Wil6210 in LEDE - TPLink Talon 7200AD

For Developers
1

Hi,

I'm using a precompiled LEDE v17.01.2 release on a TP-Link Talon AD7200.
This LEDE comes with a working wilocity driver (wil6210) for the 802.11ad interface.

I'm trying to modify the wil6210 driver to my needs, recompile it, get the .ko and insert the module into my LEDE device.

The problem I'm having is that when I insert the wil6210 recompiled module in my LEDE device using modprobe, it doesn't load.
Can someone please help me debug this problem ?

Here are some information I think they might help you help me:

  • I'm not having any significant debugging output from modprobe
  • The wireless interface associated with wil6210 driver doesn't load after using the recompiled driver
  • The kernel source code I'm using for driver compilation is version 4.4 generic
  • The kernel on my LEDE device is 4.4.71

Any insight is welcome.

Best regards,
Mohammed

2

Hi

You have to use exact kernel version for module to start. Rebuild the wil6210 module from LEDE buildroot and simply scp and install ipk package.

3

Hi,

Thank you for your reply. It's always nice that someone shows attention to your problems :slight_smile:

Indeed, for compilation I'm using the exact same kernel version of the target system.
I don't understand the part about rebuilding. Could you clarify 2 points for me:

  • How do I rebuild wil6210 module against LEDE source code ? It's easy for a general linux distro, but I I can't figure out how to build a module againt a LEDE distro
  • The result of the module building is a binary .ko, not a package. What do you mean by installing a package ?

Regards,
Mohammed

4

couldn't remember the exact path so i found this in my bash_history, it's for mac80211 which i think covers your wil6210 driver

make package/kernel/mac80211/compile V=s

upload mac80211 package to device (and any dependent packages that were rebuilt) install over existing one / reboot

5

What if I want to change wil6210 code, recompile it, create a package and load it to device ?
I can't find where openwrt gets the code for wil6210 in order to package it ..

6

openwrt/build_dir/target-mips_24kc_musl/linux-ar71xx_generic/backports-2017-11-01/drivers/net/wireless/ath

7

I checked everywhere in the default repo but I can't find any path corresponding to net/wireless/ath
I'm using lede 17.01.2

P.S :
have you heard of https://github.com/seemoo-lab/lede-ad7200 ?
These guys included wil6210 driver in their lede distro

Again, thanks a lot
Mohammed

8

In OpenWrt most network drivers are part of mac80211 package

That package currently uses drivers from kernel 4.14-rc2 with a ton of patches and backports.
So,to add wil6210 driver it has to be added to the makefile to be build as a kernel module.
Then it can be simply included as a kmod package and it will be loaded on device boot.
Also,please move to 18.06 branch.

9

Thanks @robimarko !
Your explanation is what I was looking for

10

You actually linked a repo where driver was included,so you can simply add the needed stuff to Makefile and firmware.

I have not seen a device using wil6210 driver in OpenWrt