Subject: bug#49611: Despite wireless-regdb being installed in my operating-system, dmesg indicates it can't find `regulatory.db`

From: Guillaume Le Vaillant <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Jul 2021 21:17:23 +0000

Katherine Cox-Buday <[email-masked]> skribis:

> Thank you both! I was not aware that this belonged in the firmware
> field and not the packages field. This has solved the error message
> during boot. Further, adding the kernel argument successfully sets my
> region as US on boot.
>
> tags 49611 notabug
> close 49611
>
> This is not part of the bug per-say, but a question around this space:
> despite all of this, I still cannot broadcast on US approved channels.
> I think this is because the EEPROM on the card is set as global. What
> am I missing? Do you know how Linux intend for people to notify the
> stack that this is an OK thing to do? I know projects like OpenWRT
> carry patches to the driver, but I keep thinking surely this is not
> the only way.

Some WiFi devices can have extra EEPROM-based restrictions if they don't
implement some features.
I have a WiFi card that I can't use as access point on the 5 GHz band
because it doesn't implement radar detection, which is apparently
mandatory on this band to avoid causing interference.
Luckily I have another device based on a different chipset where it just
works.