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Since Linux 2.6.33 (2.6.33.2 to be precise), now and then my WiFi connection drops and I can't get it back without rebooting. (Disabling/enabling the wireless, or suspend/resuming, were certain remedies for this under 2.6.32, but they don't work reliably for this anymore under 2.6.33.)
chip: AR5008 in Macbook2,1 (June 2007)
kernel driver: ath9k (yes, despite the "9" name this is the appropriate driver for my model: The model does 802.11n like the AR9XXX drivers)
wireless manager: NetworkManager
Anybody else see this problem / remedies / etc.? Quick Googling hasn't found me anything obvious/useful.
In the meanwhile, does Arch provide a way to use an older kernel (2.6.32.x) while automatically keeping its initrd up-to-date etc.?
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Can you post the dmesg output when this happens? I've had a similar problem with a Broadcom card also on a MacBook. I first thought it was a driver bug but it doesn't seem to happen anymore since I've disabled power management for my wireless card. You might find this thread useful: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=94544.
To ensure it has nothing to do with NetworkManager you could also try to connect to your network manually using wireless_tools and see if the problem persists. You can find how to here: http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wir … nual_setup,
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You can downgrade the kernel package and set pacman to ignore it, or build a parallel one with abs. The initramfs gets generated by mkinitcpio. (all in the wiki).
First I would try the other way round though, and check if you have more luck with compat-wireless.
edit: have you tried manually unloading/reloading ath9k? that should do it. I have this on a shortcut:
cat .scripts/wlan.sh
#!/bin/bash
gksu "rmmod ath9k"
gksu "modprobe ath9k"
gksu "netcfg2 -r home"Last edited by hokasch (2010-04-21 16:54:53)
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Oh, I also wouldn't recommend downgrading your kernel because of this issue. It will most likely give you problems in future updates such that its generally a bad idea IMHO.
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Thanks for the info.
When it happens next, I'll check/record the dmesg. I'll see if re-loading ath9k helps. AUR has a compat-wireless but it's out-of-date... http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=16829 (I might find time to tinker with wireless_tools, though I'll have to dig into the WPA password stuff)
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nevermind the aur package, just build it yourself - the procedure is quite straightforward:
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Dow … our_driver
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Thanks for the info.
When it happens next, I'll check/record the dmesg. I'll see if re-loading ath9k helps. AUR has a compat-wireless but it's out-of-date... http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=16829 (I might find time to tinker with wireless_tools, though I'll have to dig into the WPA password stuff)
If you own the network you could try to make it insecure only temporarily by turning WEP/WPA protection off, it has helped me debug my issues quicker.
nevermind the aur package, just build it yourself - the procedure is quite straightforward:
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Dow … our_driver
Although you could do this is, it probably means you would have to recompile it every time the kernel updates. So personally I would avoid this and use the AUR package or make one yourself for easy rebuilding in the future.
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Personally, I find the 3-command setup rather convenient. Also note that you will always have to rebuild compat-wireless after a kernel update, be it manually or with an AUR package, and that compat-wireless is released daily vs kernel ~every 3 months. If compat-wireless fixes your problem in 2.6.33, hopefully this changes will be pulled into 2.6.34 anyway.
But by all means, have a go at a PKGBUILD. I can't even understand what the current one was doing. As a start, here is one (rather dump I guess) way to get around anti-hotlinking:
wget --delete-after http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Download && wget http://wireless.kernel.org/download/compat-wireless-2.6/compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2Last edited by hokasch (2010-04-22 14:47:11)
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by the way, unload/reloading ath9k module works like a charm for me too.
(yeah, I know that's a workaround...)
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