Ath10k and QCA6174 causing PCIe errors, firmware crashes, and connection drops?

Solution 1:

Warning: This is only a partial solution!

While the main issue (the wifi drop and crash) appears to be solved, the AER Corrected Error message still spams the logs. At least wifi is more consistent now.

Bernard Wei's comment led to the repository for ath10k firmware, which conveniently included an update for the hw3.0 chain.

Downloading firmware-6.bin_WLAN.RM.4.4.1-00110-QCARMSWP-1 and replacing firmware-6.bin in /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0 followed by a reboot brought a far more stable wireless experience.

cd /lib/firmware/ath10k/QCA6174/hw3.0
sudo mv firmware-6.bin firmware-6.bin.old
sudo wget https://github.com/kvalo/ath10k-firmware/raw/master/QCA6174/hw3.0/4.4.1/firmware-6.bin_WLAN.RM.4.4.1-00110-QCARMSWP-1 -O firmware-6.bin

Note, however, that the following lines are now in the syslog:

[   21.482256] ath10k_pci 0000:3c:00.0: Unknown eventid: 3
[   21.498398] ath10k_pci 0000:3c:00.0: Unknown eventid: 118809
[   21.501401] ath10k_pci 0000:3c:00.0: Unknown eventid: 90118

Now... to wait for this to hit the linux-firmware package for real. And also fix the AER errors...

Solution 2:

After way too much frustration I bought Intel 3168NGW card and replaced flawed Qulacomm wifi hardware. Suddenly all works perfectly. Even bluetooth, which was always buggy works totally great now. I wish I replaced the card long time before. And I wish Dell never put Linux incompatible hardware in XPS...