Enable 802.11 debug at boot

[Karl Denninger]

On 7/28/2017 13:11, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> I am having evere issues with bringing up my network card. I had previously
> had this and a patch to a locking issued mostly fixed it. (It still popped
> up now and ten, but moved from "problem" to "annoyance".) Now it is again a
> problem.
>
> System is a Lenovo T520 ThinkPad running 1-STABLE with an Intel WiFi card:
> iwn0 at pci0:3:0:0:        class=0x028000 card=0x13118086 chip=0x00858086
> rev=0x34$
>     vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
>     device     = 'Centrino Advanced-N 6205 [Taylor Peak]'
>     class      = network
>
> When the card is brought up at boot time, it has a very hard time getting a
> connection. It could take over a minute to connect, but the system kept
> reporting that the card had transitioned from DOWN to UP and DHCP would
> fire up. After one or two cases of the card showing hung and a firmware
> reload, it would make a connection and things would be fine.
>
> Since about hte start of the 11.1 release cycle, it has gotten much worse
> and some really odd behavior has appeared. It often seems to fail to scan
> properly and connects to a neighbor's Xfinity (Comcast) service (very weak
> signal and low priority in the wpa_supplicant config file) instead of my
> AP. If I run "ifconfig wlan0 list scan", I don't even see my AP. If I
> restart, I go through the same connection dance and my eventually connect
> to my AP. A "list scan" usually does not show any Xfinity SSID. Weird.
>
> It now get really weird. I try to re-scan for APs with "ifconig wlan0
> scan". It used to take a few seconds to scan before reporting the list of
> APs, but now comes back instantly, always with an identical list of APs. It
> never changes. It looks like scan is a no-op. Waiting for  background scan
> to run also never seems to show any change in the list of available APs.
> Not even slight changes is S/N ratio.
>
> My kernel has IWN_DEBUG and IEEE80211_DEBUG, but I am not sure how to get
> debug enabled at boot. sysctl.conf takes care of dev.iwn.0.debug, but I'm
> not sure how to do "wlandebug +assoc +auth +state +rate" at boot. Do I need
> to write a little rc.d script to run after /usr is mounted and before the
> network starts? Of is there a better way?
>
> Thanks!
I am seeing the same behavior with an X220 Thinkpad with (what I believe
is) the same Centrino (a/b/g capable) WiFi card.  It works /most of the
time /eventually, but often will cycle two or three times before it
finally comes up.

I did not see the problem with 11.0, but with 11.1-RELEASE it is a
definite issue.

-- 
Karl Denninger
karl at denninger.net <mailto:karl at denninger.net>
/The Market Ticker/
/[S/MIME encrypted email preferred]/
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