Bug 2044233

Summary:	[RHEL8.6] iwlwifi: backport patches to prevent firmware resets
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8	Reporter:	Íñigo Huguet <ihuguet>
Component:	kernel	Assignee:	Íñigo Huguet <ihuguet>
kernel sub component:	Wifi	QA Contact:	Ken Benoit <kbenoit>
Status:	CLOSED CURRENTRELEASE	Docs Contact:
Severity:	unspecified
Priority:	unspecified	CC:	carl, jarod, kbenoit, ngompa13
Version:	8.5	Keywords:	TestOnly, Triaged
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2022-05-16 09:55:13 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:	2043453
Bug Blocks:

Description Íñigo Huguet 2022-01-24 09:41:35 UTC

This bug was initially created as a copy of Bug #2035849

There was a iwlwifi issue that would cause firmware resets and cause
performance to significantly degrade to around ~500Kb/s till the
interface was brought down and then up again. Upstream identified the
issue and there are 2 patches that fix the issue by increasing the
scan timeout[1] and in cases where the firmware resets allows it to
recover quicker[2]. The patch to allow for quicker firmware recovery
is present in Linus' tree and present in the 5.16 rc releases while
the patch to prevent the firmware from crashing in the instance is in
net-next for 5.17.

I believe this impacts any Intel WiFi 6 cards, but it particularly
affects the AX210 on the Framework laptop.

[1] - https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=214549
[2] - https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=214693

The two patches can be found upstream and they are attached to the upstream bugs.

Comment 1 Íñigo Huguet 2022-03-01 09:18:32 UTC

Wireless update to v5.16 and later fixes has been merged. It includes the patches reported to fix this BZ. Setting state to ON_QA.

@kbenoit reproduction steps from https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=214693#c0:
1. Start iperf to generate network load.
2. Perform `nmcli device wifi rescan`.
3. Expect: no device restart. Actual: device restarts (see logs) and network speeds become abysmally slow or non-responsive until disconnecting and reconnecting to WiFi network.

Note that this was very likely to only happen if the driver and the card has the 6GHz band enabled, but not required to be connected to 6GHz channel.

@ngompa13 may you want and be able to test it as well? I think you were using RHEL9, not sure if you can also test it with RHEL8.

Comment 2 Neal Gompa 2022-03-01 13:44:41 UTC

I don't have a Framework Laptop on hand to test with at the moment, but maybe @carl could? I believe he has one.

Comment 3 Ken Benoit 2022-03-02 17:52:03 UTC

Ran testing against RHEL-8.6.0-20220227.3 (with kernel-4.18.0-371.el8 installed on top of it since it hasn't landed in the nightlies yet) on an Intel AX211 using the steps from comment 1. Only saw a momentary dip in speed (a drop of ~30 Mbps for only 1 second) if the rescan was performed and then the speed went right back to normal. Marking as verified.

Comment 4 Carl George 🤠 2022-05-11 04:30:57 UTC

I do have a framework laptop but I'm currently using it and cannot install a different operating system for testing at this time.