum /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0/board-2.bin

(Unless I made a typo in the path, but you should be able to find it
easily.)

-- 
Kalle Valo