wcn36xx#

wcn36xx is a mac80211 driver for wcn3660 and wcn3680 chips found from Qualcomm SoC.

Caveats#

Currently wcn36xx only compiles with msm kernels and backports infrastructure is needed to get latest cfg80211 and mac80211.

Supported chips#

wcn36xx supports both WCN3660 and WCN3680 chips.

Available devices#

wcn36xx was tested on Google Nexus 4(Mako), Sony Xperia - T(Mint), Z(Yuga), ZR(Dogo) and Z1(Honami). Basically, wcn36xx can support all MSM based devices.

Features#

As a general rule for this section, don’t list every tiny detail, just the most important things one should know about.

Working#

list wireless features that your driver supports, e.g. station mode, access point mode etc

  • 11b, 11g, 11n, 11a

  • HW rate control

  • hardware encryption(TKIP, CCMP, WEP)

  • HW connection monitoring

  • aggregation (Immediate BA only)

  • ProbeResponse offloading

  • Beacon filtering

  • Multicast filtering

  • WoW

  • power save

  • AP mode support

  • Ad-Hoc

  • 11s mesh

Not working (yet)#

list features that could be supported but are not yet

  • ARP offloading

  • 80211AC

  • P2P

  • Miracast

  • Bluetooth coexistence

  • WAPI

  • WMM

  • CQM

  • DFS

  • Recovery (In case of chip hanging, wcn36xx must restart it)

Not supported#

  • list important features that the device will not support

Sources#

wcn36xx is part of the mainline kernel. The latest developement version can be found on github:

KrasnikovEugene/wcn36xx

Device firmware#

The latest greatest firmware can be found on here https://www.codeaurora.org/cgit/external/hisense/platform/vendor/qcom-opensource/wlan/prima/tree/firmware_bin?h=8130_CS

wcn36xx loads WCNSS_qcom_wlan_nv.bin file and sends it to the hardware.

Support#

Mailing list:

http://lists.infradead.org/mailman/listinfo/wcn36xx

There’s an IRC channel #wcn36xx at Freenode.

Bug tracker:

KrasnikovEugene/wcn36xx#issues

Dissector#

If you are hacking on wcn36xx and want to see see what Qualcomm’s prima driver (or wcn36xx) sends to and from fw, check out the wcn36xx-dissector. It allows you to view all commands and data in wireshark. It understands most commands and buffer structures.

kanstrup/wcn36xx-dissector

Compilation#

Go to working directory#

Change to a directory where you’ll keep your git repositories like ~/git/

Checkout backports#

git clone git://github.com/hauke/backports.git

Checkout linux-next#

git clone --no-checkout git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/next/linux-next.git

The –no-checkout is there to save space since backports will pickout the relevant stuff anyway.

Checkout wcn36xx#

git clone git://github.com/KrasnikovEugene/wcn36xx.git

Checkout wcn36xx from upstream or your own branch

Generate a build tree#

Make sure you have “coccinelle” installed otherwise gentree will fail. Create a file named copy-list.wcn36xx in the backports folder containing:

wcn36xx/ -> drivers/net/wireless/ath/wcn36xx/

Do a git log, find the first commit that says something like: “refresh on next-20131122”. Then execute the command:

cd backports
./gentree.py --verbose --clean --git-revision next-20131122 --extra-driver ../ copy-list.wcn36xx ../linux-next/ ../backport-wcn

This command will create the folder ../backport-wcn where it will put all the necessary linux stuff from linux-next. It will also apply a number of patches, if any of these fail you must sort it out otherwise the build folder will not be ready.

Time to build#

cd ../backport-wcn

Symlink the wcn36xx-folder into the backport-wcn-folder:

ln -s ~/git/wcn36xx drivers/net/wireless/ath/wcn36xx

This sets up some links to your cm build:

export CM_BUILD=mako
export CM_ROOT=~/mako/cm-10.1

This executes the defconfig for the environment:

make KLIB=$CM_ROOT/out/target/product/$CM_BUILD/obj/KERNEL_OBJ \
KLIB_BUILD=$CM_ROOT/out/target/product/$CM_BUILD/obj/KERNEL_OBJ \
ARCH=arm \
CROSS_COMPILE=$CM_ROOT/prebuilts/gcc/linux-x86/arm/arm-eabi-4.6/bin/arm-eabi- \
defconfig-wcn36xx

Builds the module and all necessary compat/cfg80211/mac80211 modules as well:

make KLIB=$CM_ROOT/out/target/product/$CM_BUILD/obj/KERNEL_OBJ \
KLIB_BUILD=$CM_ROOT/out/target/product/$CM_BUILD/obj/KERNEL_OBJ \
ARCH=arm \
CROSS_COMPILE=$CM_ROOT/prebuilts/gcc/linux-x86/arm/arm-eabi-4.6/bin/arm-eabi-

Build platform driver wcn36xx_msm#

cd drivers/net/wireless/ath/wcn36xx/wcn36xx_msm/
make KLIB=$CM_ROOT/out/target/product/$CM_BUILD/obj/KERNEL_OBJ \
KLIB_BUILD=$CM_ROOT/out/target/product/$CM_BUILD/obj/KERNEL_OBJ \
ARCH=arm \
CROSS_COMPILE=$CM_ROOT/prebuilts/gcc/linux-x86/arm/arm-eabi-4.6/bin/arm-eabi-

NOTES FOR OSX#

To make this run on OSX (Mountain Lion) I had to do some changes. 1) The make commands shall not use the same path for the CROSS_COMPILE option. “linux-x86” must be replaced with “darwin-x86”.

