Linux issues with Qualcomm Atheros QCA9377 802.11ac WiFi chip

Posted on by Arun Anandhakrishnan

Lenovo (especially Thinkpad) laptops that have the QCA9377 WiFi PCI-Express chip has frequent disconnects and/or very low throughput intermittently. The only way to fix this issue is here:

First of all, backup the firmware files we are about to replace:

$ sudo mv /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA9377/hw1.0/firmware-5.bin  /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA9377/hw1.0/firmware-5.bin.bak
$ sudo mv /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA9377/hw1.0/firmware-6.bin  /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA9377/hw1.0/firmware-6.bin.bak

Now, get the best firmware available for this chip at the time of this writing (13 January 2022) and put it in the right place:

$ git clone https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmware.git
$ sudo cp -r ath10k-firmware/QCA9377 /lib/firmware/ath10k/$ 
$ sudo mv /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA9377/hw1.0/CNSS.TF.1.0/firmware-5.bin_CNSS.TF.1.0-00267-QCATFSWPZ-1 /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA9377/hw1.0/firmware-5.bin

If this does not fully solve the issue, try changing the kernel command line in /etc/default/grub as follows:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="pcie_aspm=off ipv6.disable=1"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="pcie_aspm=off ipv6.disable=1"

This is assuming that your configuration has WiFi chip on PCI-Express interface. Otherwise, only try the option to disable IPv6.

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