Hello,
I've spent a better part of a day chasing a weird perhaps regulatory related
issue in rtw89 driver, which I think may be useful reporting on. :)
I have a dual wifi card system, with both cards serving as APs: RTL8852AE
and RTL8852CE.
I observe two things:
- hostapd fails to start 5G AP on either RTL8852AE or RTL8852CE with this in the
log:
wlan-5g: interface state UNINITIALIZED->COUNTRY_UPDATE
Frequency 5180 (primary) not allowed for AP mode, flags: 0x11873 NO-IR
Primary frequency not allowed
wlan-5g: IEEE 802.11 Configured channel (36) or frequency (5180)
(secondary_channel=1) not found from the channel list of the current mode (2)
IEEE 802.11a
wlan-5g: IEEE 802.11 Hardware does not support configured channel
Could not select hw_mode and channel. (-3)
wlan-5g: interface state COUNTRY_UPDATE->DISABLED
wlan-5g: AP-DISABLED
wlan-5g: Unable to setup interface.
wlan-5g: interface state DISABLED->DISABLED
wlan-5g: AP-DISABLED
wlan-5g: CTRL-EVENT-TERMINATING
hostapd_free_hapd_data: Interface wlan-5g wasn't started
nl80211: deinit ifname=wlan-5g disabled_11b_rates=0
wlan-5g: IEEE 802.11 Configured channel (36) or frequency (5180)
(secondary_channel=1) not found from the channel list of the current mode (2)
IEEE 802.11a
wlan-5g: IEEE 802.11 Hardware does not support configured channel
(previously it worked fine)
- I can see this in `iw phy` output for both cards:
Frequencies:
* 5180.0 MHz [36] (20.0 dBm) (no IR)
* 5200.0 MHz [40] (20.0 dBm) (no IR)
* 5220.0 MHz [44] (20.0 dBm) (no IR)
* 5240.0 MHz [48] (20.0 dBm) (no IR)
- And now the interesting thing. no IR flag is only present, when both cards
are installed at once in the system.
- When I remove either one of the cards, "no IR" flags are gone from
5G band channels in `iw phy` output and hostapd starts successfully.
- Both cards have \xff\xff in efuse.country_code (so they are WW roaming cards,
I guess)
- Interestingly this did not happen when I was using RTL8822AE instead of
RTL8852CE in this system. So this seem to be somehow triggered by using
two cards driven by rtw89 driver.
`iw reg get` always returns in any case (and hostapd is set up with country_code=CZ
for both cards):
global
country CZ: DFS-ETSI
(2400 - 2483 @ 40), (N/A, 20), (N/A)
(5150 - 5250 @ 80), (N/A, 23), (N/A), NO-OUTDOOR, AUTO-BW
(5250 - 5350 @ 80), (N/A, 20), (0 ms), NO-OUTDOOR, DFS, AUTO-BW
(5470 - 5725 @ 160), (N/A, 26), (0 ms), DFS
(5725 - 5875 @ 80), (N/A, 13), (N/A)
(5945 - 6425 @ 320), (N/A, 23), (N/A), NO-OUTDOOR
(57000 - 66000 @ 2160), (N/A, 40), (N/A)
I'm wondering how "no IR" flag can appear on 5G channels when I have two
cards in one system, and disappear when I have just one installed, all other
things being equal. :)
Best regards,
Ondrej
