Atheros (ath) MSI wireless embedded chipset fails to attach on 7.0-STABLE

Fri Aug 8 14:26:37 UTC 2008

Alexander Sack <pisymbol at gmail.com> escribió:

>
>
>
> Edwin L. Culp wrote:
>>
>> "Alexander Sack" <pisymbol at gmail.com> escribió:
>>
>>> Final update, I got everything working!  I came home and connected by
>>> new notebook using the latest PCIe Atheros chipset to a WPA2 network
>>> using wpa_supplicant!  Yippie!
>>>
>>> Hope this thread helps someone else,
>>>
>>> -aps
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 5:17 PM, Alexander Sack <pisymbol at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 3:44 PM, Alexander Sack <pisymbol at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 3:35 PM, Edwin L. Culp
>>>>> <eculp at casasponti.net> wrote:
>>>>>> "Manolis Kiagias" <sonic2000gr at gmail.com> escribió:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Edwin L. Culp wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> "Alexander Sack" <pisymbol at gmail.com> escribió:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> On Tue, Jun 17, 2008 at 11:31 AM, Manolis Kiagias
>>>>>>>>> <sonic2000gr at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Alexander Sack wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> Hello:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> I have installed FreeBSD-7.0-amd64 stable on my new AMD X2
>>>>>>>>>>> Turon based
>>>>>>>>>>> notebook, a MSI-1710A (GX710Ax) which has a generic embedded
>>>>>>>>>>> controller.  During boot up I notice that ATH complains with:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> ath_rate: version 1.2 <SampleRate bit-rate selection algorithm>
>>>>>>>>>>> ath_hal: 0.9.20.3 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112,
>>>>>>>>>>> RF2413,
>>>>>>>>>>> RF5413)
>>>>>>>>>>> ath0: <Atheros 5424/2424> mem 0xfd7f0000-0xfd7fffff irq 16 at
>>>>>>>>>>> device
>>>>>>>>>>> 0.0
>>>>>>>>>>> on pci2
>>>>>>>>>>> ath0: Reserved 0x10000 bytes for rid 0x10 type 3 at 0xfd7f0000
>>>>>>>>>>> ath0: [MPSAFE]
>>>>>>>>>>> ath0: [ITHREAD]
>>>>>>>>>>> ath0: unable to attach hardware; HAL status 13
>>>>>>>>>>> device_attach: ath0 attach returned 6
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>> HAL status 13 from the header file seems to indicate that the
>>>>>>>>>>> 7.0-STABLE driver doesn't support my hardware revision.  Here is
>>>>>>>>>>> my
>>>>>>>>>>> pciconf -l output:
>>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> Maybe you could try compiling a kernel with a newer hal. This is
>>>>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>>>>> kind of
>>>>>>>>>> hack we use on the eeepc. Have a look at this:
>>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>>> http://nighthack.org/wiki/EeeBSD
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Thank you SO much for this link.  That's EXACTLY what I want to do
>>>>>>>>> because I realize that this is a HAL problem.  I've been searching
>>>>>>>>> like MAD where I could get an updated binary HAL for this chipset
>>>>>>>>> (PCIe based).
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> That makes two of us ;)
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> My dmesg is very, very similar to yours and hoped that this would
>>>>>>>> work.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> ath0: <Atheros 5424/2424> mem 0xf2200000-0xf220ffff irq 19 at device
>>>>>>>> 0.0
>>>>>>>> on pci5
>>>>>>>> ath0: Reserved 0x10000 bytes for rid 0x10 type 3 at 0xf2200000
>>>>>>>> ioapic0: routing intpin 19 (PCI IRQ 19) to vector 64
>>>>>>>> ath0: [MPSAFE]
>>>>>>>> ath0: [ITHREAD]
>>>>>>>> ath0: unable to attach hardware; HAL status 13
>>>>>>>> device_attach: ath0 attach returned 6
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I followed the instructions from the web page, recompiled and it
>>>>>>>> made no
>>>>>>>> difference which really worries me that I must have done
>>>>>>>> something wrong.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> cd madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007/hal
>>>>>>>> cp -R * /usr/src/sys/contrib/dev/ath/
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I did not erase it previously but  am going to try that.  I made no
