Atheros QCA6174 Wifi disconnects frequently

[RandomJerk]

HI. I have an Dell Precision 5520 laptop which has QCA6174 card and having issues with Wifi on it. My wifi works fine, but disconnects every few minutes. The network manager shows the status as connected, but I will be unable to access any website or even ping my own router. The only way to recover the connection is to hit the Wireless Connection icon in the System Tray and then toggle the Wifi Off and On to get things going. After a few minutes, the same thing happens. This happens on both 5 and 2.4 Ghz networks. I'm sure I turned off Power Management/Saving Mode on the card.

Below is the details.

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inxi -F
System:    Host: Precision-5520 Kernel: 4.13.8-041308-generic x86_64 (64 bit) Desktop: Cinnamon 3.4.6
           Distro: Linux Mint 18.2 Sonya
Machine:   System: Dell (portable) product: Precision 5520
           Mobo: Dell model: 0R6JFH v: A00 Bios: Dell v: 1.3.4 date: 06/08/2017
CPU:       Quad core Intel Core i7-7820HQ (-HT-MCP-) cache: 8192 KB 
           clock speeds: max: 3900 MHz 1: 2900 MHz 2: 2900 MHz 3: 2900 MHz 4: 2900 MHz 5: 2900 MHz 6: 2900 MHz
           7: 2900 MHz 8: 2900 MHz
Graphics:  Card-1: Intel Device 591b
           Card-2: NVIDIA Device 13b6
           Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 driver: nvidia Resolution: 1920x1080@60.00hz
           GLX Renderer: Quadro M1200/PCIe/SSE2 GLX Version: 4.5.0 NVIDIA 384.90
Audio:     Card Intel Device a171 driver: snd_hda_intel Sound: ALSA v: k4.13.8-041308-generic
Network:   Card-1: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter driver: ath10k_pci
           IF: wlp2s0 state: up mac: 84:33:85:21:c2:a1
           Card-2: Atheros
           IF: null-if-id state: N/A speed: N/A duplex: N/A mac: N/A
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 250.1GB (57.5% used) ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 model: N/A size: 512.1GB
           ID-2: USB /dev/sda model: Portable_SSD_T5 size: 250.1GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 38G used: 14G (39%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda1
           ID-2: /home size: 176G used: 106G (64%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/sda6
           ID-3: swap-1 size: 16.98GB used: 0.00GB (0%) fs: swap dev: /dev/dm-0
RAID:      No RAID devices: /proc/mdstat, md_mod kernel module present
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 43.0C mobo: N/A gpu: 42C
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 295 Uptime: 6:17 Memory: 7719.2/15580.2MB Client: Shell (bash) inxi: 2.2.35 

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sudo lshw -c network
  *-network               
       description: Wireless interface
       product: QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
       vendor: Qualcomm Atheros
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
       logical name: wlp2s0
       version: 32
       serial: 54:13:79:74:a2:e1
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath10k_pci driverversion=4.13.8-041308-generic firmware=WLAN.RM.4.4-00022-QCARMSWPZ-2 ip=192.168.1.153 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
       resources: irq:140 memory:ed200000-ed3fffff

Pastebin URL of the Ubuntu wireless script for more details

https://pastebin.com/5Z7YmykR

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dmesg | grep ath10k
[   17.585783] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: pci irq msi oper_irq_mode 2 irq_mode 0 reset_mode 0
[   17.903407] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: qca6174 hw3.2 target 0x05030000 chip_id 0x00340aff sub 1028:0310
[   17.903408] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: kconfig debug 0 debugfs 1 tracing 1 dfs 0 testmode 0
[   17.903757] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: firmware ver WLAN.RM.4.4-00022-QCARMSWPZ-2 api 6 features wowlan,ignore-otp crc32 4d458559
[   17.969276] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: board_file api 2 bmi_id N/A crc32 6fc88fe7
[   18.559116] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Unknown eventid: 90118
[   18.559755] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: htt-ver 3.32 wmi-op 4 htt-op 3 cal otp max-sta 32 raw 0 hwcrypto 1
[   18.650632] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0 wlp2s0: renamed from wlan0
[   19.400959] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Unknown eventid: 90118
[  257.310767] Modules linked in: rfcomm ccm arc4 pci_stub vboxpci(OE) vboxnetadp(OE) vboxnetflt(OE) bbswitch(OE) bnep vboxdrv(OE) binfmt_misc nvidia_uvm(POE) nls_iso8859_1 snd_hda_codec_hdmi nvidia_drm(POE) nvidia_modeset(POE) snd_hda_codec_realtek nvidia(POE) dell_rbtn snd_hda_codec_generic ath10k_pci dell_laptop ath10k_core dm_crypt dell_wmi mxm_wmi dell_smbios wmi_bmof dcdbas ath snd_hda_intel intel_rapl snd_hda_codec mac80211 dell_smm_hwmon x86_pkg_temp_thermal snd_hda_core intel_powerclamp snd_hwdep coretemp snd_pcm cfg80211 kvm_intel rtsx_pci_ms memstick kvm uvcvideo irqbypass videobuf2_vmalloc crct10dif_pclmul crc32_pclmul ghash_clmulni_intel videobuf2_memops pcbc videobuf2_v4l2 videobuf2_core snd_seq_midi videodev snd_seq_midi_event hid_multitouch snd_rawmidi media snd_seq aesni_intel aes_x86_64
[ 3247.619919] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Unknown eventid: 90118
[ 6068.813935] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Unknown eventid: 90118
[14913.021533] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Unknown eventid: 90118
[22242.016075] ath10k_pci 0000:02:00.0: Unknown eventid: 90118

