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#1 2016-02-13 22:23:40

chc4
Member
Registered: 2016-02-13
Posts: 3

Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 wifi adapter not working

I got an Acer E5-573G laptop for Christmas, and have been trying to get Arch working on it off and on for a while now. Unfortunately, the adapter doesn't seem to be support.

Googling around only bring up links about how to get it working with Ubuntu via kernel.org backports, and that the necessary drivers were merged with ath10k for 4.0+ here, so I'm not sure why it doesn't currently work with the installation media which is 4.3.3.
To make matters worst, I can't follow the instructions for Ubuntu to get it working since it requires pulling the driver source over the internet, which is the entire problem, along with running out of space on the USB ramdisk if I try to install linux-headers and clang and all other dependancies to build it by mounting my Windows partition and copying the source from that.

Right now I'm just using Arch in a VirtualBox VM, but I'm not sure if I built it from source in that and copied it out if I would be able to install the driver first to the installation media and later to the installed image. I suspect not, since the VM is running 4.4.1

Is there anything I could do to try and get the ath10k_pci driver working if the installation media ships with the driver already, or an ETA for when Arch will merge the support in?

Last edited by chc4 (2016-02-13 22:27:26)

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#2 2016-02-13 23:07:24

jeremy31
Member
Registered: 2015-11-01
Posts: 149

Re: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 wifi adapter not working

You could check to see what versions are supported by the kernel with

modinfo ath10k_pci | grep -i alias

and post the results

In Ubuntu, they just install newer backports and grab the firmware from https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmware

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#3 2016-02-13 23:42:33

maslascher
Member
Registered: 2013-10-15
Posts: 52

Re: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 wifi adapter not working

Got the same. QCA9377 is supported by newest kernel, but I did not get any luck with getting Wi-Fi to work on Arch.
Maybe it's just Arch thing, this stuff is very new for Linux.

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#4 2016-02-13 23:47:23

chc4
Member
Registered: 2016-02-13
Posts: 3

Re: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 wifi adapter not working

It's a hassle to reboot into the media and back out for info, but I got it by writing to the mounted Windows partition.
In the virtualbox VM:
alias:          pci:v0000168Cd00000042sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v0000168Cd00000040sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v0000168Cd0000003Esv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v0000168Cd00000041sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v0000168Cd0000003Csv*sd*bc*sc*i*

In the installation media:
alias:          pci:v0000168Cd00000040sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v0000168Cd0000003Esv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v0000168Cd00000041sv*sd*bc*sc*i*
alias:          pci:v0000168Cd0000003Csv*sd*bc*sc*i*

lspci lists the wifi adapter as being in the 0042 PCI address space, so that looks like the reason. I just don't know /why/ it's not supported hmm

I tried building the backports in the VM, copying it out to Windows, and then installing it in the installation media...but that requires GNU make, which isn't included by default. And I still doubt it would actually work.

Last edited by chc4 (2016-02-13 23:49:09)

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#5 2016-02-16 09:34:24

InspectorMustache
Member
Registered: 2014-01-18
Posts: 10

Re: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 wifi adapter not working

I managed to get mine to work following these instructions: http://boggs.xyz/2016/01/06/qca9377-linux/
You could also have a look at this GitHub repo: https://github.com/ajaybhatia/Qualcomm- … Wifi-Linux

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#6 2016-02-16 10:11:01

loqs
Member
Registered: 2014-03-06
Posts: 17,192

Re: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 wifi adapter not working

https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=205354 covers that support has been in the kernel since 4.4 but the firmware is not in the linux-firmware package.
https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmwar … 9377/hw1.0
https://github.com/ajaybhatia/Qualcomm- … 9377/hw1.0
The driver expects the firmware to be in /usr/lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA9377/hw1.0
I linked two repositories as they name the files differently the second link with the shorter filenames seems to be the correct one to me.
edit:
remove url=

Last edited by loqs (2016-02-17 19:50:05)

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#7 2016-02-17 19:24:38

chc4
Member
Registered: 2016-02-13
Posts: 3

Re: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 wifi adapter not working

Hi! Thanks for the links. Unfortunately, it's not all that feasible for me to follow the instructions. The blog post InspectorMustache linked requires building the kernel module from backports which I tried to do before, but couldn't because the USB ramdisk runs out of space trying to install all the dependencies. Even if I did, the last step is to reboot to get the driver working which I can't do for the installation media. I've looked at that github AUR package before, but running makepkg fails for some reason. I doubt I could build the driver in my VM and transfer it over, since the kernel version is different. Can anyone verify that it would actually work if I did that? Or am I just SOL?

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#8 2016-02-17 20:27:32

loqs
Member
Registered: 2014-03-06
Posts: 17,192

Re: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 wifi adapter not working

Apologies I missed you stating you are using the 4.3.3 kernel.
https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 9#p1591119 appears to indicate how you can increase the amount of space allocated to the  overlay of the boot media.
Do you have an alternate internet connection you could use during the installation process as that would probably be easiest.  After install you would have the 4.4 kernel and would just need to place board.bin and firmware-5.bin in the correct location.
Alternatively from the virtual box install use Archiso to create a new install media based upon the 4.4 kernel and with the firmware already installed ( I have no experience with this )
As a third alternative you could downgrade the kernel on the virtual box install to match the kernel on the install media. You should be able to build a module compatible with the current install media.  After adding the firmware you could try installing the module and see if the interface is detected.
Edit:
The now released 2016.03.01 ISO contains the 4.4.1 kernel.

Last edited by loqs (2016-03-04 21:59:31)

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