Wireless drops and can not reconnect untill a cold boot

jayanath · 2008-09-23 20:45:04

Hi,
I moved from Ubuntu to Arch recently. Everything is working fine except my wireless.
The wireless connection drops time to time and can not reconnect untill I do a cold boot.

The configs:
Lenovo R61, AR5212 wireless chipset, Madwifi (ath_pci, wpa_supplicant) , wicd

Few things I tried with no luck:
1) re-installed the madwifi
2) reloaded the kernel modules (ath_pci, ath_hal)
3) restarted wpa_cli

Hope the follwings would shed some light:

[amare@breeze ~]$ uname -a
Linux breeze 2.6.26-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Sep 9 10:15:21 UTC 2008 i686 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU T8100 @ 2.10GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux
---------------------------------------------------
[amare@breeze ~]$ lsmod | grep ath
ath_pci               241848  0 
wlan                  222192  1 ath_pci
ath_hal               250976  1 ath_pci
ath5k                  99072  0 
mac80211              165280  1 ath5k
cfg80211               25608  2 ath5k,mac80211
----------------------------------------------------

[amare@breeze ~]$ iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

wmaster0  no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"W1relessTCS"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Tx-Power=23 dBm   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 B   
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0
-----------------------------------------------------
[amare@breeze sbin]$ sudo modprobe ath_hal
[amare@breeze sbin]$ sudo modprobe ath_pci
[amare@breeze sbin]$ sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Resource temporarily unavailable

-------------------------------------------------------

Modules in rc.conf

MODULES=(tg3 !ath5k ath_hal ath_pci wlan snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm-oss
snd-hwdep snd-page-alloc snd-pcm snd-timer snd snd-hda-intel soundcore
acpi-cpufreq vboxdrv !net-pf-10 !pcspkr thinkpad-acpi !cpufreq_stats !cpufreq_ondemand !cpufreq_conservative !cpufreq_powersave !tpfand)

Thanks in advance for any help.

Jayanath

elliott · 2008-09-24 05:26:24

One thing I notice, ath5k and ath_pci shouldn't be loaded at the same time. I also notice you have !ath5k in your rc.conf, which should take care of that, but it obviously didn't for some reason.

Last edited by elliott (2008-09-24 05:26:48)

jayanath · 2008-09-24 05:54:15

Thanks for your help.:)

I did the followings and managed to resolve the conflicts if any.
rmmod ath5k
rmmod ath_pci
modprobe ath_pci

Then my wireless interface chaged to ath0 from wlan0 and now its working. I will update this forum if I get the same problem again.

The new lsmod results for ath

[amare@breeze sbin]$ lsmod | grep ath
ath_rate_sample        15872  1 
ath_pci               241848  0 
wlan                  222192  5 wlan_wep,wlan_scan_sta,ath_rate_sample,ath_pci
ath_hal               250976  3 ath_rate_sample,ath_pci

Need to find a way to remove the ath5k permenantly from the system since the blacklisting it on rc.conf does not seems to be working.

jayanath · 2008-09-25 15:13:13

I removed the ath5k from the module list in rc.conf.

MODULES=(tg3 ath_hal ath_pci wlan snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm-oss
snd-hwdep snd-page-alloc snd-pcm snd-timer snd snd-hda-intel soundcore
acpi-cpufreq vboxdrv !net-pf-10 !pcspkr thinkpad-acpi !cpufreq_stats !cpufreq_ondemand !cpufreq_conservative !cpufreq_powersave !tpfand)

But when I reboot it always loads the ath5k , I have no idea why.

This is right after the reboot.

[amare@breeze ~]$ lsmod | grep ath
ath_pci               241848  0 
wlan                  222192  1 ath_pci
ath_hal               250976  1 ath_pci
ath5k                  99072  0 
mac80211              165280  1 ath5k
cfg80211               25608  2 ath5k,mac80211

So I have to unload the modules (ath5k,ath_pci,ath_hal) and load only ath_pci and ath_hal in order to connect to the wireless.

Appreciate any help with removing ath5k permenently in order to stop it getting loaded automatically.

Thanks in advance

nogoma · 2008-09-25 15:23:32

It's probably being loaded by udev; add the module to MOD_BLACKLIST.

jayanath · 2008-09-25 16:34:40

Thanks nogoma.
First I tried
MODULES=(!ath5k ......etc) but no luck.
Then I tried
MOD_BLACKLIST=(ath5k) but still it gets loaded at the boot up.

I think I will have to completely remove the ath5k but I didnt find a way as yet.

Thanks again for all your help.

