@NoTengoBattery - I understand what you mean now. Thank you for the clarification. I'm linking to my config backups below anyway - not because I think you suggested a problem, but because who knows-maybe there is?
I'll give NoTengoBattery's build a try this weekend and see how that works next. I also cleaned up the backup archives of my gateway Edgerouter X and the EA6350v3 problem child plugged into it as an AP to remove passwords, etc. and posted them here if anyone cares to peruse. Never know. Maybe there is a clue in there someone else can see.
I don't see anything weird in your config, so I'm keep thinking it's a bug. Because there is no way (that's not always true, but there should not be way) to break a kernel driver from a misconfiguration.
So if you somehow managed to do just that (I have to explain, I'm talking in rhetoric) then it's the driver's fault!
Torvalds (the creator or Linux) always said just that, the kernel should not break from userspace actions.
Eureka! I swapped the EA6350v3 for the extra ea8500 this weekend - configured same - same problem. So far, so same. But one difference from my other EA8500 AP - the problem AP uses an IOT VLAN. I went into the interfaces physical settings menu for this interface and checked "bridge interfaces" (even though this VLAN is only bridged with itself - so I'm thinking there should be no need for this). Memory use has stayed low and stable for ~18 hours (<60 MB) now. Don't know why it works, but it seems to be working so far. This last debug is all with snapshot r11626 on the EA8500 and r11625 on the ER-X.
I think ath10k-ct driver has memory leak bug. Though my ASUS-AC58U only has 128M memony and I know ath10k-ct needs much more memory, when I use ath10k driver, It's stable. If I switch the driver to ath10k-ct and use iperf3 to test it, the memory will be exhausted in several minutes and the router will reboot immediately. Hi @eginnc, can you test the ath10k-ct driver by iperf3 and watch the memory usage?
I viewed the forum about ipq40xx and ipq80xx SoC, It seems that the ath10k-ct is much more suitable for the ipq80xx but not stable on the ipq40xx.
Any ideas?
ath10k and ath10k-CT are very stable with three radios running on the IPQ4019-based Linksys EA8300.
The Asus units with only 128 MB of memory are reported to be unstable, in general.
There is some talk on the mailing list to patch the ath10k-CT drivers for reduced RAM, but I don’t think that will fix the 128 MB issues. I recall one recent post indicating instability without wireless enabled.
One of my many past debug attempts on the ipq4018 was to remove ath10k-ct and replace with ath10k. It made no difference - memory use climbed unto death with either driver and ath10k was much worse than ath10k-ct with respect to connection speed, link speed and signal to noise. I don't think the problem in my case is unique to ath10k-ct. EA8500 memory use has been steady around ~50-60MB ever since enabling bridge interfaces on the IOT network interface with ath10k-ct and all has been well since.
For completeness, I'll risk the wrath of my family (mostly my insolent children using "air quotes" on my "fixing" the wifi again) and swap out the EA8500 for the EA6350 again, with bridged interfaces set for the IOT network interface. We'll see what happens and report back. Probably be the weekend before I get to that though.
Unless interfaces are supposed to be bridged to themselves to work properly, I do think there remains a memory killing ghost in the machine tied to not using this option, but I seem to have confirmed the problem is not unique to ath10k-ct or ipq4018, and I've confirmed it is present on both ipq8064 and ipq4018.
Sorry for the inconvenience.
As I have a ASUS RT-AC58U and I use it as an AP. The ath10k driver can provide about 40MB/s (5G wifi) download speed on iperf3 test. But the ath10k-ct can't finish the test because the memory is exhausted. So I want to know the performance on a 256M memory device.
Thank you.
When I was testing the IPQ4019-based Linksys EA8300 I recall seeing throughput over 500 Mbps over 802.11ac with a nearby MacBook Pro client. I didn't quantify it further as, for me, performance under "real" conditions (moderate and weak signal) is more important. I swapped out my trusty Archer C7v2 units for the EA8300s as the 802.11ac performance was noticeably better, even with 2x2 vs. 3x3 on the older chip set in the C7v2 units.
Right now, on a relatively low SNR link (-83 dBm), I'm getting 50-60 Mbps over a batman-adv link.
@sotux Sorry it took me longer than expected to swap out routers again. I did swap the EA6350v3 back into service as our first floor access point. It's running fine on snapshot r11735 (with ath10K-ct) now that I have bridge interface checked. I ran repeated iperf tests on the 5G wifi achieving ~350 Mbits between the AP and my Acer Swift 1 laptop across ~30 feet of air, line of sight. I could induce a blip in memory use, but nothing broke.
Thanks, @eginnc. I do make a mistake. The ath10k-ct driver do work well and no memory leaks.
I've tried @chunkeey's patch to reduce the memory usage on my asus RT-AC58U and tested it by iperf3. No reboot occured. Sorry for the noise. @jeff you are right.
