Issues with ath9k dropping connectivity - now no connectivity

Issues with ath9k dropping connectivity - now no connectivity

[Norman Henderson]

Hi,

I'm a bit new to all of this - here's the short story. I would
appreciate any help available!

I was building a WAP using a PC Engines ALIX board (AMD Geode LX800),
DNMA92 wireless card (Atheros 92xx) and Voyage Linux (based on Debian
Lenny, 2.6.30 kernel with hostapd 0.6.9 and libnl1.1). It was all
working but, the wireless card would drop connectivity for no apparent
reason after an undetermined time (minutes to hours). Stations (Win or
cellphone) would no longer see it at all, as if it was no longer
transmitting.

The Voyage maintainer advised that ath9k isn't that stable at 2.6.30.
So, I upgraded the kernel to 2.6.32 using the Debian Lenny backport. I
then installed the "stable" compat-wireless, 2.6.32.16.

Hostapd appears to start OK. However, the wireless SSID is only
visible to the Windows clients for a short time - seconds/minutes -
and they aren't able to connect. There were no errors in the hostapd
startup and it does its key rotations periodically. All that's logged
from hostapd -dd during the actual time that the Win clients can see
it and are trying to connect is:
1278785975.350851: STA 00:13:02:be:7b:f9 sent probe request for broadcast SSID
1278785975.353034: MGMT (TX callback) ACK
1278785975.353073: mgmt::proberesp cb
(repeated a few times)

The Win7 station used to connect automatically but now doesn't and
when I click "connect" it fails and shortly thereafter the SSID
disappears from the list.

Nothing in /var/log. iw phy phy0 info and iw dev wlan0 info appear to
report sensible info as does iwconfig.

During boot I do get messages about "VIA Padlock Hash Engine not detected" and
modprobe: FATAL: Error inserting padlock_sha
(/lib/modules/2.6.32-bpo.5-686/kern...): No such device
>From googling it's not clear to me at least whether this is relevant.

Suggestions? What further diagnostics could I do?

Thanks,
Norm Henderson

Re: Issues with ath9k dropping connectivity - now no connectivity

[Felix Fietkau]

On 2010-07-10 8:32 PM, Norman Henderson wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm a bit new to all of this - here's the short story. I would
> appreciate any help available!
> 
> I was building a WAP using a PC Engines ALIX board (AMD Geode LX800),
> DNMA92 wireless card (Atheros 92xx) and Voyage Linux (based on Debian
> Lenny, 2.6.30 kernel with hostapd 0.6.9 and libnl1.1). It was all
> working but, the wireless card would drop connectivity for no apparent
> reason after an undetermined time (minutes to hours). Stations (Win or
> cellphone) would no longer see it at all, as if it was no longer
> transmitting.
> 
> The Voyage maintainer advised that ath9k isn't that stable at 2.6.30.
> So, I upgraded the kernel to 2.6.32 using the Debian Lenny backport. I
> then installed the "stable" compat-wireless, 2.6.32.16.
> 
> Hostapd appears to start OK. However, the wireless SSID is only
> visible to the Windows clients for a short time - seconds/minutes -
> and they aren't able to connect. There were no errors in the hostapd
> startup and it does its key rotations periodically. All that's logged
> from hostapd -dd during the actual time that the Win clients can see
> it and are trying to connect is:
> 1278785975.350851: STA 00:13:02:be:7b:f9 sent probe request for broadcast SSID
> 1278785975.353034: MGMT (TX callback) ACK
> 1278785975.353073: mgmt::proberesp cb
> (repeated a few times)
> 
> The Win7 station used to connect automatically but now doesn't and
> when I click "connect" it fails and shortly thereafter the SSID
> disappears from the list.
> 
> Nothing in /var/log. iw phy phy0 info and iw dev wlan0 info appear to
> report sensible info as does iwconfig.
> 
> During boot I do get messages about "VIA Padlock Hash Engine not detected" and
> modprobe: FATAL: Error inserting padlock_sha
> (/lib/modules/2.6.32-bpo.5-686/kern...): No such device
> From googling it's not clear to me at least whether this is relevant.
> 
> Suggestions? What further diagnostics could I do?
I'd suggest using a 'bleeding edge' compat-wireless along with hostapd
version 0.7.2.

