Re: [regression] Bug 216753 - 6e 6 ghz bands are disabled since 5.16 on intel ax211

From: Marcel Holtmann
Date: Fri Dec 02 2022 - 11:56:21 EST


Hi Thorsten,

>> The other possibility is that this is actually a bios bug, as the DSM
>> is being read out of ACPI. In which case that would be Dell's fault.
>
> Yes and no, but no:
>
> A kernel change exposed this problem, hence it doesn't matter if the
> BIOS is faulty: it's makes it a kernel regression and those are not
> allowed. For more on this see
> https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/reporting-issues.html
>
> That at least would be the normal approach. But the thing is: the legal
> implications when it comes to things like wifi make this somewhat
> trickier. :-/

so you need to set your country code first before any of the regulatory
enabled channels on 6Ghz get used. Otherwise you are stuck in the world
domain that doesn’t allow 6Ghz at all.

Two choices, either you run iwd and just set Country=DE where this than
would be persistent; see iwd.config(5). Or you do this via iw reg set DE
manually. wpa_supplicant has a set_country wrapper, but I don’t see it
being used anywhere, so I assume you have to do this manually when using
wpa_supplicant.

And of course tools like crda etc. need to be fully functional to load
the appropriate regulatory information. Since any 6Ghz operation is
blocked by default.

Regards

Marcel