netdev - Lenovo BIOS/UEFI 1.24 broke WiFi on ThinkPad T14s (Fedora 36/37)

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Message-Id: <F5BA9F2E-41B8-4CC9-A743-75A7C94EC48C@me.com>
Date:   Tue, 15 Nov 2022 19:09:40 -0500
from:   hotter_scads.0h@...oud.com
to:     netdev@...r.kernel.org
Subject: Lenovo BIOS/UEFI 1.24 broke WiFi on ThinkPad T14s (Fedora 36/37)

Hi,

After upgrading the UEFI/BIOS firmware from 1.21 to 1.24 on a Lenovo ThinkPad T14s Gen 2 running Fedora 36/37, the WiFi stopped working. The WiFi router I’m using is Netgear R7000. The kernel is Fedora’s 6.0.8-300.fc37.x86_64.
This new firmware,1.24, was released two days ago, on Nov 13, 2022.

This is the kernel log with the new 1.24 BIOS firmware, which causes the wifi to never work, and the kernel just keeps printing this:

Nov 15 15:04:42 fedora kernel: wlp3s0: authenticate with 9c:3d:cf:8d:41:a8
Nov 15 15:04:42 fedora kernel: wlp3s0: bad VHT capabilities, disabling VHT
Nov 15 15:04:42 fedora kernel: wlp3s0: Invalid HE elem, Disable HE
Nov 15 15:04:42 fedora kernel: wlp3s0: 80 MHz not supported, disabling VHT
Nov 15 15:04:42 fedora kernel: wlp3s0: send auth to 9c:3d:cf:8d:41:a8 (try 1/3)
Nov 15 15:04:42 fedora kernel: wlp3s0: send auth to 9c:3d:cf:8d:41:a8 (try 2/3)
Nov 15 15:04:42 fedora kernel: wlp3s0: send auth to 9c:3d:cf:8d:41:a8 (try 3/3)
Nov 15 15:04:42 fedora kernel: wlp3s0: authentication with 9c:3d:cf:8d:41:a8 timed out

And this keeps on printing on and on, as the laptop tries to connect to the wifi router, and it never does. (To use networking, I had to connect an ethernet cable…)

However after downgrading back to BIOS 1.21, the wifi works fine, just as before/expected, and the kernel prints this:

[ 221.928935] wlp3s0: authenticate with 9c:3d:cf:8d:41:a7
[ 221.941349] wlp3s0: Invalid HE elem, Disable HE
[ 222.487032] wlp3s0: send auth to 9c:3d:cf:8d:41:a7 (try 1/3)
[ 222.589808] wlp3s0: send auth to 9c:3d:cf:8d:41:a7 (try 2/3)
[ 222.592570] wlp3s0: authenticated
[ 222.600506] wlp3s0: associate with 9c:3d:cf:8d:41:a7 (try 1/3)
[ 222.603264] wlp3s0: RX AssocResp from 9c:3d:cf:8d:41:a7 (capab=0x1011 status=0 aid=2)
[ 222.634583] wlp3s0: associated

Hope this helps in figuring out what the problem could be with the new firmware, and maybe come up with a workaround in the kernel, at least until Lenovo fixes this in the firmware with a new release.

Regards…