>>>>>>>> kern
>>>>>>>> configuration changes to find that the hal is from contrib.  Is
>>>>>>>> there
>>>>>>>> nothing else I should do?
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Well, I have only tested this on the eeepc and can confirm it works.
>>>>>>> Maybe different atheros chipset have other problems not directly
>>>>>>> related
>>>>>>> to the hal version.
>>>>>>> You do not need to do anything more that what is shown in the
>>>>>>> page: untar,
>>>>>>> replace the existing files, recompile / install kernel, reboot.
>>>>>>> If you got
>>>>>>> no errors during the kernel compilation phase, you can safely
>>>>>>> assume you did
>>>>>>> everything correctly, and the problem lies elsewhere.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> At least there was a ray of hope for the time it took to compile
>>>>>> the kernel.
>>>>>
>>>>> Ed:
>>>>>
>>>>> I took recompiled and got the same issue.  If I use the LATEST mad
>>>>> distro I get some compile bugs (ath_desc_status was moved into
>>>>> ath_desc structure in ah_desc.h) which I can't completely work around
>>>>> (apparently the API into the HAL has changed as well).  What I'm
>>>>> trying to do is look at the Linux driver and understand the newer API
>>>>> in order to get past this compile issue and see if this works.
>>>>> Otherwise I believe we are SOL.
>>>>>
>>>>> Does anyone know if the CURRENT contains an updated ath HAL AND driver
>>>>> for support of newer PCIe based chipsets?
>>>>>
>>>>> If I get it to work I will let you know...
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Ok the trick is not to get it from the madfi project.  Get it from the
>>>> author directly!
>>>>
>>>> If you grab:
>>>>
>>>> http://people.freebsd.org/~sam/ath_hal-20080528.tgz
>>>>
>>>> Copy the contents into the src/sys/contrib/dev/ath/* and recompile,
>>>> you should now see ath attach properly to the your NIC card.  Thanks
>>>> go to my friend jkim for pointing this out since he has a similar
>>>> notebook/chipset and runs CURRENT successfully.  I tried using CURRENT
>>>> ath but there is to much vap support in it and it turned out the
>>>> 7.0-RELEASE driver works.
>>>>
>>>> Now ath attaches properly and I'm going to test it out!  (this is at
>>>> least much further than a bad attach status code from the HAL).
>>>>
>>>> Let me know how it goes,
>>
>> Going  G R E A T  for the first time I see:
>>
>> ath_hal: 0.10.5.6 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, AR5416, RF5111, RF5112,
>> RF2413, RF5413, RF2133, RF2425, RF2417)
>>
>> ath0: <Atheros 5424/2424> mem 0xf2200000-0xf220ffff irq 19 at device
>> 0.0 on pci5
>> ath0: [ITHREAD]
>> ath0: WARNING: using obsoleted if_watchdog interface
>> ath0: mac 14.2 phy 7.0 radio 10.2
>>
>> and an ifconfig ath0 shows:
>>
>> ath0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 2290
>> 	ether 00:1d:d9:27:5c:e5
>> 	media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect (autoselect)
>> 	status: no carrier
>>
>> My problem is now the no carrier, I think that I'm very close but
>> still no cigar.
>>
>> Thanks soooooo much for your help.  Gonna bang away and the manuals
>> and google to find out why, no carrier.  I have an AP a few feet away
>> and iPhone works great.
>>
>
> Did you get this to ever work?  I am now running into the same issue.  What
> had happened was I sent my notebook back to fix a plastic latch and at the
> sametime work changed the wireless AP settings.  Now when the chipset comes
> up I constantly get no carrier and ifconfig ath0 scan list just hangs (sits
> there).
>
> Any idea what maybe the issue?  This is highly frustrating because it WAS
> working (I'm using a new 7.0-STABLE, from yesterday freshly built against
> Sam's latest HAL).

It is working great for me on both amd64 and i386 Current 8 with  
ath_hal-20080528.

I haven't had time to be too adventurous and am using a fixed  
configuration in rc.conf which follows:

wlans_ath0=wlan0
ifconfig_wlan0="DHCP ssid virus wepmode on wepkey 1:0x2373FE9515 weptxkey 1"

It hasn't even hiccuped since I set it up.  Actually I have multiple  
configurations for different AP's but haven't set it up to be automatic.

I hope this helps some,

ed