am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

mechmg93 · 2010-01-28 07:01:40

i did a test with kerenl 2.6.32.6

after installing it and run:

rfkill unblock all

it started searching normally for wireless networks but i could not connect to encrypted networks. So back to 2.6.30.6.

el_cammello · 2010-01-28 07:08:18

my ath5k on my aspire one works well with kernel 2.6.31.6-1, I've upload the package here:

kernel26-2.6.31.6-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz

(link of post)

mechmg93 · 2010-02-03 10:11:09

a temporary solution for me was installing kernel 2.6.32.7 and latest madwifi, and now everything is ok. I had also tried this solution but had problems with madwifi to. latest madwifi seems ok.

el_cammello · 2010-02-03 10:43:17

Now I'm using tera's dev kernel, 2.6.33_rc6, ath5k on this kernel seems works well

TiZ · 2010-02-03 23:21:23

Hi. I have an Acer Aspire One AOA150. Atheros wireless. Regardless of whether I use ath5k or ndiswrapper (+ WinXP AOA150 wireless drivers from Acer's site), I get dropped whenever the netbook uses high bandwidth. It used to be that whenever this happened, my router, a Linksys WRT54G, would drop everyone else on the network. I installed DD-WRT, and now only I get dropped. Which is a step up from previous behavior. It leads me to believe that, regardless of this thread and the bug reports I've seen from people with problems identical to mine, that I (or we!) may have bigger problems than a kernel driver. I'd hate to sentence this otherwise fantastic netbook to a life of having a usb wifi adapter sticking out of it all the time.

So really, the point of me posting here is to say, "me too", and also to ask... did ndiswrapper fix the problem for anyone, or did anyone else have the same problem with it as me? I'm just asking so I can be secure in knowing that the wifi isn't fried on this thing.

I would gladly give Tera's dev kernel a try, and I have repeatedly... it won't boot for me, presumably due to a different hard drive controller. No one's offering a 2.6.33-rc6 kernel package so I can check to see if it works for me. Zen-next is not an option, as rc5 has a regression that breaks ath5k, and it was fixed in rc6.

EDIT: Spoke too soon; I found a kernel26-rc in AUR and will be trying it out now. Hopefully I won't have too many problems downloading the source. :x

Last edited by TiZ (2010-02-03 23:25:07)

cb474 · 2010-02-05 05:25:10

I seem to have ath5k working with kernel 2.6.32.7-1. And I hate to admit that my problem may have had to do with a really stupid oversight on my part.

I reinstalled Arch last night, to switch fro x86_64 to i686 (for various reasons). When I was configuring wireless from the command line it worked fine with ath5k. To make a long story short, I realized that newer versions of the kernel automatically detect the wireless on/off switch on my thinkpad. This was not the case with 2.6.30, with which it did not matter what position the switch was in. I tried turning off the switch and got the "SIOCSIFFLAGS: Unknown error 132" message that I mentioned in my first post in this thread.

So it's possible that my problem with ath5k in the newer versions of the kernel had to do with my wireless switch being off. Duh. I am deeply embarrassed. Although I really thought I checked the switch when the problem first arose for me in 2.6.31 (because I already knew I had to turn it on in Ubuntu, but it didn't matter in Arch). Of course, I can't rule out that the solution has something to do with reinstalling Arch or with the change to i686, since I don't fully recall whether I checked the switch in the past or not.

Curiously madwifi continues to works fine in 2.6.32 regardless of what position the switch is in.

[Edit: I may have spoke too soon. Now when I scan for access points in wicd, I'm getting the "no wireless networks found" message, even though I'm still connected to an access point. Ath5k, when it works, also remains extremely slow to scan and slow to obtain and IP address, compared to madwifi. It's weird that ath5k would work intermittently.

"iwlist wlan0 scan" gives me this message: "wlan0 Failed to read scan data : Resource temporarily unavailable"

Turning off and on the wireless switch solved the problem. Very weird. I guess that's invoking rfkill somehow?]

Last edited by cb474 (2010-02-05 05:37:54)

TiZ · 2010-02-18 22:30:01

I have fixed my wireless problems for the most part. I apologize for not reporting on it sooner.

There were actually three factors with my problem.

1. No matter the driver I used, my WRT54G didn't like WPA encryption with my Aspire One. It would disassociate everyone connected whenever there was high bandwidth usage on it. So I switched to the DD-WRT firmware
2. After switching to DD-WRT, it didn't like WPA encryption with *anyone*, and would drop any computer that had high bandwidth usage. Thus I disabled encryption, and just to be sure, downgraded to a more tested version of DD-WRT.
3. Ath5k seems to kind of suck for my Aspire One. I frequently got "atk5k: no further txbuf available" in my dmesg after disabling encryption on the router. Which meant it continued to drop.