  1. The Makefile in backport-wcn must be modified.

The comment on line 101 looking like this:

  • # RHEL as well, sadly we need to grep for it ;

  • It must be remove or else you will get a bash error.

  1. You must modify the kconf/Makefile

  • To the first line in this file (beginning with CFLAGS) add -DKBUILD_NO_NLS to the end. Otherwise you will get a lkc.h error when building.

Installation#

Mako on CM 10.1#

  1. Compile CyanogenMod as per instructions: http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Build_for_mako Be sure to checkout CM10.1:

repo init -u git://github.com/CyanogenMod/android.git -b cm-10.1

  1. From your CM_ROOT-folder configure the CM Kernel:

make  -C kernel/lge/mako \
O=$CM_ROOT/out/target/product/$CM_BUILD/obj/KERNEL_OBJ \
INSTALL_MOD_PATH=../../system \
ARCH=arm \
CROSS_COMPILE="$CM_ROOT/prebuilts/misc/linux-x86/ccache/ccache $CM_ROOT/prebuilts/gcc/linux-x86/arm/arm-eabi-4.6/bin/arm-eabi-" \
menuconfig

*  *    * Enable loadable module support and all sub-menu entries.
*  *    * Enable CCM support under Cryptographic API.
*  *    * Disable cfg80211 - wireless configuration API under Networking support -> Wireless.
*  *    * Disable PRIMA-WLAN under Device drivers -> Staging drivers -> Qualcomm Atheros Prima WLAN module

  1. Replace mako_defconfig with the new .config:

cp out/target/product/mako/obj/KERNEL_OBJ/.config \
kernel/lge/mako/arch/arm/configs/mako_defconfig

  1. Create new file device/lge/mako/init.mako.wcn36xx.sh:

#!/system/bin/sh /system/bin/insmod /system/lib/modules/wcn36xx_msm.ko /system/bin/insmod /system/lib/modules/compat.ko /system/bin/insmod /system/lib/modules/cfg80211.ko /system/bin/insmod /system/lib/modules/mac80211.ko /system/bin/insmod /system/lib/modules/wcn36xx.ko

  1. Edit device/lge/mako/device.mk and add init.mako.wcn36xx.sh to PRODUCT_COPY_FILES:

PRODUCT_COPY_FILES += \
        device/lge/mako/init.mako.bt.sh:system/etc/init.mako.bt.sh \
        device/lge/mako/init.mako.wcn36xx.sh:system/etc/init.mako.wcn36xx.sh

  1. Edit device/lge/mako/init.mako.rc and comment out section ‘service p2p_supplicant’. Then copy ‘service wpa_supplicant’ and rename that to ‘service p2p_supplicant’.

  2. Add to the end of device/lge/mako/init.mako.rc:

service wcn36xx /system/bin/sh /system/etc/init.mako.wcn36xx.sh
    class main
    user root
    oneshot

  1. Compile new images and flash them according to CyanogenMod instructions.

  2. Compile wcn36xx as per instructions above.

  3. Install kernel modules to the device:

adb root
adb remount

cd ../backports-output
adb push compat/compat.ko /system/lib/modules/
adb push net/wireless/cfg80211.ko /system/lib/modules/
adb push net/mac80211/mac80211.ko /system/lib/modules/
adb push drivers/net/wireless/ath/wcn36xx/wcn36xx.ko /system/lib/modules/
adb push drivers/net/wireless/ath/wcn36xx/wcn36xx_msm/wcn36xx_msm.ko /system/lib/modules/

  1. Reboot the device and now you should be able to use wcn36xx from GUI.

Mint on CM 10.1#

*  *      - Follow instructions ([[http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Build_for_mint|http://wiki.cyanogenmod.org/w/Build_for_mint]]) do download and build CM sources.
*  *      - In case of build error "No such file or directory: 'vendor/sony/blue-common/proprietary/boot/RPM.bin'" download file RPM.bin from [[https://github.com/TheMuppets/proprietary_vendor_sony|https://github.com/TheMuppets/proprietary_vendor_sony]] and put it to the folder 'vendor/sony/blue-common/proprietary/boot'
*  *      - Flash built image to the phone as described here [[http://www.xperiablog.net/2012/12/04/how-to-install-cyanogenmod-10-on-your-sony-xperia-t-guide/|http://www.xperiablog.net/2012/12/04/how-to-install-cyanogenmod-10-on-your-sony-xperia-t-guide/]]
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