Bug 1279653

Created attachment 1092018 [details]
dmesg | grep cfg80211

Created attachment 1092020 [details]
dmesg | grep rtl8821ae

Created attachment 1092021 [details]
lspci

This seems to be an issue with cfg80211 and CRDA on Fedora.

Booting the Fedora 23 LiveCD, 5ghz networks work. Once cfg80211 is loaded, 5GHz networking is disabled. 

It appears that when the card is in its default world regulatory domain, things work - but when the CA regulatory domain is loaded, 5GHz support gets killed.

I have also been testing with the rtlwifi-new driver from github:

 o https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new/issues/56

...and the behaviour is the same on F23.

Since the driver at rtlwifi-new is the same as the one in the kernel, itt is not surprising that the behavior is identical.

Still the case with kernel 4.2.7-300.fc23.x86_64, fresh Fedora installation.

Anything I can do to work around this?

Created attachment 1110818 [details]
Output from "dmesg | grep cfg80211"

Created attachment 1110819 [details]
Output from "iw phy" after load with ieee80211_regdom=CA

I downloaded a fresh copy of Fedora-Live-Workstation-x86_64-23-10.iso, copied it to a USB stick, and booted it.

Attached are the output of the cfg80211 outputs from dmesg. There are two sets of outputs. The first is with cfg80211 loaded with the regulatory domain set to world, which is the default set in my device. The second is after I unloaded cfg80211 and reloaded it with the regdom set to CA.

The "iw phy" output after cfg80211 was reloaded is also attached. In both cases, I was able to connect to channel 149.

Apparently the difference between your results and mine is that I have an RTL8821AE and you have an RTL8812AE. I have looked at the code, and both variants tell mac80211 that they are dual-band devices. I will continue looking for any differences in the initialization.

Unfortunately, I only have RTL8821AE devices. I found the 8812 variant on the web, but I'm a little hesitant to spend the $50 that it costs. There are none listed on E-bay.

The Realtek engineer confirmed that the RTL8812AE works OK in their environment using the standard kernel code in Fedora 23, thus the problem seems to happen only for your system.

I am more convinced that you are having some incorrect interaction between CRDA and mac80211. Does your device have the regdom for Canada built into the EEPROM, or are you loading cfg80211 with that option? Mine selects the regdom for the world, but I have a US option selected in a file in /etc/modprobe.d/.

Hi,

I've been following this bug every week or so for the last couple of months (I came here from the GitHub issue) and I can confirm that a D-Link DWA-582 (which uses a RTL8812AE) can connect to 2.4 GHz APs but not 5 GHz APs. It can see the 5 GHz APs when you click on search/list but it cannot connect to them. I've tried both Fedora 23 live cd and Manjaro 15.12 live cd. I've tried the default regdom (whatever it's set to when you boot the live image) and I've also tried connecting after running commands such as "iw reg set US", "iw reg set CA", "iw reg set RU" and a bunch of other countries.

Also, I can't edit the filesystem (/etc/modprobe.d/) since I'm running it from a live image. Filesystem edits usually require a reboot but any edits to the filesystem won't be saved after a reboot on a live image.

If you can see the 5G APs in a scan, then they are not blocked. It is possible that your computer only has a single antenna, and that it is not attached to the connector that the driver expects. This can be checked by runnin the command

sudo iw dev wlan0 scan | egrep "freq|signal"

Change wlan0 to match the actual name of the wireless device. Post that output. In addition, post the 5G frequency info from "iw phy".

For what it's worth, according to this user (https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new/issues/56#issuecomment-137716157), it appears that his Startech PEX867WAC22 (RTL8812AE) also can see 5GHz APs but cannot connect to them. Also, for whatever it's worth, about 1-2 weeks ago I had Windows 8.1 installed on the same computer and it connected to the same 5 GHz AP using the driver from the D-Link website.

Anyway, I followed your instructions after booting from a live image on both Fedora 23 64-bit and Manjaro KDE 15.12 64-bit.

