Re: [PATCH 2/3] staging/rtl8192e: use s8 instead of char

[Arnd Bergmann]

On Wednesday, July 20, 2016 7:25:19 AM CEST Jes Sorensen wrote:
> Arnd Bergmann <arnd@xxxxxxxx> writes:
> >> I'd like to get rid of all the drivers/staging/rtl* drivers eventually 
> >
> > That would be great, yes.
> >
> > Can you clarify what the long-term plan is? I see that
> > drivers/net/wireless/realtek/rtlwifi/ has most of the PCIe parts
> > and one USB device (rtl8192cu/rtl8188cus) while
> > drivers/net/wireless/rtl8xxx has all the USB parts including
> > that one.
> >
> > Does that mean we want the staging drivers for PCIe devices
> > to get merged into rtlwifi, and the remaining USB drivers to get
> > replaced by r8xxxu?
> 
> Well it really all depends on how much time I have and how much others
> step up and help contribute to the code. For rtl8xxxu my plans are as
> follows:
> 
> 1) rtl8188eu support, since this is the most widely distributed USB
> dongle which isn't currently supported by a non staging driver. I am
> currently working on this together with Andrea Merello.

Ok, cool.

> 2) Beacon support for IBSS and AP mode - hopefully this should make it
> possible to default rtl8xxxu for rtl8192cu/rtl8188cu devices and disable
> them in rtlwifi.

Do we have any indication that those two actually work in rtlwifi at the
moment? My experience seems to match the recommendations for all the
raspberry pi users that use yet another (worse looking) driver:

https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/commit/9ee31007a5032a3afe2fcb20c36b34f0ad57df56

> 3) SDIO device support
> 
> 4) PCI device support
> 
> 5) 802.11ac device support
> 
> 3/4/5 not necessarily in that order. There really is no reason why
> rtl8xxxu shouldn't have SDIO and PCI device support added so the core
> code can be shared.

Ok, got it.

> > As one data point that I can provide (but you are probably
> > aware of), I could never get my rtl8188cus stick to work with
> > rtlwifi, but I found the older r8712u device to work fine with
> > the staging/rtl8712 driver.
> 
> I'd love to hear if the rtl8188cus works better with rtl8xxxu.

It took me far too long to get the driver running on my machine (all my fault),
but I've tested it now. Unfortunately there is something very wrong
with my home wireless network at the moment, so I can only confirm
that it doesn't work any worse than my Intel Wireless card on 2.4GHz,
but that isn't any good (5GHz devices are fine, but that doesn't
help on a 2.4GHz-only device).

This is what I see in the kernel log

[  773.862848] usb 2-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 8 using ehci-pci
[  773.957415] usb 2-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=8176
[  773.957425] usb 2-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[  773.957430] usb 2-1.2: Manufacturer: Realtek
[  773.957433] usb 2-1.2: SerialNumber: 00e04c000001
[  774.115182] usb 2-1.2: Vendor: Realtek
[  774.115192] usb 2-1.2: Product: 
[  774.115199] usb 2-1.2: rtl8192cu_parse_efuse: dumping efuse (0x80 bytes):
[  774.115206] usb 2-1.2: 00: 29 81 00 74 ed 00 00 00
[  774.115212] usb 2-1.2: 08: ff 00 da 0b 76 81 01 41
[  774.115219] usb 2-1.2: 10: 32 00 85 62 7e ad 5c f3
[  774.115225] usb 2-1.2: 18: 70 15 9c b1 0a 03 52 65
[  774.115231] usb 2-1.2: 20: 61 6c 74 65 6b 00 02 03
[  774.115237] usb 2-1.2: 28: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[  774.115242] usb 2-1.2: 30: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[  774.115248] usb 2-1.2: 38: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[  774.115254] usb 2-1.2: 40: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[  774.115260] usb 2-1.2: 48: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[  774.115265] usb 2-1.2: 50: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
[  774.115271] usb 2-1.2: 58: 06 00 2a 2a 2a 00 00 00
[  774.115277] usb 2-1.2: 60: 2a 2a 2a 00 00 00 00 00
[  774.115283] usb 2-1.2: 68: 00 00 00 00 04 04 04 00
[  774.115289] usb 2-1.2: 70: 00 00 00 00 00 00 05 00
[  774.115295] usb 2-1.2: 78: 10 00 00 00 36 00 00 00
[  774.115302] usb 2-1.2: RTL8188CU rev A (TSMC) 1T1R, TX queues 2, WiFi=1, BT=0, GPS=0, HI PA=0
[  774.115308] usb 2-1.2: RTL8188CU MAC: 5c:f3:70:15:9c:b1
[  774.115314] usb 2-1.2: rtl8xxxu: Loading firmware rtlwifi/rtl8192cufw_TMSC.bin
[  774.115409] usb 2-1.2: Firmware revision 80.0 (signature 0x88c1)
[  775.692344] rtl8xxxu 2-1.2:1.0 wlan1: renamed from wlan0
[  775.721151] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan1: link is not ready
[  775.746653] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan1: link is not ready
[  775.798780] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan1: link is not ready
[  788.414618] wlan2: authenticate with 22:4e:7f:6f:5b:3c
[  788.452485] wlan2: send auth to 22:4e:7f:6f:5b:3c (try 1/3)
[  788.457926] wlan2: authenticated
[  788.462261] wlan2: associate with 22:4e:7f:6f:5b:3c (try 1/3)
[  788.475159] wlan2: RX AssocResp from 22:4e:7f:6f:5b:3c (capab=0x431 status=0 aid=1)
[  788.504683] wlan2: associated

throughput for me is 2mbit/s, compared to my intel 2x2 wireless that gets
5mbit/s on the same network, but I guess that doesn't really mean much
as long as I have problems with the infrastructure.

rtl8xxxu  IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"openwrt24-ab"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 22:4E:7F:6F:5B:3C   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=47/70  Signal level=-63 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:38   Missed beacon:0

iwlwifi   IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"openwrt24-ab"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: 22:4E:7F:6F:5B:3C   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=15 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:on
          Link Quality=65/70  Signal level=-45 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:90  Invalid misc:146   Missed beacon:0


> For the rtl8712 device, rtl8192su?, then potentially that could be added to
> rtl8xxxu as well, but it's not a top priority on my list right now.

This one:
Bus 001 Device 033: ID 0bda:8171 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188SU 802.11n WLAN Adapter

I bought the rtl8188su a while ago, while the rtl8188cus (0bda:8176)
is from this year. According to https://wikidevi.com/wiki/Realtek, it
seems to be one year older than the rtl8188cus and was almost as common
in its day. Apparently everyone that used to make ...su device replaced it
with a ...cu or the newer ...eu chips and that is all you can buy these days
on the low end.

	Arnd