[Wireless] Can't connect to wlan

Mel fbsd.questions at rachie.is-a-geek.net
Wed Apr 2 05:00:08 PDT 2008 

On Wednesday 19 March 2008 13:35:22 Benjamin Close wrote:
> Yousif Hassan wrote:
> > Benjamin Close wrote:
> >> Sam Leffler wrote:
> >>> Yousif Hassan wrote:
> >>>> On Wed, 2008-03-12 at 08:06 +1030, Benjamin Close wrote:
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> >>>> The slightly wonky:
> >>>> - As reported by someone else:
> >>>>   wpi0: timeout resetting Tx ring 1
> >>>>   wpi0: timeout resetting Tx ring 3
> >>>>   wpi0: timeout resetting Tx ring 4
> >>>> appear on startup and occasionally on kldload - however they don't
> >>>> appear to adversely affect too much
> >
> > <snip>
> >
> >>> wpi doesn't yet support background scan so doing an explicit scan
> >>> from the command line will disconnect you from any ap you care
> >>> connected to. It shouldn't be hard to add bgscan--but that's easy
> >>> for me to say :)
> >>
> >> It's certainly on my todo list!
> >
> > Thanks for reminding me about the bgscan thing.  I had read that
> > somewhere before and completely forgotten!
> >
> > Ben, are the
> > wpi0: timeout resetting Tx ring 1
> > wpi0: timeout resetting Tx ring 3
> > wpi0: timeout resetting Tx ring 4
> > (and other variants thereof)
> > messages anything to be concerned about?  It doesn't seem to affect
> > stuff but it does show up on initial startup and every other scan I do.
> >
> > Thanks to everyone who worked on wpi for a most excellent driver.
>
> The timeouts are related to the firmware not being able to reset the tx
> ring. Normally this isn't too bad as the first thing after resetting the
> tx rings is to stop the firmware and reinit it. Whilst it won't cause a
> crash, it still a bug that needs fixing.

I think I finally found the issue with the connection dropping. It is related 
to a beacon miss and the driver not getting back to authenticated state.
The /root/bin/testwpi.sh script mentioned below pings the AP 50 times sends it 
to syslog and does it again.

Apr  1 09:20:30 laptop kernel: Beacon miss: 20 >= 7
Apr  1 09:20:30 laptop kernel: Beacon miss: 21 >= 7
Apr  1 09:20:30 laptop kernel: wpi_newstate: RUN -> ASSOC
Apr  1 09:20:30 laptop kernel: wpi0: link state changed to DOWN

Then this Beacon miss continues incrementing until:
Apr  1 09:20:56 laptop kernel: Beacon miss: 274 >= 7

At this point the packet loss is still 100%:
Apr  1 09:21:04 laptop /root/bin/testwpi.sh: 50 packets transmitted, 14 
packets received, 72.0%
 packet loss round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 0.513/0.599/1.046/0.131 ms
Apr  1 09:22:05 laptop /root/bin/testwpi.sh: 50 packets transmitted, 0 packets 
received, 100.0%
 packet loss
Apr  1 09:23:06 laptop /root/bin/testwpi.sh: 50 packets transmitted, 0 packets 
received, 100.0%
 packet loss

Then for no apparent reason, it tries again:
Apr  1 10:49:41 laptop kernel: Beacon miss: 20 >= 7
Apr  1 10:49:41 laptop kernel: Beacon miss: 21 >= 7
Apr  1 10:49:41 laptop kernel: Beacon miss: 22 >= 7

...

Apr  1 10:50:07 laptop kernel: Beacon miss: 273 >= 7
Apr  1 10:50:37 laptop /root/bin/testwpi.sh: 50 packets transmitted, 0 packets 
received, 100.0% packet loss
Apr  1 10:51:38 laptop /root/bin/testwpi.sh: 50 packets transmitted, 0 packets 
received, 100.0% packet loss
Apr  1 10:53:40 laptop last message repeated 2 times
Apr  1 11:03:51 laptop last message repeated 10 times

...