In OpenWrt we're using a compat-wireless based on wireless-testing
2010-07-06, along with two ath9k patches that were merged in a later
version.

According to my own testing and various user feedback, this is the most
stable version that we had so far.

I think 2.6.36 is probably going to be the first Linux Kernel version
with ath9k working in AP mode *reliably*.

- Felix

Re: Issues with ath9k dropping connectivity - now no connectivity

[Norman Henderson]

Thanks very much Felix for the quick comment. I'll follow up on it
over the next few days as I get time to move to "bleeding edge"
(something I've sworn from my youth to never do...).

However I guess I was more concerned about the regression from an
environment that worked (with disconnections) to one that doesn't
connect at all - is that just the luck of the draw or did I do
something stupid? (more precisely, what was it that I did stupid,
because that's inevitably true :~

- Norm Henderson

On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 7:38 PM, Felix Fietkau <nbd@openwrt.org> wrote:
> On 2010-07-10 8:32 PM, Norman Henderson wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I'm a bit new to all of this - here's the short story. I would
>> appreciate any help available!
>>
>> I was building a WAP using a PC Engines ALIX board (AMD Geode LX800),
>> DNMA92 wireless card (Atheros 92xx) and Voyage Linux (based on Debian
>> Lenny, 2.6.30 kernel with hostapd 0.6.9 and libnl1.1). It was all
>> working but, the wireless card would drop connectivity for no apparent
>> reason after an undetermined time (minutes to hours). Stations (Win or
>> cellphone) would no longer see it at all, as if it was no longer
>> transmitting.
>>
>> The Voyage maintainer advised that ath9k isn't that stable at 2.6.30.
>> So, I upgraded the kernel to 2.6.32 using the Debian Lenny backport. I
>> then installed the "stable" compat-wireless, 2.6.32.16.
>>
>> Hostapd appears to start OK. However, the wireless SSID is only
>> visible to the Windows clients for a short time - seconds/minutes -
>> and they aren't able to connect. There were no errors in the hostapd
>> startup and it does its key rotations periodically. All that's logged
>> from hostapd -dd during the actual time that the Win clients can see
>> it and are trying to connect is:
>> 1278785975.350851: STA 00:13:02:be:7b:f9 sent probe request for broadcast SSID
>> 1278785975.353034: MGMT (TX callback) ACK
>> 1278785975.353073: mgmt::proberesp cb
>> (repeated a few times)
>>
>> The Win7 station used to connect automatically but now doesn't and
>> when I click "connect" it fails and shortly thereafter the SSID
>> disappears from the list.
>>
>> Nothing in /var/log. iw phy phy0 info and iw dev wlan0 info appear to
>> report sensible info as does iwconfig.
>>
>> During boot I do get messages about "VIA Padlock Hash Engine not detected" and
>> modprobe: FATAL: Error inserting padlock_sha
>> (/lib/modules/2.6.32-bpo.5-686/kern...): No such device
>> From googling it's not clear to me at least whether this is relevant.
>>
>> Suggestions? What further diagnostics could I do?
> I'd suggest using a 'bleeding edge' compat-wireless along with hostapd
> version 0.7.2.
>
> In OpenWrt we're using a compat-wireless based on wireless-testing
> 2010-07-06, along with two ath9k patches that were merged in a later
> version.
>
> According to my own testing and various user feedback, this is the most
> stable version that we had so far.
>
> I think 2.6.36 is probably going to be the first Linux Kernel version
> with ath9k working in AP mode *reliably*.
>
> - Felix
>

Re: Issues with ath9k dropping connectivity - now no connectivity

[Felix Fietkau]

On 2010-07-10 9:40 PM, Norman Henderson wrote:
> Thanks very much Felix for the quick comment. I'll follow up on it
> over the next few days as I get time to move to "bleeding edge"
> (something I've sworn from my youth to never do...).
> 
> However I guess I was more concerned about the regression from an
> environment that worked (with disconnections) to one that doesn't
> connect at all - is that just the luck of the draw or did I do
> something stupid? (more precisely, what was it that I did stupid,
> because that's inevitably true :~
No idea if it was a configuration error or if it broke somewhere. To be
honest, I stopped caring about AP mode in old kernels completely,
because of the large number of known bugs that are fixed in newer versions.

