i.MX6: Silex Wi-Fi: 5.10.y: wpa_supplicant/hostapd 2.10 breaks WPA

[ts-kris]

Note! This issue ONLY affects i.MX6 based platforms with the Silex Wi-Fi module running kernel 5.10.y!

Due to some issue between the ath10k/ath10k_sdio driver in the 5.10.y kernel and release 2.10 of hostapd and wpa_supplicant, attempting to use any WPA modes with the Silex Wi-Fi module under these conditions can result in issues from lack of connectivity all the way to hardware lockups.

The solution at this time is to downgrade to release 2.9 the hostapd and wpa_supplicant tools. Unfortunately, due to the way Buildroot is included as a submodule, as well as the fact that other W-Fi devices that we ship on various platforms are unaffected, there is nothing we can easily do at the moment to patch this repository. We are however, looking in to this further to see what we may be able to patch or update long-term in order to resolve this issue.

Currently, this repository uses Buildroot 2023.02 release. The following patches can be applied to the buildroot/ folder to patch only wpa-supplicant and hostapd to downgrade them to release 2.9. Note that, github doesn't seem to allow files named *.patch even though the upload tool claims to support patch files. These can be applied just the same.

buildroot-2023.02-downgrade-wpasupplicant-to-2.9.txt
buildroot-2023.02-downgrade-hostapd-to-2.9.txt

[ts-kris]

Patches for buildroot 2023.11 which will be merged shortly (#57)

buildroot-2023.11-downgrade-wpasupplicant-to-2.9.txt
buildroot-2023.11-downgrade-hostapd-to-2.9.txt