ath11k: tolerate non-PASS regulatory status from QSDK firmware

[firasshaari]

Problem

CIG WF196 (IPQ8074 + QCN9074) running ApNos v5.0.0 (OpenWrt 25.12.3) fails to start 5 GHz on any DFS channel:

ath11k c000000.wifi1: Failed to set the requested Country regulatory setting
ath11k c000000.wifi1: failed to process regulatory info from received event
ath11k c000000.wifi1: vdev start resp error status 4 (invalid regdomain)

Non-DFS channels (36, 149) work. DFS channels (52, 64, 100, 116) all fail. Regression from ApNos 4.2.4 on the same hardware + firmware.

Root cause

QSDK firmware (WLAN.HK.2.7.0.1-01744) sends WMI_REG_CHAN_LIST_CC_EVENT with status_code != REG_SET_CC_STATUS_PASS (typically REG_CURRENT_ALPHA2_NOT_FOUND).

In backports-6.1.24 (ApNos 4.2.4): the regulatory event handler had no status_code check -- it processed whatever rules the firmware sent regardless of status.

The current QSDK backports added a check at wmi.c that rejects the event entirely with -EINVAL when status is non-PASS. This leaves the firmware DFS regulatory context broken -- firmware then refuses DFS vdev_start because it never received a valid channel list for DFS bands.

Fix

Downgrade the fatal check to a debug log and continue processing the regulatory rules the firmware provided:

 if (reg_info->status_code != REG_SET_CC_STATUS_PASS) {
-    ath11k_warn(ab, "Failed to set the requested Country regulatory setting\n");
-    return -EINVAL;
+    ath11k_dbg(ab, ATH11K_DBG_REG,
+               "regulatory status %d, continuing with available rules\n",
+               reg_info->status_code);
 }

Patch location: feeds/qca-wifi-6/mac80211/patches/pending/a-106-ath11k-tolerate-non-PASS-regulatory-status-from-QSDK-FW.patch

Verification

Tested on CIG WF196 (IPQ8074 + QCN9074) with firmware WLAN.HK.2.7.0.1-01744:

Channel	Before	After
36 (non-DFS)	Works	Works
52 (DFS UNII-2)	Fails status 4	Works
64 (DFS UNII-2)	Fails status 4	Works
116 (DFS UNII-2C)	Fails status 4	Works
dmesg "Failed to set Country"	Every boot	Gone
dmesg "status 4 invalid regdomain"	Every DFS attempt	Gone

Scope

Affects all QCA wifi-6 APs using QSDK-era firmware (WLAN.HK.2.x) with the current QSDK backports. Does not affect QCA wifi-7 or MediaTek targets.

Note: This PR is based on main~1 (3f602f67) to avoid ef629637 which introduced a broken ucentral-schema Makefile (missing PKG_SOURCE_VERSION). That commit should be reverted separately.

[blogic]

I cannot find the corresponding Jira ticket

[blogic]

I have the feeling that this is just papering over a deeper issue. just ignoring the errors from the FW feels utterly wrong. the FW will not be ensuring the regd compliant restrictions after this patch.

[firasshaari]

@blogic sounds good. I have assigned this ticket to the CIG team. Let's wait for their feedback before we spend more time on this.