Atheros (ath) MSI wireless embedded chipset fails to attach on 7.0-STABLE

[Manolis Kiagias]

Edwin L. Culp wrote:
> "Alexander Sack" <pisymbol at gmail.com> escribió:
>
>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Manolis Kiagias 
>> <sonic2000gr at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> Alexander Sack wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hello:
>>>>
>>>> I have installed FreeBSD-7.0-amd64 stable on my new AMD X2 Turon based
>>>> notebook, a MSI-1710A (GX710Ax) which has a generic embedded
>>>> controller.  During boot up I notice that ATH complains with:
>>>>
>>>> ath_rate: version 1.2 <SampleRate bit-rate selection algorithm>
>>>> ath_hal: 0.9.20.3 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, 
>>>> RF5413)
>>>> ath0: <Atheros 5424/2424> mem 0xfd7f0000-0xfd7fffff irq 16 at 
>>>> device 0.0
>>>> on pci2
>>>> ath0: Reserved 0x10000 bytes for rid 0x10 type 3 at 0xfd7f0000
>>>> ath0: [MPSAFE]
>>>> ath0: [ITHREAD]
>>>> ath0: unable to attach hardware; HAL status 13
>>>> device_attach: ath0 attach returned 6
>>>>
>>>> HAL status 13 from the header file seems to indicate that the
>>>> 7.0-STABLE driver doesn't support my hardware revision.  Here is my
>>>> pciconf -l output:
>>>>
>>>
>>> Maybe you could try compiling a kernel with a newer hal. This is the 
>>> kind of
>>> hack we use on the eeepc. Have a look at this:
>>>
>>> http://nighthack.org/wiki/EeeBSD
>>
>> Thank you SO much for this link.  That's EXACTLY what I want to do
>> because I realize that this is a HAL problem.  I've been searching
>> like MAD where I could get an updated binary HAL for this chipset
>> (PCIe based).
>
> That makes two of us ;)
>
> My dmesg is very, very similar to yours and hoped that this would work.
>
> ath0: <Atheros 5424/2424> mem 0xf2200000-0xf220ffff irq 19 at device 
> 0.0 on pci5
> ath0: Reserved 0x10000 bytes for rid 0x10 type 3 at 0xf2200000
> ioapic0: routing intpin 19 (PCI IRQ 19) to vector 64
> ath0: [MPSAFE]
> ath0: [ITHREAD]
> ath0: unable to attach hardware; HAL status 13
> device_attach: ath0 attach returned 6
>
> I followed the instructions from the web page, recompiled and it made 
> no difference which really worries me that I must have done something 
> wrong.
>
> cd madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007/hal
> cp -R * /usr/src/sys/contrib/dev/ath/
>
> I did not erase it previously but  am going to try that.  I made no 
> kern configuration changes to find that the hal is from contrib.  Is 
> there nothing else I should do?
>
> Thanks,
>

Well, I have only tested this on the eeepc and can confirm it works.
Maybe different atheros chipset have other problems not directly related 
to the hal version.
You do not need to do anything more that what is shown in the page: 
untar, replace the existing files, recompile / install kernel, reboot. 
If you got no errors during the kernel compilation phase, you can safely 
assume you did everything correctly, and the problem lies elsewhere.