AX210 firmware files do not exist

Community Support Question
1

I’m having a problem - or an inconvenience, really, with my 12th gen i5 laptop. I’m running Debian Sid without any notable issues except that on boot, I get a message saying that the firmware for the wireless card failed to load. It then falls back to a previous version, and loads it without issue.

I planned to copy the requested files to /lib/firmware/ from the official repo. I cloned the linux-firmware respository here, but the files that it’s looking for do not exist (iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-72.ucode & iwl-debug-yoyo.bin). Any ideas where I can go to find these files?

The wireless card seems to work fine anyway, so I wonder if this is really a problem that needs fixing, but I figured it’s worth posting about to see if anyone else has already found a solution.

Interestingly, when running kernel 5.19, the error message doubles up - I have no idea why. I’ll include the dmesg output below - apologies if the formatting gets all screwy.

dmesg output (v5.18):
[ 4.487468] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: enabling device (0000 → 0002)
[ 4.492517] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-72.ucode (-2)
[ 4.492523] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-72.ucode failed with error -2
[ 4.493662] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: firmware: direct-loading firmware iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-71.ucode
[ 4.493668] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: api flags index 2 larger than supported by driver
[ 4.493678] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: TLV_FW_FSEQ_VERSION: FSEQ Version: 0.0.2.36
[ 4.493877] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwl-debug-yoyo.bin (-2)
[ 4.493880] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: loaded firmware version 71.058653f6.0 ty-a0-gf-a0-71.ucode op_mode iwlmvm
[ 4.662947] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: Detected Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX210 160MHz, REV=0x420
[ 4.821350] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: firmware: direct-loading firmware iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0.pnvm
[ 4.821368] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: loaded PNVM version 881c99e1
[ 4.833258] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: Detected RF GF, rfid=0x10d000
[ 4.908670] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: base HW address: 8c:f8:c5:55:1b:30
[ 8.541650] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0 wlp166s0: renamed from wlan0

dmeg output (v5.19):
[ 4.899521] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: enabling device (0000 → 0002)
[ 4.904296] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-72.ucode (-2)
[ 4.904311] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-72.ucode (-2)
[ 4.904314] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: Direct firmware load for iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-72.ucode failed with error -2
[ 4.905557] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: firmware: direct-loading firmware iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-71.ucode
[ 4.905566] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: api flags index 2 larger than supported by driver
[ 4.905579] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: TLV_FW_FSEQ_VERSION: FSEQ Version: 0.0.2.36
[ 4.905871] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwl-debug-yoyo.bin (-2)
[ 4.905881] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: firmware: failed to load iwl-debug-yoyo.bin (-2)
[ 4.905884] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: loaded firmware version 71.058653f6.0 ty-a0-gf-a0-71.ucode op_mode iwlmvm
[ 5.052553] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: Detected Intel(R) Wi-Fi 6 AX210 160MHz, REV=0x420
[ 5.213343] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: firmware: direct-loading firmware iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0.pnvm
[ 5.213381] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: loaded PNVM version 881c99e1
[ 5.227126] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: Detected RF GF, rfid=0x10d000
[ 5.302829] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0: base HW address: 8c:f8:c5:55:1b:30
[ 8.860559] iwlwifi 0000:a6:00.0 wlp166s0: renamed from wlan0

2

I see this too with Debian testing (Bookworm A1). I couldn’t find the ...-72.ucode anywhere, but it falls back to ...-71.ucode fine and I don’t have any issues.

A couple other notes:

I used to get rid of the ...yoyo.bin error by setting kernel parameter enable_ini=N or enable_ini=0 but that hangs the card now, though the parameter is still documented in modinfo iwlwifi.

The error message is especially problematic during the text mode Debian installer. It seems as though WiFi is not detected but it is - the installer thinks the fallback error is a failure. Just hit No to loading drivers and it will proceed.

3

It’s good to know that I’m not the only one seeing this. Thanks for your reply.

I also noticed that videos, and even the display overall (even typing in a terminal emulator), stutters heavily in v5.19. CPU and RAM usage remain normal, and all mouse and keyboard inputs seem to register consistently - just the display constantly hiccups then catches up. Have you noticed this as well? I’m currently using v5.18 without any issues other than the one mentioned in this post. I plan to just wait for v6.0 to be released and hopefully fix these issues - but maybe you have some other insights? Another kernel parameter perhaps?

4

I haven’t had any video or display problems with Debian Bookworm A1 (kernel 5.19.11-1). With Debian Sid, you might be seeing this: