Which PCIe wlan cards are supported?

[leothrix]

I’ve got two PCIe cards I’m attempting to use with the espressobin, one is ath9k based and the other is an ath10k card. I’ve used pretty much every combination of kernels and/or modules I can think of to attempt to get the cards working and recognized – I’ve run the precompiled kernel zip from the tech specs page, a slightly adapted kernel .config from the Realtek howto page, a custom 4.4.8 build based on the upstream Marvell kernel tree, and running the buildroot image – nothing has recognized these cards. I’ve attempted this with three new Atheros cards, all with the same results, so I doubt it’s the card hardware.

I’m curious whether a) only the RTL8191SE works with the espressobin, b) my Atheros-based cards should be working but I’ve got a bad board, or c) nobody has yet been able to get wlan working on the espressobin, whether with a Realtek card, Atheros, or anything else.

Does any end user have a working wlan PCIe card on the espressobin? Board developers, is anything outside of the Realtek RTL8191SE unsupported and untested, or should they be working as expected and I’m either doing something wrong or have a piece of bad hardware somewhere?

[tom.i]

Hi,
for me it’s same issue. I’ve that Realtek WIFI card which Marvell put inside the package, but I can’t use it in Ubuntu too.
I followed same wiki pages as you ( http://wiki.espressobin.net/tiki-index.php?page=Configuring+Realtek+RTL8191SE+mini+PCIe+WiFi+card ), but it doesn’t help and inserting mods doesn’t start wifi card:

root@espressobin:/home# insmod rtlwifi.ko 
root@espressobin:/home# insmod rtl8xxxu.ko 
root@espressobin:/home# insmod rtl_pci.ko 
root@espressobin:/home# insmod rtl8192se.ko 
root@espressobin:/home# iw reg set US
root@espressobin:/home# hostapd -B hostapd.conf 
Configuration file: hostapd.conf
Could not read interface wlan0 flags: No such device
nl80211: Driver does not support authentication/association or connect commands
Could not read interface wlan0 flags: No such device
nl80211 driver initialization failed.
hostapd_free_hapd_data: Interface wlan0 wasn't started

I don’t know if I have made any mistake or…

[mm]

Hi,

I tested with an intel 7260 mini pcie card and it makes the kernel panic (tested with the kernel provided by Marvell and the kernel provided by Arch Linux).

[Boris]

I tested with an ath10k card (same behavior like leothrix) and with a BCM94313 card. Only the BCM94313 card is recognized in the PCI bus.

—————-

BCM94313 card:

# Booting Trusted Firmware
BL1: v1.2(release):armada-17.02.0:
BL1: Built : 09:41:56, Jun 2 2NOTICE: BL2: v1.2(release):armada-17.02.0:
NOTICE: BL2: Built : 09:41:57, Jun 2 20NOTICE: BL31: v1.2(release):armada-17.02.0:
NOTICE: BL31:

U-Boot 2015.01-armada-17.02.0-g8128e91 (Jun 02 2017 – 09:41:51)

I2C: ready
DRAM: 1 GiB
Board: DB-88F3720-ESPRESSOBin
CPU @ 1000 [MHz]
L2 @ 800 [MHz]
TClock @ 200 [MHz]
DDR @ 800 [MHz]
Comphy-0: PEX0 2.5 Gbps
Comphy-1: USB3 5 Gbps
Comphy-2: SATA0 5 Gbps
Now running in RAM – U-Boot at: 3ff2b000
U-Boot DT blob at : 000000003fa18168
MMC: XENON-SDHCI: 0
SF: Detected W25Q32DW with page size 256 Bytes, erase size 4 KiB, total 4 MiB
PCIE-0: Link up (Gen1-x1 2.5GHz, Bus0)
SCSI: SATA link 0 timeout.
AHCI 0001.0300 32 slots 1 ports 6 Gbps 0x1 impl SATA mode
flags: ncq led only pmp fbss pio slum part sxs
Net: neta0
Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0
Marvell>> pci
Scanning PCI devices on bus 0
BusDevFun VendorId DeviceId Device Class Sub-Class
_____________________________________________________________
00.00.00 0x14e4 0x4727 Network controller 0x80

