ath problems/questions

[Sam Leffler]

Aragon Gouveia wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> First, forgive me if I'm posting to the incorrect list....
> 
> I have recently started playing with ath under FreeBSD 7.0-BETA2.  I'm using
> a Ubiquiti SRX ExpressCard.
> 
> The main problem I'm having is that during scans, channels will suddenly
> fail to reset and the only way to recover is to reboot or kldunload if_ath,
> unplug, replug, and kldload if_ath.  Here's a snippet of the error messages:
> 
> Feb 21 22:43:31 fuzz kernel: ath0: ath_chan_set: unable to reset channel 40 (5200 Mhz, flags 0x140 hal flags 0x140)
> Feb 21 22:43:32 fuzz kernel: ath0: ath_chan_set: unable to reset channel 44 (5220 Mhz, flags 0x140 hal flags 0x140)
> Feb 21 22:43:33 fuzz kernel: ath0: ath_chan_set: unable to reset channel 48 (5240 Mhz, flags 0x140 hal flags 0x140)
> Feb 21 22:43:33 fuzz kernel: ath0: ath_chan_set: unable to reset channel 2 (2417 Mhz, flags 0x480 hal flags 0xc0)
> Feb 21 22:43:34 fuzz kernel: ath0: ath_chan_set: unable to reset channel 3 (2422 Mhz, flags 0x480 hal flags 0xc0)
> Feb 21 22:43:35 fuzz kernel: ath0: ath_chan_set: unable to reset channel 4 (2427 Mhz, flags 0x480 hal flags 0xc0)

Blech, I keep forgetting to add the hal status code to this printf.  We 
need to identify why the reset failed but it's likely a 
hardware/expresscard issue and not in the driver.  Unfortunately I don't 
have an SRX card (just about every other Ubiquiti cards--thank you 
Robert--but not this one).


> 
> If I set the interface down and back up without any reloading of modules or
> replugging of the card, I get the following error:
> 
> Feb 21 22:45:45 fuzz kernel: ath0: unable to reset hardware; hal status 3227908992

This is odd, the status code should be in the range 1-15.

> 
> I am not able to reproduce this reliably, however, setting chanlist to 1-48
> (or less) seems to stop it from happening.  Scanning above channel 48 and the
> errors start again (sometimes).  Any ideas?

Not really.  I don't see a mac+phy for the card or any indication of the 
hal version you are using and I'm not familiar with the part in this card.

> 
> 
> The other problem I'm having is that scanning behaves differently depending
> on when wlan_scan_sta.ko is loaded.  If I load it before setting the
> interface up, when I set the interface up it begins scanning continuously
> by itself.  While it's doing this issuing an "ifconfig ath0 scan" doesn't
> do anything.  However, doing a list scan seems to work and continously gets
> updated.
> 
> If I load wlan_scan_sta.ko after setting the interface up, no auto scanning
> occurs.  If I run "ifconfig ath0 scan" it scans, returns the results, and
> stops scanning. 
> 
> I have tried with and without bgscan enabled - no difference.  Is there
> any way of controlling this behaviour?

Assuming all this is using the SRX card I'd forget about trying to 
understand/resolve 802.11 issues until we understand why you're seeing 
the above problems.

	Sam