Thus, the fix for me was to disable encryption on the router, and switch my driver to ndiswrapper. Now things are working peachy keen. I do get dropped once in a long while with no indication of such, but the stability is leaps and bounds ahead of what it was before. I can even download 2GB torrents at 1MB/s without dropping. The one caveat is that speed seems to fluctuate. But that's a very acceptable loss.

Last edited by TiZ (2010-02-18 22:33:08)

mechmg93 · 2010-05-18 16:56:43

I reopen this therad after a lot of time in order to ask the archlinux/ath5k users if they finally managed to get ath5k usable?

I tested again with 2.6.34, and after rfkill unblock all, it appears but it keeps remaining unusable.

Is there any possibility for this issue to be arch specific?

mechmg93 · 2010-05-20 07:26:31

Update:

i realized that the need of rfkill command was due to my thinkpad on/off switch also.(which previously it wasn't usable so that's why i had not test it again.)

The problem is that after switching on and of my wireless 2-3 times it stops responding and wireless interface is not recognized anymore.

As far as the not connecting issue concerned, up to now i have not any access point over here to check.

Last edited by mechmg93 (2010-05-20 07:29:20)

karabaja4 · 2010-05-20 22:40:39

My ath5k completely died with kernel 2.6.34 update. wlan0 interface doesn't show, module doesn't load automatically. Loading it manually with modprobe doesn't start the card.

D-link DWL-G650 (Atheors AR5212).

Had to revert to 2.6.33.x to get it working.

karabaja4 · 2010-06-01 21:44:03

karabaja4 wrote:

My ath5k completely died with kernel 2.6.34 update. wlan0 interface doesn't show, module doesn't load automatically. Loading it manually with modprobe doesn't start the card.
D-link DWL-G650 (Atheors AR5212).
Had to revert to 2.6.33.x to get it working.

Bump on this?

naguz · 2010-06-23 15:51:49

You could try using ath_pci for that card (install madwifi)

airencracken · 2010-07-18 07:12:00

ath5k seems to hate WPA. It works just fine for me with unencrypted networks, but WPA brings it to it's knees. ath_pci used to work fine, but at one point (a kernel upgrade) it caused my machine to stop booting. Sometimes websites will load, sometimes they won't. Pretty annoying.

Nittany · 2010-09-14 18:53:31

I've been scanning the forums and the Internet in general for information about the ath5k driver and its inability to use WPA2 encryption. Just this week I helped install a Buffalo WHR-G300N router running DD-WRT and configured to use WPA2 at my parents' home and attempted to test its wireless signal with my ancient Twinhead P88TE laptop with a TP-Link TL-WN610G Cardbus card. I had no trouble initializing a connection but I discovered that any period of inactivity would cause a loss of connectivity. The signal would stay up as long as I was downloading files or calling up webpages, but taking the time to read a webpage meant having to eventually reestablish the wireless connection between the Twinhead and the router. My folks' iMac had no trouble establishing or sustaining its wireless connection with the Buffalo router.

Turning off WPA encryption at the router eliminated the dropped wireless connections but I don't consider this to be much of a solution.

I don't have the laptop in front of me now, but here are the configuration settings I know: running linux kernel 2.6.35.4-1, ath5k driver, for Atheros chipset AR5212, using wicd.

Blacklisting ath5k in rc.conf and substituting madwifi's ath_pci doesn't solve the problem. The only noticeable change I see is that signal strength is significantly lowered while using ath_pci.

I'm thinking that perhaps a new wpa_supplicant template added to wicd could help, with a line that would either increase (or eliminate) the amount of time that would elapse before dropping the connection, but I don't know what such a modification would look like. The above posts about disabling rfkill looked promising but my Twinhead has no wireless shutoff switch; would disabling rfkill do anything for me?

neoanima · 2011-08-24 10:40:13

problem still exits in kernel 3.03
ath5k module is not mature as ath_pci/hal provided by madwifi on Arothes AR5001 chip.

Clouseau · 2011-09-09 16:32:03

neoanima wrote:

problem still exits in kernel 3.03
ath5k module is not mature as ath_pci/hal provided by madwifi on Arothes AR5001 chip.

I can confirm this. No AP mode in ath5k, but with ath_pci yes. On AR5001X+ chipset.

Arch Linux

#101 2010-01-28 07:01:40

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

#102 2010-01-28 07:08:18

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

#103 2010-02-03 10:11:09

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

#104 2010-02-03 10:43:17

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

#105 2010-02-03 23:21:23

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

#106 2010-02-05 05:25:10

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

#107 2010-02-18 22:30:01

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

#108 2010-05-18 16:56:43

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

#109 2010-05-20 07:26:31

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

#110 2010-05-20 22:40:39

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

#111 2010-06-01 21:44:03

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

#112 2010-06-23 15:51:49

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

#113 2010-07-18 07:12:00

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

#114 2010-09-14 18:53:31

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

#115 2011-08-24 10:40:13

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

#116 2011-09-09 16:32:03

Re: am i the onlyone having problem with ath5k(etc) and kernel 2.6.3X??

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