—————–

ath10k card

Booting Trusted Firmware
BL1: v1.2(release):armada-17.02.0:
BL1: Built : 09:41:56, Jun 2 2NOTICE: BL2: v1.2(release):armada-17.02.0:
NOTICE: BL2: Built : 09:41:57, Jun 2 20NOTICE: BL31: v1.2(release):armada-17.02.0:
NOTICE: BL31:

U-Boot 2015.01-armada-17.02.0-g8128e91 (Jun 02 2017 – 09:41:51)

I2C: ready
DRAM: 1 GiB
Board: DB-88F3720-ESPRESSOBin
CPU @ 1000 [MHz]
L2 @ 800 [MHz]
TClock @ 200 [MHz]
DDR @ 800 [MHz]
Comphy-0: PEX0 2.5 Gbps
Comphy-1: USB3 5 Gbps
Comphy-2: SATA0 5 Gbps
Now running in RAM – U-Boot at: 3ff2b000
U-Boot DT blob at : 000000003fa18168
MMC: XENON-SDHCI: 0
SF: Detected W25Q32DW with page size 256 Bytes, erase size 4 KiB, total 4 MiB
advk_pcie_pio_read_config(227): wait for PIO time out
advk_pcie_pio_read_config(227): wait for PIO time out
PCIE-0: Link up (Gen1-x1 2.5GHz, Bus0)
SCSI: SATA link 0 timeout.
AHCI 0001.0300 32 slots 1 ports 6 Gbps 0x1 impl SATA mode
flags: ncq led only pmp fbss pio slum part sxs
advk_pcie_pio_read_config(227): wait for PIO time out
advk_pcie_pio_read_config(227): wait for PIO time out
advk_pcie_pio_read_config(227): wait for PIO time out
advk_pcie_pio_read_config(227): wait for PIO time out
advk_pcie_pio_read_config(227): wait for PIO time out
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0xc
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x1000
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x1000
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x2000
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x2000
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x3000
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x3000
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x4000
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x4000
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x5000
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x5000
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x6000
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x6000
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x7000
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x7000
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0xc
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x0
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x0
Net: neta0
Hit any key to stop autoboot: 0
Marvell>> pci
Scanning PCI devices on bus 0
BusDevFun VendorId DeviceId Device Class Sub-Class
_____________________________________________________________
Non-posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x0

[leothrix]

I’ve gotten a hold of a RTL8191SEvB card, which the PCIe bus recognizes, but still won’t show up as a valid network interface:

[root@host ~]# lshw -short
H/W path  Device  Class      Description
========================================
                  system     Marvell Armada 3720 Community Board
/0                bus        Motherboard
/0/1              processor  cpu
/0/2              processor  cpu
/0/3              memory     925MiB System memory
/0/0              network    RTL8191SEvB Wireless LAN Controller
/2        usb3    bus        xHCI Host Controller
/3        usb2    bus        xHCI Host Controller
/1        usb1    bus        EHCI Host Controller
/4        lan1    network    Ethernet interface
/5        br0     network    Ethernet interface
/6        lan0    network    Ethernet interface
/7        wan     network    Ethernet interface
/8        eth0    network    Ethernet interface
[root@host ~]# rfkill list all
[root@host ~]# iw list
[root@host ~]#

Based upon the replies to this thread, it would appear that there are no known PCIe cards that work on the espressobin. This post by @Bryan seems to suggest that a compatible Marvell card is forthcoming, but to be completely honest I’m skeptical given that the official wiki purports that this Realtek card is compatible as well, but nobody has been able to make it work successfully.

Having tried unsuccessfully to make a few Realtek, ath10k, and ath9k cards work, I’m curious whether anyone from globalscale/marvell would like to chime in to clarify the situation, otherwise it would appear that the espressobin is dead in the water when it comes to wifi over PCIe.

[tom.i]

Maybe drivers from @bryan which he mentioned here will be fine.
But I’m not sure, if it helps to the Realtek wifi card.

[leothrix]

@tom.i, I tried to use that with all of the aforementioned cards without success, unfortunately.

However, I can report that the latest Arch Linux ARM kernel release for the espressobin does work with the RTL8191SE card mentioned on the wiki, I’ve tested AP mode over 802.11n successfully.

