Atheros wireless problems.

Frank Mayhar frank at exit.com
Thu Sep 25 04:45:49 UTC 2008


So I obtained a D-Link DWL-AG660 cardbus card, which has a 5213 (I
believe) Atheros chipset in it; it's an a/b/g card.  This is to use
while the chipset embedded in my laptop isn't supported.  It came today,
I installed it tonight and, well, problems.

I can get it to associate and, sometimes, even to get an IP address, but
as soon as I start trying to actually pass traffic on it, all hell
breaks loose.  It starts timing out and the ath_hal starts complaining.

Essential information:

ath0 at pci0:57:0:0:       class=0x020000 card=0x3a631186 chip=0x0013168c rev=0x01 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Atheros Communications Inc.'
    device     = 'AR5212, AR5213 802.11a/b/g Wireless Adapter'
    class      = network
    subclass   = ethernet
ath0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 2290
        ether 00:13:46:11:6b:41
        media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect mode 11g
        status: associated
wlan0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
        ether 00:13:46:11:6b:41
        inet6 fe80::213:46ff:fe11:6b41%wlan0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4 
        media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet OFDM/54Mbps mode 11g
        status: associated
        ssid Unwired channel 1 (2412 Mhz 11g) bssid 00:1f:33:82:2f:6d
        regdomain FCC indoor ecm authmode WPA2/802.11i privacy ON
        deftxkey UNDEF TKIP 2:128-bit txpower 18 bmiss 7 scanvalid 450 bgscan
        bgscanintvl 300 bgscanidle 250 roam:rssi 7 roam:rate 5 protmode CTS
        wme burst ff roaming MANUAL

>From the dmesg:
ath0: <Atheros 5212> mem 0xf2110000-0xf211ffff irq 17 at device 0.0 on cardbus0
ath0: [ITHREAD]
ath0: WARNING: using obsoleted if_watchdog interface
ath0: mac 5.9 phy 4.3 radio 3.6
wlan0: Ethernet address: 00:13:46:11:6b:41

Then from /var/log/messages:
Sep 24 21:14:11  kernel: ath0: device timeout
Sep 24 21:14:11  kernel: ath0: ath_reset: unable to reset hardware; hal status 3230480741

I've also seen:
Sep 24 21:03:55 auton kernel: ath0: unable to reset hardware; hal status 3310983360
Sep 24 21:02:35 auton kernel: ath0: unable to reset hardware; hal status 0

But it has only been those messages.  I haven't yet tried turning on
bootverbose but I can if you would like.

Any ideas?  Any suggestions?  As I sit here (using the wired em0 instead
of ath0) the lights on the card are happily blinking but it's not doing
anything at all.
-- 
Frank Mayhar frank at exit.com     http://www.exit.com/
Exit Consulting                 http://www.gpsclock.com/
                                http://www.exit.com/blog/frank/
                                http://www.zazzle.com/fmayhar*


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