Mainline OpenWrt support for the GL.iNet Flint 3 (GL-BE9300) — Qualcomm IPQ5332 (quad Cortex-A53) with tri-band Wi-Fi 7, a Realtek RTL8372N 10G switch and a RTL8221B 2.5G WAN PHY.
This branch (
flint3-be9300) is a complete, buildable OpenWrt tree. Clone it and build — there is nothing to drop into another checkout. (An earliermainbranch held a target overlay; it is retired and preserved at the tagarchive/main-overlay.)
Target: qualcommbe/ipq53xx, kernel 6.18.
| Block | Detail |
|---|---|
| SoC | Qualcomm IPQ5332, 4× Cortex-A53 |
| Wi-Fi 2.4 GHz | on-SoC radio, ath12k over AHB |
| Wi-Fi 5 / 6 GHz | 2× QCN9274, ath12k over PCIe |
| Switch | RTL8372N, out-of-tree DSA driver (realtek,rtl837x); SoC↔switch link is 10GBASE-R |
| WAN | RTL8221B 2.5G, USXGMII |
| Storage | eMMC |
| Subsystem | State |
|---|---|
| Boot / procd / SSH | working |
| LAN (RTL8372N via DSA + EDMA/PPE) | working |
| WAN (2.5G, USXGMII) | working, links at 2.5 Gbps |
| VLANs (bridge-vlan on DSA) | working |
| Wi-Fi 7, all three bands | working |
| MLO (AP MLD across 2.4/5/6 GHz) | working |
| DFS | working (needs the cfg80211 secondary-AP-after-CAC patch, included) |
| 802.11k / 802.11v | working |
| eMMC sysupgrade + return to stock | working |
Throughput measured between two units over a 2.5G trunk: ~1.8–1.9 Gbit/s.
- ath12k firmware hang under sustained load. After hours with many clients the Q6 can take a fatal error; radios stay down until reboot. Reported upstream.
- PPE WAN RX FIFO overruns. Roughly 0.07–0.09 % of packets at ~1.9 Gbit/s. No longer the hard ~600 Mbit/s cap earlier builds had, but not zero.
- 802.11r is incompatible with MLO. hostapd's FT code has no MLD awareness — do not enable 11r on an MLD SSID. 11k/11v are fine.
git clone -b flint3-be9300 https://github.com/perceival/openwrt-flint3.git
cd openwrt-flint3
./scripts/feeds update -a
./scripts/feeds install -a
make menuconfig # Target System: Qualcomm Atheros 802.11be
# Subtarget: ipq53xx
# Target Profile: GL.iNet GL-BE9300
make -j"$(nproc)"Images land in bin/targets/qualcommbe/ipq53xx/.
Full, hardware-verified instructions — including the round trip back to stock — are on the device page:
https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-be9300
Short version: from stock firmware, use the factory image with
sysupgrade -F -n. The stock image check requires a QSDK FIT, so -F is
required and the "missing section" warnings for u-boot/tz/sb11 are
expected. Do not force the plain sysupgrade image from stock.
Back up your eMMC first — the ART partition holds this unit's radio calibration and MAC addresses and cannot be recovered from anywhere else.
Patches from this work that have gone upstream or are in review:
wifi: ath12k: advertise AP_VLAN interface mode for IPQ5332(linux-wireless)- hostapd WDS/AP_VLAN
bss->ctxfix (applied by Jouni Malinen) - ath12k
hw_scanNULL-deref report (with the Qualcomm dev team)
- Forum thread: https://forum.openwrt.org/t/gl-inet-flint-3-exploration-gl-be9300-ipq5332/250267
- Device page: https://openwrt.org/toh/gl.inet/gl-be9300
- Q6/PAS research notes:
2.4GHZ-Q6-PAS-FINDINGS.md
Built on JiaY-shi's GL-BE6500 tree, which provided the working IPQ5332 Wi-Fi and RTL837x DSA foundation. Thanks to everyone contributing hardware findings and testing via the issue tracker and the forum thread.