This is definitely an improvement, and works sufficiently well to function as a wireless router for now. Hopefully some progress can be made for ath9k and ath10k-based cards, as attempting to use those still just results with kernel panics at boot time.

[tom.i]

Hi Leo,
yesterday I’ve tried Armbian from this post and wifi works without problem too.
So maybe I’m done with selection of right distribution for EspressoBin (finally) 😀

[Boris]

I tested it again with the Ubuntu image from ARMBIAN (ARMBIAN 5.32.170626 nightly Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS 4.4.73-mvebu64). The behavior remains the same.

BCM4313:

[ 2.422240] PCI host bridge /soc/pcie@d0070000 ranges:
[ 2.427321] MEM 0xe8000000..0xe8ffffff -> 0xe8000000
[ 2.432532] IO 0xe9000000..0xe900ffff -> 0xe9000000
[ 2.537994] advk-pcie d0070000.pcie: link up
[ 2.542146] advk-pcie d0070000.pcie: PCI host bridge to bus 0000:00
[ 2.548911] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [bus 00-ff]
[ 2.554514] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [mem 0xe8000000-0xe8ffffff]
[ 2.561713] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [io 0x0000-0xffff] (bus address [0xe9000000-0xe900ffff])
[ 2.571993] pci 0000:00:00.0: BAR 0: assigned [mem 0xe8000000-0xe8003fff 64bit]
…
~$ lspci
00:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

=======

Qualcomm Atheros AR93xx:

[ 2.410950] PCI host bridge /soc/pcie@d0070000 ranges:
[ 2.416302] MEM 0xe8000000..0xe8ffffff -> 0xe8000000
[ 2.421271] IO 0xe9000000..0xe900ffff -> 0xe9000000
[ 2.526635] advk-pcie d0070000.pcie: link up
[ 2.530794] advk-pcie d0070000.pcie: PCI host bridge to bus 0000:00
[ 2.537195] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [bus 00-ff]
[ 2.543220] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [mem 0xe8000000-0xe8ffffff]
[ 2.550170] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [io 0x0000-0xffff] (bus address [0xe9000000-0xe900ffff])
…
$ lspci
00:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR93xx Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

======

ath10k (I have four different cards with this chipset):

[ 2.399443] PCI host bridge /soc/pcie@d0070000 ranges:
[ 2.404527] MEM 0xe8000000..0xe8ffffff -> 0xe8000000
[ 2.409736] IO 0xe9000000..0xe900ffff -> 0xe9000000
[ 3.412441] advk-pcie d0070000.pcie: link never came up
[ 3.417687] advk-pcie d0070000.pcie: PCI host bridge to bus 0000:00
[ 3.423991] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [bus 00-ff]
[ 3.429747] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [mem 0xe8000000-0xe8ffffff]
[ 3.437035] pci_bus 0000:00: root bus resource [io 0x0000-0xffff] (bus address [0xe9000000-0xe900ffff])
[ 4.878493] advk-pcie d0070000.pcie: Posted PIO Response Status: CA, 0xe00 @ 0x0

In this case I see a red LED next to the mPCIe connector … What does that mean ?

[mm]

The Intel 7260 wifi mini pcie card now just works fine (272mbps~ on a 5ghz AC wifi) with the latest kernel packaged by Arch Linux (which includes the required advk pci fixes).

[leothrix]

@mm interesting, thank you for the report. Are you using the card in AP mode, or just as a wireless client? If it’s working smoothly on 5Ghz in AP mode that may be the best/only option for a 5GHz access point.

[pali]

Hello! I sent patch series for PCIe controller to linux-pci mailing list which should fix most of the problems with different Compex wifi cards on Armada 3720 boards, including Espressobin.

https://lore.kernel.org/linux-pci/20200430080625.26070-1-pali@kernel.org/T/#u

If you have still problems with different wifi cards on Espressobin, try above PCIe patches and let me know if they helped or not.

[Anonymous]

thank you so much for the great information

[cgfx]

Has anyone gotten the Intel WiFi 6 AX200NGW working on the espressobin for Wi-Fi 6?
What is the defacto card that works the best currently with the espressobin?
does anyone have wi-fi 6 working and which cards are you using?

thanks, cgfx

[pali]

With above PCIe patches, which are now part of Linux 5.8, all PCIe cards should be properly detected.

[Author]

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