Linux 6.19 Fixes Dead WiFi on MediaTek MT792x Devices
▼ Summary
– Michael Larabel is the founder and principal author of Phoronix.com, a site launched in 2004 focused on improving the Linux hardware experience.
– He has authored over 20,000 articles on topics including Linux hardware support, performance, and graphics drivers.
– Larabel is the lead developer of the Phoronix Test Suite, an automated benchmarking software.
– He also leads development for the related Phoromatic and OpenBenchmarking.org platforms.
– Contact and follow-up information for Larabel is available through his Twitter, LinkedIn, and personal website.
A significant fix has landed in the Linux kernel, resolving a persistent and frustrating issue for users of certain MediaTek wireless chips. The Linux 6.19 kernel update includes a crucial patch that addresses a dead WiFi problem affecting MediaTek MT7921 and MT7922 devices. This long-standing bug, which could cause the wireless adapter to become completely unresponsive, has been a notable pain point for laptop owners and users of add-in cards featuring these popular chips.
The core of the problem involved a race condition within the driver’s firmware handling. In simple terms, the software instructions controlling the WiFi chip could get out of sync, leading to a state where the hardware would fail to initialize properly after resuming from sleep or even during a normal boot. The result was a WiFi adapter that appeared dead to the system, offering no networks and often not even showing up in network manager tools. Users were frequently forced to resort to a full system reboot to restore functionality, a disruptive and inelegant workaround.
The submitted patch modifies the driver’s initialization sequence to ensure the firmware is loaded and ready in a more reliable order, effectively eliminating the race condition. Early testing and reports from the development community indicate the fix is robust, bringing stable wireless operation to affected systems. This is a welcome development for the many devices, particularly modern laptops, that rely on these MediaTek components for connectivity.
For everyday users, this kernel improvement means fewer headaches and more reliable wireless performance on hardware like specific models from Lenovo, Acer, and other manufacturers. The fix is part of the mainline kernel, so it will trickle down through various distributions over the coming weeks and months as they update to newer kernel versions. Those experiencing the issue may need to manually update their kernel or wait for their distribution’s official repositories to provide the patched version.
(Source: Phoronix)
