Re: problems with madwifi and Atheros AR5418

[Celejar <celejar@gmail.com>]

On Wed, 03 Sep 2008 23:14:46 +0200
mpg <mpg@elzevir.fr> wrote:

> Le (on) mercredi 03 septembre 2008 22:20, mpg a écrit (wrote) :
> 
> > which means my AP when down and my laptop on battery (don't know which one
> > is responsible).
> > 
> Well, I did the test. When the AP gets down, I can see
> 
> wlan0: No ProbeResp from current AP <address> - assume out of range
> 
> which looks perfectly correct. The problem is, after this, when the AP is
> back, I can try ifdown wlan0; ifup wlan0 or whater using iwconfig, ifconfig
> and dhclient, it doesn't associate any more with the AP, and I get messages
> like 
> 
> ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready

This line generally appears when the card comes on-line; if all goes well, it should soon be followed by something like 'ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready'

>From my dmesg (with the b43 driver, which also uses mac80211, like ath9k):


ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): eth0: link is not ready
eth0: direct probe to AP 00:17:5a:4f:31:c0 try 1
eth0 direct probe responded
eth0: authenticate with AP 00:17:5a:4f:31:c0
eth0: authenticated
eth0: associate with AP 00:17:5a:4f:31:c0
eth0: RX AssocResp from 00:17:5a:4f:31:c0 (capab=0x401 status=0 aid=53)
eth0: associated
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): eth0: link becomes ready

> The only way I found to make the thing work again is to 
> 
> modprobe -r ath9k && modprobe ath9k
> 
> (that is, unload and relaod the driver). Then it authenticates and
> associates back with the AP and everything's fine.
> 
> Is something wrong with my config, am I doing something wrong, or is it a
> problem with the driver?
> 
> For what it's worth, the relavant section of my /etc/network/interfaces
> looks like:
> 
> allow-hotplug wlan0
> iface wlan0 inet dhcp
>         wireless-essid  <myessid>
>         wireless-key    <thekey>
> 
> and I'm using WEP authentication.

I'm not much of an expert, but here are a couple of suggestions:

Try disabling WEP, and see if the problem persists.
Try configuring the interface manually, without DHCP:
	ifconfig wlan0 up
	iwconfig wlan0 essid xxxxxxxx
	ifconfig wlan0 x.x.x.x

Read the dmesg and syslog carefully, and perhaps post them here.

Good luck,
Celejar
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