Bug#939262: firmware-iwlwifi: Consider update to newest version (20190815)

[Andrew Bettison]

See my report in https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=934781#30

On my Dell Precision M6400 laptop, the newer iwlwifi 20190815 firmware 
only partly fixes the problem.  The Wi-Fi no longer hangs (great!), but 
Microcode SW errors still occur in periods of high throughput.


-- System Information:
Debian Release: bullseye/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'xenial-security'), (500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.3.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_FIRMWARE_WORKAROUND
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF8 (charmap=UTF-8), 
LANGUAGE=en_AU:en (charmap=UTF-8)

Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

firmware-iwlwifi depends on no packages.

firmware-iwlwifi recommends no packages.

Versions of packages firmware-iwlwifi suggests:
ii  initramfs-tools  0.135

-- no debconf information

On Sat, 21 Sep 2019 08:51:55 -0400 "Andrew G. Dunn"  wrote:

> I'll chime in that I'm also affected on this same hardware, manual 
install

> works but it would be preferred if the package was updated.

Bug#934781: firmware-iwlwifi: iwl4965: Microcode SW error detected

[Andrew Bettison]

As an experiment, I downloaded the tarball from 
https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/tag/?h=20190815 
(as recommended in 
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=939262 ), and manually 
copied its intel/* and iwlwifi-* files into /lib/firmware (overwriting 
the ones installed by the firmware-iwlwifi package).


After rebooting kernel 5.3.0-2 (amd64) I still get "iwlwifi: Microcode 
SW error" messages accompanied by "ieee80211 phy0: Hardware restart was 
requested" during periods of high Wi-Fi throughput, but they do not 
cause the Wi-Fi to hang.  So the newer firmware appears to rectify the 
worst part of the problem (Wi-Fi freeze) but does not fully resolve the 
problem.


On Sun, 08 Sep 2019 23:43:04 -0400 Celejar  wrote:

> Package: firmware-iwlwifi
> Version: 20190717-2
> Followup-For: Bug #934781
>
> I did some further digging - in my case, at least, the problem seems to
> be triggered by some relatively recent kernel change. I combed through
> the system journal for the last few months, and the problem first starts
> appearing in the logs a few days after I began running kernel 5.2.x
> (from 5.2.7 through 5.2.9). Previously, while running 4.19.x, the
> problem never appears.
>
> I haven't done a bisection, but it seems pretty clear at this point that
> there's a microcode bug that has begun to be triggered by something in
> newer kernels.

Bug#939441: firmware-iwlwifi: Microcode SW error detected / Error sending REPLY_ADD_STA: time out after 2000ms

[Andrew Bettison]

Package: firmware-iwlwifi
Version: 20190717-2
Severity: normal
Tags: upstream

During heavy Wi-Fi use (rsync), every few seconds (see first kern.log
extract):

Microcode SW error detected.  Restarting 0x200.

And once:

Error sending REPLY_ADD_STA: time out after 2000ms.

followed by an event log dump (see second kern.log
extract).  At that point the Wi-Fi froze, and could only
be restored by restarting NetworkManager.



-- System Information:
Debian Release: bullseye/sid
  APT prefers testing
  APT policy: (990, 'testing'), (500, 'xenial-security'), (500, 'unstable'),
(500, 'stable')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 5.2.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Kernel taint flags: TAINT_FIRMWARE_WORKAROUND
Locale: LANG=en_AU.UTF8, LC_CTYPE=en_AU.UTF8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=en_AU:en
(charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)
LSM: AppArmor: enabled

firmware-iwlwifi depends on no packages.

firmware-iwlwifi recommends no packages.

Versions of packages firmware-iwlwifi suggests:
ii  initramfs-tools  0.135
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] microcode: microcode updated early 
to revision 0xa0b, date = 2010-09-28
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] Linux version 5.2.0-2-amd64 
(debian-kernel@lists.debian.org) (gcc version 8.3.0 (Debian 8.3.0-21)) #1 SMP 
Debian 5.2.9-2 (2019-08-21)
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] Command line: 
BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-5.2.0-2-amd64 
root=UUID=b5cca383-fde9-4f0b-9735-36077a0c8ede ro quiet
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] x86/fpu: Supporting XSAVE feature 
0x001: 'x87 floating point registers'
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] x86/fpu: Supporting XSAVE feature 
0x002: 'SSE registers'
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] x86/fpu: Enabled xstate features 
0x3, context size is 576 bytes, using 'standard' format.
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 
0x-0x0009b7ff] usable
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 
0x0009b800-0x0009] reserved
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 
0x0010-0xdf451bff] usable
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 
0xdf451c00-0xdfff] reserved
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 
0xf800-0xfbff] reserved
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 
0xfec0-0xfec0] reserved
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 
0xfed18000-0xfed1bfff] reserved
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 
0xfed2-0xfed8] reserved
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 
0xfeda-0xfeda5fff] reserved
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 
0xfee0-0xfee0] reserved
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 
0xffe0-0x] reserved
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] BIOS-e820: [mem 
0x0001-0x00041fff] usable
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] NX (Execute Disable) protection: 
active
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] SMBIOS 2.4 present.
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] DMI: Dell Inc. Precision M6400  
   /076V94, BIOS A09 11/05/2009
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] tsc: Fast TSC calibration failed
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] e820: update [mem 
0x-0x0fff] usable ==> reserved
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] e820: remove [mem 
0x000a-0x000f] usable
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] last_pfn = 0x42 max_arch_pfn = 
0x4
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] MTRR default type: uncachable
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] MTRR fixed ranges enabled:
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00]   0-9 write-back
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00]   A-B uncachable
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00]   C-D7FFF write-protect
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00]   D8000-E uncachable
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00]   F-F write-protect
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00] MTRR variable ranges enabled:
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00]   0 base 0 mask 8 
write-back
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00]   1 base 0E000 mask FE000 
uncachable
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00]   2 disabled
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00]   3 disabled
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00]   4 disabled
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00]   5 disabled
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [0.00]   6 disabled
Sep  5 08:23:41 sago kernel: [