Fedora steps:

1. First thing I did was take a screenshot of all the APs: fedora_scan.png
2. Next, I ran sudo iw dev wlp1s0 scan | egrep "freq|signal" (fedora_output.txt)
3. I ran iw phy (fedora_output.txt)
4. I ran iw reg set CA and iw phy (fedora_output.txt)
5. I ran iw reg set US and iw phy (fedora_output.txt)

Fedora 23 64-bit: Linux Kernel 4.2.3

Manjaro steps:

1. First thing I did was take a screenshot of all the APs: manjaro_scan.png
2. Next, I ran sudo iw dev wlp1s0 scan | egrep "freq|signal" (manjaro_output.txt)
3. I ran iw phy and iw reg get (manjaro_output.txt)
4. I ran iw reg set US and iw phy (manjaro_output.txt) (5G networks were still shown after a scan)
5. I ran iw reg set CA and iw phy (manjaro_output.txt) (5G networks were still shown after a scan)
6. I tried to connect to Discovery_5Ghz but it got stuck at "setting network address..." (manjaro_error.png)
7. I set the connection to static IP (manjaro_ip.png)
8. Connection is successful but I cannot access anything. Router cannot detect the computer and pinging 192.168.1.154 from another PC gives 0 results (manjaro_error2.png)

Manjaro KDE 15.12 64-bit: Linux Kernel 4.1.15

Created attachment 1116268 [details]
fedora_scan

Created attachment 1116269 [details]
fedora_output

Created attachment 1116270 [details]
manjaro_scan

Created attachment 1116271 [details]
manjaro_output

Created attachment 1116272 [details]
manjaro_error

Created attachment 1116273 [details]
manjaro_ip

Created attachment 1116274 [details]
manjaro_error2

Also, I forgot to mention that the D-Link DWA-582 has 2 antennas.

These are interesting results. Given the same hardware and essentially the same driver, 5G frequencies are allowed with Manjaro and forbidden with Fedora. I'm not sure why Manjaro was unable to complete the connection, but that is likely a separate issue.

At this point, I do not know enough to say why the Manjaro, Ubuntu and openSUSE systems allow 5G and Fedora does not.

Gabe: There is a question in Comment 10 that you still have not answered.

@Gabe: Please pull updates from the rtlwifi_new repo, build the master branch (the default), and run again. The new code will log a line

In _rtl_regdomain_select, country code XX

Please report the value for XX.

Manjaro has a nifty tool to swap out kernels so I decided to try out a bunch of kernels:

3.10.94 --> wifi card not detected

3.14.58 --> can see 5G and can connect

3.16.7 --> can see 5G and can connect

3.18.25 --> can see 5G but cannot connect

4.1.15 --> can see 5G but cannot connect

4.2.8 --> cannot see 5G

4.3.3 --> cannot see 5G

4.4.0 --> cannot see 5G

I should add that for the kernels that cannot even see 5G APs, the "iw phy" output says that all 5 GHz channels are disabled.

Created attachment 1116777 [details]
Patch to fix problem with RTL8812AE

The problem with the D-Link DWA-582 is that the country code is improperly encoded in the EEPROM. This problem leads to the driver selecting a channel plan that only includes 2.4 GHz channels. This patch changes that tp allow both 2.4 and 5 GHz bands.

The NEEDINFO request, which the OP has ignored, is cleared. I think this bug can be closed. The patch will be submitted to the wireless tree.

Thanks Larry!  I've backported your patch to 4.3.y and included it in Fedora git.

kernel-4.3.4-300.fc23 has been submitted as an update to Fedora 23. https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2016-2f25d12c51

kernel-4.3.4-200.fc22 has been submitted as an update to Fedora 22. https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2016-5d43766e33

kernel-4.3.4-200.fc22 has been pushed to the Fedora 22 testing repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Updates_Testing for
instructions on how to install test updates.
You can provide feedback for this update here: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2016-5d43766e33

kernel-4.3.4-300.fc23 has been pushed to the Fedora 23 testing repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.
See https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Updates_Testing for
instructions on how to install test updates.
You can provide feedback for this update here: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2016-2f25d12c51

kernel-4.3.4-300.fc23 has been pushed to the Fedora 23 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.

kernel-4.3.4-200.fc22 has been pushed to the Fedora 22 stable repository. If problems still persist, please make note of it in this bug report.