ath10k / WCN3990: firmware-5.bin and wlanmdsp.mbn being out of sync

[Kalle Valo]

Dmitry Baryshkov <dmitry.baryshkov at linaro.org> writes:

> On Mon, 4 Dec 2023 at 14:56, Kalle Valo <kvalo at kernel.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> Hi Dmitry,
>>
>> Dmitry Baryshkov <dmitry.baryshkov at linaro.org> writes:
>>
>> > I wanted to ask your opinion regarding one of the issues we stumbled
>> > upon on the Qualcomm RB1 and RB2 platforms. These platforms use ath10k
>> > snoc (WCN3990) WiFi "card". We noticed the following messages being
>> > spawned on the console, which I traced it to the
>> > ATH10K_FW_FEATURE_SINGLE_CHAN_INFO_PER_CHANNEL feature:
>> >
>> > ath10k_snoc c800000.wifi: chan info: invalid frequency 0 (idx 41 out of bounds)
>> >
>> > As a reminder, on this platform the wlan firmware and firmware-N.bin
>> > files come separately.
>> > The wlanmdsp.mbn is downloaded by the onboard modem DSP via the
>> > tqftpserv request (which is served from the board-specific folder
>> > qcom/qcm2210). The firmware-N.bin file is loaded by the WiFi driver
>> > itself from the generic folder, ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0. Current
>> > firmware-5.bin file was provided with the sdm845's wlanmdsp.mbn, which
>> > is older than qcm2210/qrb4210's wlanmdsp.mbn.
>> >
>> > I'm looking for suggestions on how to make ath10k driver load
>> > firmware-N.bin file which corresponds to the board-specific
>> > wlanmdsp.mbn.
>>
>> We have had similar discussions in the past but it didn't go very far.
>> It would be so nice if you could finally fix this :) At one point we
>> even had a discussion that we might need something similar for ath11k
>> but it didn't go anywhere.
>>
>> > In particular I'd like to hear your opinion on the following proposal:
>> >
>> > Add the  optional property to the board DT, that specifies:
>> > firmware-name = "path/to/wlanmdsp.mbn".  The property, if present,
>> > will be used as an override for the firmware directory. So, while the
>> > ath10k driver will not load wlanmdsp.mbn on its own, it will still
>> > look for the firmware-N files in the specified directory.
>>
>> Back in the day I was thinking something like below, please let me know
>> what you think.
>>
>> So the normal firmware path for WCN3990 is:
>>
>> ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0/
>>
>> My idea was that if we could extend it for different "platforms" (not
>> sure what's the proper term for this) by having platform specific
>> directories:
>>
>> ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0-platform/
>>
>> (Replace "platform" with a unique name for the platform, for example
>> "acme-kv7" for a product from Acme with model name kv7.)
>>
>> Then DT could inform ath10k about this "platform" string and ath10k
>> would then download boath firmware-N.bin and board-2.bin from the
>> platform specific directory.
>>
>> And even cleaner if we could have the *.mbn firmware files in the same
>> directory, even if ath10k doesn't access them directly.
>
> We can, and a symlink from qcom/SoC/.../dir to that subdir.
>
> So, for example, for Pixel-3, using your schema we will have:
>
> ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0-blueline/wlanmdsp.mbn
> ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0-blueline/firmware-5.bin
> ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0-blueline/board-2.bin
>
> qcom/sdm845/Google/blueline/wlanmdsp.mbn ->
> ../../../../ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0-blueline/wlanmdsp.mbn
>
> This sounds mostly fine to me. My only suggestions is to change it as following:
>
> ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0/board-2.bin
>
> ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0/blueline/wlanmdsp.mbn
> ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0/blueline/firmware-5.bin
> ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0/blueline/board-2.bin
>
> qcom/sdm845/Google/blueline/wlanmdsp.mbn ->
> ../../../../ath10k/WCN3990/hw1.0/blueline/wlanmdsp.mbn

Is there a specific reason why you propose adding a new subdirectory?
Personally I find it confusing that hw1.0 directory contains the
firmware files and then there's a subdirectory which also contains
similar firmware files.

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