Athp driver

stephenw10

Hmm, I kinda lost track of where we are with this.

I have two ath10k NICs in my test box and they load up OK across 2.5 updates. I have some kernel modules in there but they are waaay old at this point. The only line required, seemingly, is if_athp_load="yes" in loader.conf(.local). It seems to pull in the required firmware modules without explicitly loading them:

[2.5.0-DEVELOPMENT][root@apu.stevew.lan]/root: kldstat
Id Refs Address                Size Name
 1   22 0xffffffff80200000  3123108 kernel
 2    1 0xffffffff83324000    d42f8 if_athp.ko
 3    1 0xffffffff83621000      a45 athp_QCA988X_hw2.0_board.bin.ko
 4    1 0xffffffff83622000    3cb9f athp_QCA988X_hw2.0_firmware-5.bin.ko
 5    1 0xffffffff8365f000      fe0 cpuctl.ko
 6    1 0xffffffff83660000     2678 intpm.ko
 7    1 0xffffffff83663000      b10 smbus.ko
 8    1 0xffffffff83664000     3110 cryptodev.ko

[2.5.0-DEVELOPMENT][root@apu.stevew.lan]/root: sysctl net.wlan.devices
net.wlan.devices: athp1 athp0

I don't see any sort of driver version listed in a sysctl.

I do see it trying and failing to load this:

athp0: ath10k_fetch_fw_file: firmware_get: athp_cal-pci-athp0.bin
athp_cal-pci-athp0.bin: could not load firmware image, error 2

Steve

kiokoman

hi steve,
athp_cal-pci-athp0.bin
this is a firmware for calibration, not used/needed by us. I found it month ago and searched on google for what it was.

the only file we need to load are the one already present in your kldstat

the only thing that if_athp.ko do is to load the correct firmware for the card, in your case
athp_QCA988X_hw2.0_board.bin.ko and athp_QCA988X_hw2.0_firmware-5.bin.ko

also i found that if you remove *firmware-5.bin.ko then firmware-4.bin.ko will be loaded.
if you remove *5.bin.ko and 4.bin.ko then *3.bin.ko will be loaded and so on

i found somewhere a discussion talking about the difference of this firmware but the only thing that i rember now is that firmware-2 should be idea for AP mode. i tried all of them and saw no difference

stephenw10

Ah, interesting. Looks like the modules I have are dated May 14th, they must still be those you compiled.

I'll try to update.

Steve

kiokoman

there is nothing new from Geramy or Adrian, the last commit is 7 feb
but here is the new firmware i found
10.2.4.70.70.zip
from kvalo/ath10k-firmware

content of athp_QCA988X_hw2.0_firmware-5.bin.ko

^?ELF^B^A^A 
......
^@QCA-ATH10K^@w^@^@^@^@^L^@^@^@10.2.4.70.70^A^@^@^@^D^@
......

stephenw10

Seems good:

athp1: qca988x hw2.0 (0x4100016c, 0x043202ff) fw 10.2.4.70.70 api 5 htt-ver 2.1 wmi-op 5 htt-op 2 cal otp max-sta 128 raw 0 hwcrypto 1 features no-p2p,bit10

Be nice if there was some change log. 2.5 years between those versions from what I can see.

Steve

kiokoman

nope, sorry can't find any changelog anywhere

stephenw10

Yeah I couldn't see anything either. Seems to be working OK though so no significant regression, at least not yet!

Still seeing values in scans that cannot be correct in terms of channel or even the reported MAC. Some random data in there.

Can't wait to try media VHT mode 11ac mediaopt hostap. Just need some way to actually apply it I guess. Fun!

Steve

stephenw10

Anyone running this in a current, 12.1-stable, snapshot?

I tested the modules would load before upgrading and was surprised to find they did. But doesn't actually load the with the hardware in place.

I guess it's new modules time.

Steve

kiokoman

not anymore, I have virtualized everything on ESXi and added a Ubiquiti ap-ac-pro, for me it was too unstable.
but I have modules compiled for FreeBSD 12.1 if you want to try
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fM-Jlmf8BY21kIEGueSxFWmrISZqcDj3
there is a folder athp-12.1

kiokoman

nice

Sponsored by: Rubicon Communications, LLC (d/b/a "Netgate")

Co-authored-by: Bjoern A. Zeeb bz@FreeBSD.ORG.

we had to wait for netgate to chime in before something get done

thumb up for netgate and bzfbd

but idk when we can take advantage of the patches, that drivers are intended to be built against FreeBSD 13

maybe with pfsense 2.6 ?

stephenw10

Ooo, nice I'll give them a go.
It's weird I'm seeing that firmware table full error that others reported before. It's been so long since I set this up initially I've forgotten exactly how I got past it. The notes I made that seemed sufficient at the time suddenly look woefully inadequate!

Steve

stephenw10

Looks like current snaps are loading more firmware by default. Standby....

stephenw10

And we're back...
Firmware limit removed in current snaps.

Steve

kiokoman

ah it was #define FIRMWARE_MAX right?

stephenw10

Yup. https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd/commit/7dfd7b3b1a033dac9d594cdec23d2f82b84fa39d

Gektor

@kiokoman
Can you add, please, firmware (with board-2.bin) for QCA9984/hw1.0 on FreeBSD 12.1?

stephenw10

I'm not sure that is supported at all yet. What's the PCI-ID?

https://github.com/erikarn/athp/blob/master/otus/freebsd/src/sys/dev/athp/if_athp_pci.c#L126

Steve

Gektor

@stephenw10
0x168c 0x0046 0x168c 0xcafe 0 0 "Qualcomm Atheros" "QCA9984"

stephenw10

Yeah not in the code so the driver would not attach to that yet.

_rp

Hey, I also have a Compex WLE600VX card installed in my pFsense with 2.5.0 Dev installed, the card I understand is a Qualcomm Atheros QCA9882 based card. I'm running the latest snapshot from yesterday.

Can anyone summarise what I need to do to make use of this card please, it's currently not showing in the device list in the GUI.