Odd crash in ath10k card only on certain firmware versions...

[Peter Dohm]

Hi all.

I’ve been experimenting with a generic QCA6174 hw 3.0 card that was purchased with my Protectli Vault appliance (https://protectli.com/product/m2-wifi/) which looks to just be this device resold: https://www.jetone.com.tw/jww6051.html

The device per lspci looks like so:

07:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter (rev 30)
    Subsystem: Qualcomm Atheros Device 3361
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 176
    Memory at b1000000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2M]
    Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 3
    Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable+ Count=1/8 Maskable+ 64bit-
    Capabilities: [70] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
    Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
    Capabilities: [148] Virtual Channel
    Capabilities: [168] Device Serial Number 00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
    Capabilities: [178] Latency Tolerance Reporting
    Capabilities: [180] L1 PM Substates
    Kernel driver in use: ath10k_pci
    Kernel modules: ath10k_pci

This is an arch linux kernel: 6.2.8-arch1-1#1 SMP PREEMPTY_DYNAMIC, and everything is the latest generally available as per the date of this original email, March 28, 2023.

The default linux firmware that ships with arch (which uses the latest per hashes of the latest available on github) crashes as i’ll describe below...
 
If I use firmware version QCA6174/hw3.0/4.4.1/firmware-6.bin_WLAN.RM.4.4.1-00132-QCARMSWP-1, everything works perfectly. If i use any firmware newer than version 00132, i get the following crash during in module load:
 
(these are the only dmesg lines emitted, and the adapter interface does not plumb)
 
[timestamp] ath10k_pci 0000:07:00.0: wmi unified ready event not received
[timestamp] ath10k_pci 0000:07:00.0: device has crashed during init
[timestamp] ath10k_pci 0000:07:00.0: device has crashed during init
[timestamp] ath10k_pci 0000:07:00.0: failed to wait for target init: -70
[timestamp] ath10k_pci 0000:07:00.0: could not init core (-110)
[timestamp] ath10k_pci 0000:07:00.0: could not probe fw (-110)
 
Does anyone have ANY ideas why this particular card is crashing on the most recent firmwares? I am glad to experiment to try and figure this out with others’ help.
 
Cheers
 
+--==--+
| Peter J. Dohm (He/Him/His)
| Vice President of Technology
| Black Mesa Technologies, Inc
| peterdohm at blackmesa.com
| +1-614-668-7554
+--==--+