Atheros Looping: ath0: hardware error; resetting
Sam Leffler
sam at errno.com
Sat Dec 17 11:28:19 PST 2005
Nate Nielsen wrote:
> I have Atheros 5213 based 802.11a cards. When switching 'media' (ie:
> rates or speed) I often get the following error multiple times on my
> console:
>
>
>>ath0: hardware error; resetting
>>ath0: hardware error; resetting
>
>
> It's all fine and good when it's just a few times, but in many cases it
> enters an endless loop, bringing the wireless link to it's knees. The
> above line is written to the console over and over again,
>
> I'm running FreeBSD 6.0 on two boxes sitting next to each other. The
> wireless NICs are setup real simple (in rc.conf) with:
>
> ifconfig_ath0="inet 10.28.2.18/30 ssid tel2 channel 52 \
> mediaopt adhoc"
>
> To duplicate run the following several times:
>
> # ifconfig ath0 media auto
> # ifconfig ath0 media OFDM/6Mbps
>
> A work around is simply to punch the settings into rc.conf and reboot.
Seems to work fine here with CURRENT; I just typed the exact commands
from above. "hardware errors" are typically dma errors. If you're
operating in adhoc mode the h/w is periodically sending beacons and if
that tx descriptor gets setup wrong it can cause a dma error. Marking
the interface down will shutdown all dma so if you're seeing these
repeat try doing that. Perhaps there is a race in changing state but I
just did a tight loop where I switched media and saw nothing bad happen.
I can try 6.0 later. FWIW 5213 is kinda nebulous; the only true info
are the mac+phy revs from dmesg|grep ath.
Sam
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