[Slackware64 14.2] Loading error of ath10k firmware with latest kernel-firmware and latest kernel-huge

Howdy :-)
I only installed the official package set and before I applied the system update, the ath10k firmware was successfully loaded.
Then I updated the system with slackpkg upgrade-all.
After that I rebooted the system and the ath10k firmware failed to load. The same happened with the reinstallation of latest kernel-firmware.
Finally I downgraded kernel-firmware to the previous one installed and when I again rebooted the system, the ath10k firmware was successfully loaded with the latest kernel-huge.
Is this a bug of ath10k firmware in latest kernel-firmware package?

Thanks in advance!

I applied the updates on my netbook and the firmware continues to load (I boot to a custom 4.17 kernel but that is irrelevant here):

[    8.642391] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/pre-cal-pci-0000:02:00.0.bin failed with error -2
[    8.644874] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/cal-pci-0000:02:00.0.bin failed with error -2
[    8.648058] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/QCA9377/hw1.0/firmware-6.bin failed with error -2
[    8.672237] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: firmware ver WLAN.TF.1.0-00002-QCATFSWPZ-5 api 5 features ignore-otp crc32 c3e0d04f

Of yourse your chip might be different, mine is QCA9377. Instead of downgrading the entire firmware package you may try using an older version of the specific firmware file you need. For ath10k you can check out the following github repo:

https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmware

Ilgar,

After reading /var/log/syslog, I noticed that

ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: Direct firmware load for ath10k/cal-pci-0000:03:00.0.bin failed with error -2

appears before and after kernel-firmware downgrade, so I assume that this is not the cause of the issue.
I also noticed that the following output appears before but not after kernel-firmware downgrade:

ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: firmware crashed! (uuid 761def23-1d0f-4661-8751-35a0c8cf7610)
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: firmware register dump:
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: [00]: 0x05020001 0x00000000 0x00A0F776 0x00000000
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: [04]: 0x00A0F776 0x00060130 0x00000010 0xFFFFE000
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: [08]: 0x0042136C 0x00420660 0x00400000 0x00400000
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: [12]: 0x00000000 0x00000000 0x00952CD0 0x00952CE6
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: [16]: 0x00000002 0x01010101 0x00000003 0x0000000A
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: [20]: 0x00000328 0x00429880 0x009A37AC 0x00000032
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: [24]: 0x800A0D0A 0x0040EA88 0x00420170 0x004173B0
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: [28]: 0x00401F64 0x00401F68 0x00000000 0x00417550
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: [32]: 0x00401FC0 0x8167A03C 0x00404940 0x00000003
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: [36]: 0x800A0907 0x00000001 0x0000085B 0x339011B2
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: [40]: 0x0000FFFE 0x0000000A 0x009BFE28 0x009BE0DC
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: [44]: 0x800A0D0A 0x0040EA88 0x00420170 0x004173B0
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: [48]: 0x00400000 0x00400000 0x00000001 0xFFFFFFFF
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: [52]: 0x800A0614 0x0040EAA8 0x0041FA10 0x00420170
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: [56]: 0x00400000 0x00421370 0x00419980 0x004212E8
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: failed to receive control response completion, polling..
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: ctl_resp never came in (-110)
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: failed to connect to HTC: -110
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: could not init core (-110)
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: could not probe fw (-110)
ath10k_pci 0000:03:00.0: cannot restart a device that hasn't been started

Should I still follow the advice you gave me?

Thanks in advance!

Yes I think the driver tries to load the firmware blobs present one by one until it finds the right one. That may explain the failed attempts which also appear in my log. But in you case the new firmware seems to be crashing. I can't tell which chip you have from the logs you provided, but I recommend that 1) you try to grab an older version of the blob, either from the git repo or by extracting it from the previous Slackware package, 2) once you verify that the old one works, report the issue to kvalo (AFAIK it is his git repo where the official development takes place).

As long as your devices work correctly, there is no harm in using an older version of the firmware package. But your bug report might be useful to other people, so you might consider digging this a little further. Good luck!