Pre-compiled updated mwlwifi drivers for stable releases

Yes, getting the file into the device is sometimes tricky... You can try using wget o curl, or you can download it to your PC, and then send it using SCP.

Starting from version 10.3.4.0-20171129-af210f0 I had problems with broadcast traffic. After some time if a new wireless client connects it will not receive an IP address. In the logs on the router I see the request and the attempt to send the reply but it seems the client does not receive it. It just sends more requests. The clients already connected to the network continue to work fine.

There are no errors in system and kernel log that might help identify why this starts happening.
This problem occurs on both 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks. And it starts at random intervals after reboot. Router may work fine for a day or it may stop sending broadcast traffic after an hour of uptime.

I've tried the latest version of the driver after that but it also has this problem. I even tried compiling the latest lede snapshot with this driver but that did not help. The strangest this is that when I refleshed clean lede 17.01.4 and tried it without updated driver I also had this problem. I also tried using odhcpd instead of dnsmasq. In all the tests I used the same configuration. And I have not changed any settings before noticing the problem.

Any suggestions on how I might try to debug why this is happening?

@Sonnix I have seen a similar issue, happening on all versions from OpenWrt CC to latest LEDE, on two different routers, but only one wifi client: a wireless printer, that sometimes seem to ignore answers from the DHCP server, and manages to obtain an IP address different than the static one I configured. However, rebooting the router and then the printer has always fixed the issue.

I would open an issue at the official repo for this driver (https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi/issues); there is some very knowledgeable people around there, and surely will help you diagnose the issue and find a solution.

And by the way, there is a new release available; however, this time only the version number changes, code is exactly the same as the previous one:

@eduperez Thanks for the suggestion.
I can reproduce this problem on two android devices, notebook with Intel wireless 7265 and another router actin as client based on Atheros QCA9880. So it's not just a single device affected.

I also found an issue than might be related to the problem: https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi/issues/36
Should I reopen it or start a new one?

@Sonnix I am not going to suggest that the problem is just in your set-up, but I am currently using this router, I own many different devices, and I have used all versions of LEDE and all versions of the mwlwifi drivers. If this was a widespread issue, I (and many others) would have surely noticed it by now.

However, I do not think that opening a new issue is going to harm anybody, and someone there will probably help you investigate the problem.

I just create this topic regarding information not properly displaying in LUCI

The more I looked into the more I realized that this is a hardware/driver issue:
Ok, so I'm using the latest drivers that were posted here:

However, the arp tables are not being populated, and arping cannot ping any clients connected to radio0:

root@blue:~#  arping -I br-lan 192.168.3.45
ARPING 192.168.3.45 from 192.168.3.2 br-lan

I can arping clients connected to radio1:

root@blue:~#  arping -I br-lan 192.168.3.95
ARPING 192.168.3.95 from 192.168.3.2 br-lan
Unicast reply from 192.168.3.95 [00:C0:CA:85:00:7D]  6.394ms
Unicast reply from 192.168.3.95 [00:C0:CA:85:00:7D]  5.351ms

If anyone interested I've created an issue regarding my problem with broadcast traffic: https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi/issues/243
It seems there are actually others with more or less similar issues.

@leif.liddy You might find my last reply in the issue I mentioned relevant to the problem you are having with arp tables. For me after some time the router is unable to send broadcast traffic on wireless network and so the arp table can't be populated properly.

1 Like

+1. Although I can't precisely indicate when did it start happening. Sadly flashing router back to 17.01.4 didn't fix the problem either. :frowning:

Using the firmware directly linked by Alexander-r and removing isolate=1 from all wifi interfaces brought back the stability to 17.01.4.

Do you mean this one? It was posted by "yuhhaurlin" to help "Alexander-r" find the cause of the issue. As I understand it, it contains the same driver from the latest commit, but and updated experimental firmware (0x0903f1f3).

I'm assuming most people now this but it seems to be a bigger issue with Marvel? I'm not sure if your repo's come directly from them or not, but the reason I moved to LEDE is because Linksys has a huge firmware issue, that seems to be related to some type of chipset/firmware malfunction. They are supposedly working with them to try and resolve the issue, I'm assuming those that are having stability issues are related to that? I could be completely off base here, but I think the problem was originally posted at the first of December with Linksys and has been a battle ever since.

@cguilford My repo is just a mirror of the official repo where new drivers and firmware is being released.

Yeah, spoke too soon, that firmware still has a problem. I'm back to EA8500.

I've used WRT3200ACM snapshots for a few months before the problem manifested and before that the router worked flawlessly. I hope they roll back the change in firmware or fix the problem for the 18.xx release.

I can confirm that there still are problems with experimental firmware.
There will be more experimental firmwares but they are mostly for diagnosing the cause of the problem. Once the cause is determined hopefully there will be a fix. As mentioned in #241 Marvell is closing for the week so don't expect anything before the holidays.

There is a new release, but it just adds some debugging functions:

There is a new mwlwifi firmware 9.3.2.3: https://github.com/kaloz/mwlwifi/issues/243#issuecomment-356558472
I haven't tested it yet but it might solve wi-fi connection issues for those who have them.
Also Linksys released new beta version of official firmware. I tested it and so far I think it resolves my connection issues.

@eduperez any plans to build a package with if so that people who have problems with wi-fi can test it?

@Sonnix I released packages with the new firmware for the latest versions of the driver yesterday, but forgot to announce them here; thanks for the heads-up!

2 Likes

There is a new firmware available: 9.3.2.4, also experimental:

@eduperez and others

Any views if the 10.3.4.0-20171214 in master (commit 843d00cd) is stable/good enough for backporting into 17.01 (to be included in the possible forthcoming 17.01.5) to replace the current 2017-06-06 version)?