Bug 216832

Summary:	ath11k: provide regdb.bin for all chipsets
Product:	Drivers	Reporter:	Robert Marko (robimarko)
Component:	network-wireless	Assignee:	Kalle Valo (kvalo)
Status:	ASSIGNED ---
Severity:	normal	CC:	itor, kvalo, maciekb, moberstr, nikitashvets
Priority:	P2
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Kernel Version:	5.17 and newer	Subsystem:
Regression:	No	Bisected commit-id:

Description Robert Marko 2022-12-22 16:11:23 UTC

Newer FW-s support using it as the external regulatory database and it
would really
allow the community running AHB radios to avoid being stuck with outdated or
even non-existent regulatory data in the BDF.

So, would it be possible to make it publicly available for all chipsets and not
only for WCN6855?

Regards,
Robert

Comment 1 Kalle Valo 2023-03-06 14:20:14 UTC

To summarise:

WCN6855 has regdb within board-2.bin.

WCN6750 has regdb within board-2.bin.

My understanding is that QCA6390 does not need regdb.bin.

So the hardwares missing regdb are:

IPQ5018 hw1.0
IPQ6018 hw1.0
IPQ8074 hw2.0
QCN9074 hw1.0

Please correct if I'm missing something.

Comment 2 Robert Marko 2023-03-06 15:09:22 UTC

I think that should be it

Comment 3 Kalle Valo 2023-03-08 10:11:26 UTC

I'm getting conflicting information from internal teams and I'm not fully understanding the situation anymore.

Robert, could you be more specific why you are requesting external regdb? For example what channels, features, firmware versions etc are not working because of missing regdb? The more details you can provide the better.

Comment 4 Kalle Valo 2023-03-08 10:17:42 UTC

For reference discussion from the mailing list:

https://lore.kernel.org/all/CAOX2RU5ATBuuPewx4DgveKjhc+E1a=Kt2COWDhYqQtLiJ1=NoQ@mail.gmail.com/

In one email Robert says:

"It's currently completely blocking the community from using 2.7 FW on IPQ8074."

I would need to understand in detail how this is exactly blocking the use of 2.7.x.x firmware.

Comment 5 Robert Marko 2023-03-08 11:33:05 UTC

Sure, let me clarify.

We have a lot of IPQ8074 boards now in OpenWrt that vary by the original design age, for example, Xiaomi AX3600, AX9000, and Redmi AX6 are one of the oldest ones and dont even have regDbFlag and regDbVersion populated in the BDF, not to mention that the regulatory info they have populated is completely out of date for ETSI.

Due to regDbVersion and regDbFlag not being populated FW 2.6 and 2.7 will just crash if you dont provide external regdb.bin as there is no in-FW fallback anymore.

Devices like Dynalink WRX-36 and Qnap 301W which have regDbFlag and regDbVersion populated will work on 2.7, however, the regulatory info is outdated.
Netgear also ships devices that dont have a regulatory database populated at all and are thus unusable without an external regulatory database.

Also, without external regulatory database we have different regulatory rules on different boards which is bad, really bad and we are unable to update the regulatory rules as that would require modifying BDF-s with tools that are only available under NDA as part of QSDK.

QSDK for example has been shipping external regdb.bin for all platforms in recent releases as it allows to easily update the regulatory info and not have to manually edit BDF-s