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

Wed Jun 18 01:51:06 UTC 2008

"Alexander Sack" <pisymbol at gmail.com> escribió:

> Final update, I got everything working!  I came home and connected by
> new notebook using the latest PCIe Atheros chipset to a WPA2 network
> using wpa_supplicant!  Yippie!
>
> Hope this thread helps someone else,
>
> -aps
>
> On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 5:17 PM, Alexander Sack <pisymbol at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 3:44 PM, Alexander Sack <pisymbol at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Edwin L. Culp  
>>> <eculp at casasponti.net> wrote:
>>>> "Manolis Kiagias" <sonic2000gr at gmail.com> escribió:
>>>>
>>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>> At least there was a ray of hope for the time it took to compile  
>>>> the kernel.
>>>
>>> Ed:
>>>
>>> I took recompiled and got the same issue.  If I use the LATEST mad
>>> distro I get some compile bugs (ath_desc_status was moved into
>>> ath_desc structure in ah_desc.h) which I can't completely work around
>>> (apparently the API into the HAL has changed as well).  What I'm
>>> trying to do is look at the Linux driver and understand the newer API
>>> in order to get past this compile issue and see if this works.
>>> Otherwise I believe we are SOL.
>>>
>>> Does anyone know if the CURRENT contains an updated ath HAL AND driver
>>> for support of newer PCIe based chipsets?
>>>
>>> If I get it to work I will let you know...
>>>
>>
>> Ok the trick is not to get it from the madfi project.  Get it from the
>> author directly!
>>
>> If you grab:
>>
>> http://people.freebsd.org/~sam/ath_hal-20080528.tgz
>>
>> Copy the contents into the src/sys/contrib/dev/ath/* and recompile,
>> you should now see ath attach properly to the your NIC card.  Thanks
>> go to my friend jkim for pointing this out since he has a similar
>> notebook/chipset and runs CURRENT successfully.  I tried using CURRENT
>> ath but there is to much vap support in it and it turned out the
>> 7.0-RELEASE driver works.
>>
>> Now ath attaches properly and I'm going to test it out!  (this is at
>> least much further than a bad attach status code from the HAL).
>>
>> Let me know how it goes,

Going  G R E A T  for the first time I see:

ath_hal: 0.10.5.6 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, AR5416, RF5111, RF5112,  
RF2413, RF5413, RF2133, RF2425, RF2417)

ath0: <Atheros 5424/2424> mem 0xf2200000-0xf220ffff irq 19 at device  
0.0 on pci5
ath0: [ITHREAD]
ath0: WARNING: using obsoleted if_watchdog interface
ath0: mac 14.2 phy 7.0 radio 10.2

and an ifconfig ath0 shows:

ath0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 2290
	ether 00:1d:d9:27:5c:e5
	media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect (autoselect)
	status: no carrier

My problem is now the no carrier, I think that I'm very close but  
still no cigar.

Thanks soooooo much for your help.  Gonna bang away and the manuals  
and google to find out why, no carrier.  I have an AP a few feet away  
and iPhone works great.

Congratulations for getting yours all the way up.

ed

>>
>> -aps
>>
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