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lspci -knn | grep Net -A2
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [168c:003e] (rev 32)
	Subsystem: Dell QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [1028:0310]
	Kernel driver in use: ath10k_pci
	Kernel modules: ath10k_pci

Anyone else facing the same/similar issue ? Any help in resolving this issue is much appreciated. Thank you

[RandomJerk]

Any help please ? Thank you

[JeremyB]

Can you move the router to a 2.4 Ghz channel at a width of 20Mhz?

[RandomJerk]

Can you move the router to a 2.4 Ghz channel at a width of 20Mhz?

Yes I can do that, but this is connecting to a 5 GHz network right now. Let me test it with 2.4 and 20 Mhz channel and post back how it goes

[RandomJerk]

Tried with the 20 MHz 2.4 Ghz network and I didnt see the disconnects. But the connection was comically slow, with upload speeds being 0.2 Mbps. 40 Mhz 2.4 Ghz network has the issue. So switched back to 5 Ghz

[RandomJerk]

Any other suggestions to fix this issue?

[JeremyB]

Unfortunately I have no other ideas but I suspect a Linux issue with the 5Ghz band as there have been a few reports of the signal strength fluctuating wildly

[TheArr0w]

I have the same issue, super slow on 2.4 Ghz, frequent disconnects on 5 GHz.

lspci -nnk | grep -iA3 net; dkms status
3c:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Qualcomm Atheros Killer E2400 Gigabit Ethernet Controller [1969:e0a1] (rev 10)
Subsystem: Dell Killer E2400 Gigabit Ethernet Controller [1028:0772]
Kernel driver in use: alx
Kernel modules: alx
3d:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Qualcomm Atheros QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [168c:003e] (rev 32)
Subsystem: Bigfoot Networks, Inc. QCA6174 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter [1a56:1535]
Kernel driver in use: ath10k_pci
Kernel modules: ath10k_pci

Kernel: 4.13.1-041301-generic

[RandomJerk]

Unfortunately I have no other ideas but I suspect a Linux issue with the 5Ghz band as there have been a few reports of the signal strength fluctuating wildly

Thanks for the response. For me, it is clearly not a signal fluctuating issue. I can clearly see that the signal levels during connect and disconnect are more or less the same. There seems to be something more sinister happening at the driver level I guess. Anyways, I ordered a Linux compatible USB wifi dongle that hopefully solves my issue with this chipset.

If I had to blacklist the driver ath10K, any ideas how to do it?

[JeremyB]

Try

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sudo apt-get install linux-firmware

Reboot
See if a minor firmware change fixes it, if that doesn't work download http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/m ... 69_all.deb
Double click on the file to install and reboot

[RandomJerk]

Try

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sudo apt-get install linux-firmware

Reboot
See if a minor firmware change fixes it, if that doesn't work download http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/m ... 69_all.deb
Double click on the file to install and reboot

Tried and it didn't help. I have firmware version 1.157.13 already installed. When I download the new version 1.169 from the URL above, the installation errors out with "Error: No longer provides linux-firmware'. How can I fix it?

[JeremyB]

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 wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/l/linux-firmware/linux-firmware_1.169_all.deb

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sudo dpkg -i linux-firmware/linux-firmware_1.169_all.deb

Reboot

If you want to disable the internal when your USB adapter arrives

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echo "blacklist ath10k_pci" | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf