Return-path: Received: from mail2.candelatech.com ([208.74.158.173]:52993 "EHLO mail2.candelatech.com" rhost-flags-OK-OK-OK-OK) by vger.kernel.org with ESMTP id S1752568AbaFKOPp (ORCPT ); Wed, 11 Jun 2014 10:15:45 -0400 Message-ID: <53986490.40702@candelatech.com> (sfid-20140611_161549_287567_1264E2D6) Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2014 07:15:44 -0700 From: Ben Greear MIME-Version: 1.0 To: "Luis R. Rodriguez" CC: "linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org" Subject: Re: More confusion with regulatory issues. References: <53979E9A.5010308@candelatech.com> In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 Sender: linux-wireless-owner@vger.kernel.org List-ID: On 06/11/2014 02:10 AM, Luis R. Rodriguez wrote: > On Tue, Jun 10, 2014 at 5:11 PM, Ben Greear wrote: >> I have a Fedora 19 system with two ath10k NICs in them. I'm not sure >> they have any regulatory info in them at all, based on logs >> and some poking at what firmware reports. >> >> I have /etc/sysconfig/regdomain set to: >> >> COUNTRY=US > > I don't know who thought adding a sysconfig / default file with > regdomain with a value specified would be a good idea but users should > then just be aware that user regulatory settings *help* compliance > further, specially with cards that have regulatory stuff designed into > it, like ath5k, ath9k and ath10k. Otherwise, the OS tries to use time-zone, so one way or another it's getting user-configurables off of the disk. My ath10k cards are pre FCC approved (beta-ish NICs), so maybe that is why they have no regulatory info in them. And, I'm making test gear...I'm not just trying to use my laptop at a coffee shop. I understand why regulatory stuff exists, I just need to set up a specific test to try to debug some ath10k firmware problems. > There is one caveat too -- Atheros sells 802.11 cards to manufacturers > and for some time and maybe still today they set the regulatory domain > to 0x0 and override the regulatory setting in software since this is > economically cheaper than overriding it through changing the EEPROM / > OTP / whatever. This is actually not allowed in certain countries like > the US and JP, and what makes this worse is that the 0x0 regulatory > domain maps to the US on the ath module given that that is what is > designed by Atheros for STAs so that is what we do for ath. AP > manufacturers have the regulatory onus on them though -- so Atheros > cannot control what they do -- they can only provide EEPROM tools, > etc, and if folk are doing stupid things in software or using software > to do sloppy things -- Atheros needs to educate customers that that is > not a feature that is supported, and actually issue a bulletin on it, > otherwise boneheads that have been doing it for a long time will not > change. > > In short don't use the userspace stuff to set the regulatory domain > and use the OTP / EEPROM tools to set it. Setting it in software is > not allowed explicitly at least by the US and JP. It may be allowed in > other countries and if your country has that option you can look at > the ath module for some kconfig options I added before leaving Atheros > that enables some of this functionality for those countries. > > Apart from all this -- the fact that you get an intersection for all > reg hints going for US seems rather odd and should not be happening, > specially since if a regdomain was set to US then -EALREADY should be > issued and that regulatory domain should just be used to set onto the > cards (if the cards had an EEPROM / OTP thing with US). Even if the > user sets US twice, -EALREADY and the implications of it should > happen. I'll try the patch Janusz suggested, maybe that will fix the problem. For what it's worth, I added a wrapper to replace /sbin/regdb and printed out the value of COUNTRY before calling the original regdb. On the troubled system, it was: 00, US, US, US, US Thanks, Ben -- Ben Greear Candela Technologies Inc http://www.candelatech.com