Then for no apparent reason (as far as I know, no one was near the machine at 
the time):
Apr  1 16:34:00 laptop kernel: wpi_newstate: ASSOC -> AUTH
Apr  1 16:34:00 laptop kernel: wpi_ops: command: 16
Apr  1 16:34:00 laptop kernel: config chan 1 flags 8035 cck f ofdm 15
Apr  1 16:34:00 laptop kernel: wpi_ops: command: 1
Apr  1 16:34:00 laptop kernel: wpi_ops: command: 8
Apr  1 16:34:00 laptop kernel: Ignoring WPI_SET_CHAN
Apr  1 16:34:00 laptop kernel: wpi_ops: command: 2
Apr  1 16:34:00 laptop kernel: Scanning Essid: "MYSSID"
Apr  1 16:34:00 laptop kernel: Scanning 1 Passive: 0
Apr  1 16:34:00 laptop kernel: wpi_newstate: AUTH -> AUTH
Apr  1 16:34:00 laptop kernel: wpi_ops: command: 16
Apr  1 16:34:00 laptop kernel: config chan 1 flags 8035 cck f ofdm 15
Apr  1 16:34:00 laptop kernel: scanning channel 1 status 1
Apr  1 16:34:00 laptop kernel: scan finished nchan=0 status=2 chan=0
Apr  1 16:34:00 laptop kernel: wpi_ops: command: 4
Apr  1 16:34:36 laptop /root/bin/testwpi.sh: 50 packets transmitted, 0 packets 
received, 100.0% packet loss
Apr  1 16:35:37 laptop /root/bin/testwpi.sh: 50 packets transmitted, 0 packets 
received, 100.0% packet loss
Apr  1 16:36:38 laptop /root/bin/testwpi.sh: 50 packets transmitted, 0 packets 
received, 100.0% packet loss
Apr  1 16:46:49 laptop last message repeated 10 times

And then my girl came home from work and did the "down and list scan trick":

Apr  1 17:53:06 laptop sudo:   rachie : TTY=ttyp1 ; PWD=/home/rachie ; 
USER=root ; COMMAND=/sbi
n/ifconfig wpi0 down
Apr  1 17:53:06 laptop kernel: Disabling Firmware execution
Apr  1 17:53:06 laptop kernel: wpi_newstate: AUTH -> INIT
Apr  1 17:53:10 laptop sudo:   rachie : TTY=ttyp1 ; PWD=/home/rachie ; 
USER=root ; COMMAND=/sbi
n/ifconfig wpi0 up list scan
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: wpi0: timeout resetting Tx ring 1
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: wpi0: timeout resetting Tx ring 3
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: wpi0: timeout resetting Tx ring 4
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: Disabling Firmware execution
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: wpi_newstate: INIT -> INIT
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: Resetting the card - clearing any uploaded 
firmware
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: Attempting Loading Firmware from wpi_fw module
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: Firmware Version: Major 2, Minor 14, Driver 4,
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: runtime (text: 80524, data: 32768) init (text: 
2668, data 32768)
 boot (text 900)
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: rtext 0xf802020
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: rdata 0x0
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: itext 0xf802020
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: idata 0x0
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: btext 0xf802020
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: Loading microcode  size 0x384
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: firmware status=0xffff0000, val=0x40400000, 
result=0x40400000
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: Status Match! - ntries = 0
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: microcode alive notification version 10e02 
alive 1
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: microcode alive notification version 10e02 
alive 1
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: Firmware loaded to driver successfully
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: wpi_newstate: INIT -> SCAN
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: wpi_ops: command: 1
Apr  1 17:53:11 laptop kernel: wpi_ops: command: 8

<snipped lots of scanning>

Apr  1 17:53:13 laptop kernel: scan finished nchan=1 status=1 chan=165
Apr  1 17:53:13 laptop kernel: wpi_newstate: SCAN -> AUTH
Apr  1 17:53:13 laptop kernel: wpi_ops: command: 4
Apr  1 17:53:13 laptop kernel: wpi_ops: command: 8
Apr  1 17:53:13 laptop kernel: Ignoring WPI_SET_CHAN
Apr  1 17:53:13 laptop kernel: wpi_ops: command: 8
Apr  1 17:53:13 laptop kernel: Ignoring WPI_SET_CHAN
Apr  1 17:53:13 laptop kernel: wpi_ops: command: 16
Apr  1 17:53:13 laptop kernel: config chan 1 flags 8005 cck f ofdm 15
Apr  1 17:53:13 laptop kernel: wpi_newstate: AUTH -> ASSOC
Apr  1 17:53:13 laptop kernel: wpi_newstate: ASSOC -> RUN
Apr  1 17:53:13 laptop kernel: wpi_ops: command: 32
Apr  1 17:53:13 laptop kernel: config chan 1 flags 8035
Apr  1 17:53:13 laptop kernel: wpi0: link state changed to UP

At this point it's working again, connection is flakey with packet loss 
ranging from 0 to 50% but it's working.
This is wpi from 7-RELEASE with patch mentioned in this thread.


-- 
Mel

Problem with today's modular software: they start with the modules
    and never get to the software part.

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