- Felix

Re: Issues with ath9k dropping connectivity - now no connectivity

[Norman Henderson]

Felix, in case anyone else has the same problem, your suggestion was
correct. I installed the 2.6.32 kernel backport for Debian Lenny (from
backports.org), built the latest daily "bleeding edge" compat-wireless
from wireless.kernel.org and built the development version of hostapd
(0.7.2). It wasn't as scary as I expected; the only significant
complication was with nl80211 when building hostapd, and this was
resolved by removing CONFIG_DRIVER_NL80211=y from hostapd.config.

Everything seems to be completely stable, including with eth0 and wlan0 bridged.

Thanks for your help!

- Norm

> On Sat, Jul 10, 2010 at 21:21, Felix Fietkau <nbd@openwrt.org> wrote:
>>
>> On 2010-07-10 9:40 PM, Norman Henderson wrote:
>> > Thanks very much Felix for the quick comment. I'll follow up on it
>> > over the next few days as I get time to move to "bleeding edge"
>> > (something I've sworn from my youth to never do...).
>> >
>> > However I guess I was more concerned about the regression from an
>> > environment that worked (with disconnections) to one that doesn't
>> > connect at all - is that just the luck of the draw or did I do
>> > something stupid? (more precisely, what was it that I did stupid,
>> > because that's inevitably true :~
>> No idea if it was a configuration error or if it broke somewhere. To be
>> honest, I stopped caring about AP mode in old kernels completely,
>> because of the large number of known bugs that are fixed in newer versions.
>>
>> - Felix
>
> ==================================
> Original message:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm a bit new to all of this - here's the short story. I would
> appreciate any help available!
>
> I was building a WAP using a PC Engines ALIX board (AMD Geode LX800),
> DNMA92 wireless card (Atheros 92xx) and Voyage Linux (based on Debian
> Lenny, 2.6.30 kernel with hostapd 0.6.9 and libnl1.1). It was all
> working but, the wireless card would drop connectivity for no apparent
> reason after an undetermined time (minutes to hours). Stations (Win or
> cellphone) would no longer see it at all, as if it was no longer
> transmitting.
>
> The Voyage maintainer advised that ath9k isn't that stable at 2.6.30.
> So, I upgraded the kernel to 2.6.32 using the Debian Lenny backport. I
> then installed the "stable" compat-wireless, 2.6.32.16.
>
> Hostapd appears to start OK. However, the wireless SSID is only
> visible to the Windows clients for a short time - seconds/minutes -
> and they aren't able to connect. There were no errors in the hostapd
> startup and it does its key rotations periodically. All that's logged
> from hostapd -dd during the actual time that the Win clients can see
> it and are trying to connect is:
> 1278785975.350851: STA 00:13:02:be:7b:f9 sent probe request for broadcast SSID
> 1278785975.353034: MGMT (TX callback) ACK
> 1278785975.353073: mgmt::proberesp cb
> (repeated a few times)
>
> The Win7 station used to connect automatically but now doesn't and
> when I click "connect" it fails and shortly thereafter the SSID
> disappears from the list.
>
> Nothing in /var/log. iw phy phy0 info and iw dev wlan0 info appear to
> report sensible info as does iwconfig.
>
> During boot I do get messages about "VIA Padlock Hash Engine not detected" and
> modprobe: FATAL: Error inserting padlock_sha
> (/lib/modules/2.6.32-bpo.5-
> 686/kern...): No such device
> From googling it's not clear to me at least whether this is relevant.
>
> Suggestions? What further diagnostics could I do?
>
> Thanks,
> Norm Henderson