The wifi adapter TP-Link TL-WN722N (ath9k_htc module) tries to initialize but ultimately fails after around 30 seconds on boot.

The adapter is connected to a USB Hub and a part of regular weekly testing.

Even the adapter is attached directly to a usb port on the board the result is still the same.

[   11.663045] usb 1-2.3: ath9k_htc: Firmware ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw requested
...
[   11.985090] usb 1-2.3: ath9k_htc: Transferred FW: ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw, size: 51008
[   12.236945] ath9k_htc 1-2.3:1.0: ath9k_htc: HTC initialized with 33 credits
...
[   41.736134] ath9k_htc: Failed to initialize the device
[   41.742605] usb 1-2.3: ath9k_htc: USB layer deinitialized

This was first observed with minnowboard during the weekly testing on 17th Aug 2020.

Now this happens on upsquared board too.

dmesg and journal do not show anything unusual about the module and it works properly on *3ulcb and rpi4.

One potential clue could be failing to load regulatory database, although it fails on rpi4 too:

[   11.805782] cfg80211: Loading compiled-in X.509 certificates for regulatory database
[   11.985587] platform regulatory.0: Direct firmware load for regulatory.db failed with error -2
[   11.985591] cfg80211: failed to load regulatory.db

The regulatory error does not show up on *3ulcb boards.

attaching dmesg and journalctl for completeness