Linux 5.8 / ath11k support

akvadrako · October 13, 2020, 8:35am

How much work is it to use a newer kernel with VyOS?

I would like to use an 802.11ax card with the ath11k driver.

Cheers ~ Devin

Dmitry · October 13, 2020, 12:13pm

Hello @akvadrako, we can’t use kernel 5.8 for several dependency reasons, like Intel QAT, I hope Intel solve this in the future, but you can build and install a new kernel by yourself. Look how it doing CI vyos-build/build-kernel.sh at current · vyos/vyos-build · GitHub

akvadrako · October 13, 2020, 12:31pm

I see, and ticket T2843.

So if I do it myself, and I don’t need QAT, things should work fine?

Dmitry · October 13, 2020, 1:03pm

I think yes, but do not forget to build intel ixgbe/igb if you need it.

akvadrako · December 2, 2020, 5:31pm

I am working on this and I have encountered one issue. The ath11k driver does not use MODULE_FIRMWARE() so the firmware isn’t found. For now I can hardcode it’s inclusion, but once kernel 5.10 is supported it would be nice if the firmware was discovered automatically.

What’s the best way of handling this? If it should be considered a driver bug, is there some kernel documentation I can point to requiring this?