iwlwifi (AX210)

From: Kyle Evans <kevans_at_freebsd.org>
Date: Sun, 24 Oct 2021 07:43:24 UTC
Hi,

I've got an AX210 chip in a Framework laptop that I've (hackily)
gotten working with iwlwifi tonight... as with some other reports, the
firmware dies in a terrible fire with the stock wpa configuration.
Investigation lead to the following chain of observations:

1. Without WPA at play, I can trigger a scan and it works

2. Starting WPA, the firmware dies.

3. I can avoid it by setting ap_scan=0 in wpa_supplicant.conf and just
triggering a scan manually, e.g., in /etc/rc.d/wpa_supplicant's
wpa_poststart

 4. I can hack around it altogether without modifying the service by
just never passing ssids into the scan request in wpa_supplicant's bsd
driver: https://people.freebsd.org/~kevans/iwlhack.diff -- of course,
then it doesn't consult the cache... but at least my wifi works. :-)

I'm sticking with #4 for now because that' the most maintainable of
the local hacks that I've put together, but it'd be nice to understand
what's going on... a cursory review of the path from net80211 through
to iwlwifi didn't seem to turn up anything too hinky. I haven't tested
whether there's some difference in specific ssid vs. wildcard ssid.

Thoughts?

Thanks,

Kyle Evans