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Sender: Larry Finger <larry.finger@gmail.com>
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Date:   Tue, 5 Apr 2022 10:02:58 -0500
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Subject: Re: rtw_8822ce wifi regression after kernel update from 5.15 to 5.16
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To:     "G. P. B." <george.banyard@gmail.com>
Cc:     snecknico@gmail.com, kvalo@kernel.org,
        linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org, regressions@leemhuis.info,
        regressions@lists.linux.dev, tony0620emma@gmail.com
References: <CAFPFaMLHXhHMhuAuvXWHb3c-tX_9qRxsquEUHXY0fMxh_VsKtw@mail.gmail.com>
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From:   Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>
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On 4/5/22 06:39, G. P. B. wrote:
> On Mon, 4 Apr 2022 at 15:49, Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net 
> <mailto:Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>> wrote:
> 
>     George,
> 
>     I do not know of any regression in 5.16 with regard to the driver for
>     RTL8822CE.
>     Certainly, I saw no regressions in my testing of that driver from before it was
>     in the kernel up to the present. That said, I can only comment on the
>     user-space
>     part of openSUSE Tumbleweed, which is probably not your distro of choice.
> 
>     Are you using the drivers at https://GitHub.com/lwfinger/rtw88.git
>     <https://GitHub.com/lwfinger/rtw88.git> rather than
>     the ones in the kernel? Your posted errors that refer to rtw_8822ce indicate
>     that to be true. If the drivers came from the kernel, the reference would be to
>     rtw88_8822ce! If so, do a 'git pull' to get the drivers updated to match the
>     code in kernel 5.18. A lot of things have been fixed.
> 
>     In your system, please do a 'lsmod | grep rtw'. If any items refer to rtw88_*,
>     you have mixed drivers loaded. In that case, you should blacklist the rtw88_*
>     driver.
> 
>     Larry
> 
> 
> I haven't had time to rollback to 5.15 to check if this fixes the issue but I 
> have the following command line output:
> [girgias@fedora ~]$ lsmod | grep rtw
> rtw88_8822ce           16384  0
> rtw88_8822c           483328  1 rtw88_8822ce
> rtw88_pci              28672  1 rtw88_8822ce
> rtw88_core            167936  2 rtw88_pci,rtw88_8822c
> mac80211             1175552  2 rtw88_pci,rtw88_core
> cfg80211             1036288  2 rtw88_core,mac80211
> 
> Which if I understand your email correctly means I have mixed drivers?
> I personally did not start to use the drivers you provide on GitHub as I just do 
> dnf update to update my packages.
> Therefore, does this implies there is an issue with how Fedora is packaging the 
> WiFi drivers?
> 
> If I need to blacklist drivers, I imagine I need to do this at the package 
> manager level?

George,

No, you have the in-kernel version - the rtw drivers all start with "rtw88".

Your "regression" between 5.15 and 5.16 is that you switched from the GitHub 
repo to the in-kernel drivers. There have been many improvements in the kernel 
version since 5.16. Those are included in the GitHub version. One or more of 
them helped your system. I am not that familiar with fedora, but to get the 
kernel versions of the drivers, it is not necessary to "dnf" anything other than 
the kernel itself. All the in-kernel drivers come along with it.

Blacklisting is done by creating (as root) a blacklist file in /etc/modprobe.d/, 
not in the package manager. It is at a much lower level. On my system is such a 
file named /etc/modprobe.d/60-blacklist-rtw8822c.conf with contents of:
blacklist rtw88_8822ce
blacklist rtw88_8822c
blacklist rtw88_pci
blacklist rtw88_core

With this file, I am assured that only the drivers from GitHub will be loaded.

Larry