Profjim · 2008-09-25 17:52:42

Not at my arch box right now. But above the MODULES=... line, isn't there an option that turns on autoloading modules based on what hardware is detected? Do you have that on? If so, that may be why ath5k is getting loaded despite being !'d out in MODULES. I don't know how that option is supposed to interact with MOD_BLACKLIST, so I can't say whether MOD_BLACKLIST should by design do what you want. You say it's not in practice doing what you want.

Heller_Barde · 2008-09-26 09:25:33

actually if you ! something in MODULES= it won't be loaded by AUTOLOAD. I know that because my pcspkr module is not loaded anymore since i did that.

cheers Barde

jayanath · 2008-09-26 16:59:08

Yes I think this strange behaviour is only with ath5k.

kdrumm · 2008-09-26 21:23:14

I'm suffering from the same thing more or less. I have a

'Atheros Communications Inc. AR2413 802.11bg'

card and am just getting dropped (lack of better word).
I have ath5k

MODULES=(!ath5k)
MOD_BLACKLIST=(ath5k)

and ath5k doesn't load

[kdrumm@kdrumm-arch ~]$ lsmod | grep ath
ath_rate_sample        15872  1 
ath_pci               241848  0 
wlan                  222192  4 wlan_scan_sta,ath_rate_sample,ath_pci
ath_hal               250976  3 ath_rate_sample,ath_pci

I Dropped back to

wicd 1.4.1-4

and it has only dropped me once in about 2wks
don't know if this helps but might be another place to look.
KDrumm

Daenyth · 2008-09-28 03:48:36

Just to let you guys know, MOD_BLACKLIST is deprecated and you should be using the ! notation in MODULES.

MAKE SURE TO MERGE YOUR .PACNEW FILES

jayanath · 2008-10-09 20:06:21

Hi,

I managed to get away from the driver conflict as I posted before but still the wireless is a big pain.
Now the connection drops every now and then and the signal strength is also very low. This is same even I stay closer to the router.
I like Arch a lot but now its becoming a pain due to this wireless issue.

Thanks in advance for any help regarding this.

The configs:
Lenovo R61, AR5212 wireless chipset, Madwifi (ath_pci, wpa_supplicant) , wicd

brebs · 2008-12-04 12:27:28

ath5k is still immature. I would suggest trying madwifi svn instead:

# http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/GettingMadwifi
svn export http://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/trunk madwifi
cd <wherever>
make clean && make && make install

modprobe ath_pci
modprobe wlan_tkip
modprobe wlan_ccmp
modprobe wlan_acl
modprobe wlan_xauth
modprobe wlan_scan_ap

Also see http://madwifi-project.org/wiki/UserDoc … aDiversity

sysctl -w dev.wifi0.diversity=0
sysctl -w dev.wifi0.txantenna=1
sysctl -w dev.wifi0.rxantenna=1

jayanath · 2008-12-04 14:38:45

Thanks for the update Brebs !!

Things got better after I started to use the new madwifi 1.5.x with kernel 2.6.27:)
Still the wireless speed is SLOW compare to windows but not a big issue for the time being.

Thanks again and I will update the forum if I get any progress with the connection speed.

Last edited by jayanath (2008-12-04 14:42:55)

Arch Linux

#1 2008-09-23 20:45:04

Wireless drops and can not reconnect untill a cold boot

#2 2008-09-24 05:26:24

Re: Wireless drops and can not reconnect untill a cold boot

#3 2008-09-24 05:54:15

Re: Wireless drops and can not reconnect untill a cold boot

#4 2008-09-25 15:13:13

Re: Wireless drops and can not reconnect untill a cold boot

#5 2008-09-25 15:23:32

Re: Wireless drops and can not reconnect untill a cold boot

#6 2008-09-25 16:34:40

Re: Wireless drops and can not reconnect untill a cold boot

#7 2008-09-25 17:52:42

Re: Wireless drops and can not reconnect untill a cold boot

#8 2008-09-26 09:25:33

Re: Wireless drops and can not reconnect untill a cold boot

#9 2008-09-26 16:59:08

Re: Wireless drops and can not reconnect untill a cold boot

#10 2008-09-26 21:23:14

Re: Wireless drops and can not reconnect untill a cold boot

#11 2008-09-28 03:48:36

Re: Wireless drops and can not reconnect untill a cold boot

#12 2008-10-09 20:06:21

Re: Wireless drops and can not reconnect untill a cold boot

#13 2008-12-04 12:27:28

Re: Wireless drops and can not reconnect untill a cold boot

#14 2008-12-04 14:38:45

Re: Wireless drops and can not reconnect untill a cold boot

Board footer