TL-WDR4320 (WDR4300/WDR4310) lost 5GHz since transition to ath79

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

I've a TL-WDR4320 which currently OpenWrt. Previously I used the WDR4310 ar71xx platform for this device, and both 2.4GHz and 5GHz worked fine.

When I recently did a transition from WDR4310 ar71xx to WDR4300 ath79 (I need to force a flash since the device name is not identical), as ar71xx is being deprecated in favor of ath79, the device lost its 5GHz capabilities, only 2.4GHz is still working.

Initially the 5GHz adapter was still listed in the configuration menu, but after doing another factory reset (as well as reflashes) the 5GHz adapter disappeared completely and I have never able to get it back.

The following could be found from the log:

[   19.549553] ath9k 0000:00:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[   19.558487] ath9k 0000:00:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath9k-eeprom-pci-0000:00:00.0.bin failed with error -2
[   19.568804] ath9k 0000:00:00.0: Falling back to syfs fallback for: ath9k-eeprom-pci-0000:00:00.0.bin
[   21.118512] ath: phy1: Couldn't reset chip
[   21.122697] ath: phy1: Unable to initialize hardware; initialization status: -5
[   21.130227] ath9k 0000:00:00.0: Failed to initialize device
[   21.135989] ath9k: probe of 0000:00:00.0 failed with error -5

The issue seemed similar to this one and this one. The latter did mention that even with correct ART the 5GHz still doesn't work on ath79.

Has there been any progress with this issue? I'm currently on the latest snapshot (WDR4300 ath79 platform, built today) and the problem's still there.

2

Say, did you try rollback to ar71xx OpenWRT release (i.e. 19.07.2) for 4310 after flashing ath79 one and test for 5GHz availability?

3

Okay... I'll give it a try. It seems the ar71xx platform is still on the snapshot at present...

EDIT: Ugh... I take it back. The snapshot for ar71xx hasn't been updated since last June, and several packages (namely luci-ssl and block-mount) have broken dependencies... will try 19.02.2.

4

Hi,

I also had this problem on my WDR4300 with ath79. I did a complete new installation and restored the backup. This didn't solve my problem, however with some later snapshot all was working again (sadly I don't know which one anymore - was maybe 2 weeks ago).

Currently I am running on r12991 without this problem, will maybe install the newest snapshot later or tomorrow.

5

My WDR4300 has been working perfectly after the transition. However, the wifi configuration file has changed, as the path for the devices is different now, and you cannot keep settings from version 18.

6

Migrating from ar71xx to ath79 require new (manual) configuration, please do not restore or keep old settings =)

1 Like
7

Sadly, I tried the following and none worked. Still only 2.4GHz working and no 5GHz.

  • Force-flashing ar71xx WDR4300 19.07.2 firmware (built using same settings).
  • Force-flashing ar71xx WDR4310 19.07.2 firmware (built using same settings).
  • Flashing ready-made ARTs from this repo. (This was done using pepe2k's modded u-boot which included a webpage for this purpose)

Either the new versions had some breaking changes to the 5GHz, or maybe WDR4320's 5GHz section may not be entirely compatible with WDR4300/WDR4310.

8

Bumping my post after a few months.

It seems the art file from this post got rid of these messages, so that's probably a really valid ART.

[   19.558487] ath9k 0000:00:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath9k-eeprom-pci-0000:00:00.0.bin failed with error -2
[   19.568804] ath9k 0000:00:00.0: Falling back to syfs fallback for: ath9k-eeprom-pci-0000:00:00.0.bin

However, ath9k still fails with the same error (-5)... so that's probably not the only issue. On the other hand, when I powered the device on, I noticed the 5GHz LED stayed off the entire boot sequence (including the initial part where all LEDs should turn on)... so not sure if that's an indication that my 5GHz is really dead...