From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue May 5 17:09:17 2009 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 215CF106564A for ; Tue, 5 May 2009 17:09:17 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from LukeD@pobox.com) Received: from sasl.smtp.pobox.com (a-sasl-fastnet.sasl.smtp.pobox.com [207.106.133.19]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id E92A88FC08 for ; Tue, 5 May 2009 17:09:16 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from LukeD@pobox.com) Received: from localhost.localdomain (unknown [127.0.0.1]) by a-sasl-fastnet.sasl.smtp.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id A87C3B030C for ; Tue, 5 May 2009 13:09:15 -0400 (EDT) Received: from lukas.is-a-geek.org (unknown [71.112.210.71]) (using TLSv1 with cipher DHE-RSA-AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by a-sasl-fastnet.sasl.smtp.pobox.com (Postfix) with ESMTPSA id E393FB030B for ; Tue, 5 May 2009 13:09:13 -0400 (EDT) Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 10:09:08 -0700 (PDT) From: Luke Dean X-X-Sender: lukas@border.lukas.is-a-geek.org To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Message-ID: User-Agent: Alpine 2.00 (BSF 1167 2008-08-23) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; format=flowed; charset=US-ASCII X-Pobox-Relay-ID: 765E1B82-3997-11DE-99B7-CABC03BA4B0C-96347044!a-sasl-fastnet.pobox.com Subject: ath_hal problem on slow hardware, can be tuned? X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list Reply-To: Luke Dean List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 05 May 2009 17:09:17 -0000 I'm following 7-STABLE with my laptop. As soon as ath_hal appeared, I started having trouble with my wireless connection dropping every few hours. +ath0: ath_chan_set: unable to reset channel 11 (2462 Mhz, flags 0x480 hal flags 0xc0), hal status 3 The ath manpage documents this error as: ath%d: ath_chan_set: unable to reset channel %u (%u Mhz) The Atheros Hardware Access Layer was unable to reset the hardware when switching channels during scanning. This should not happen. sys/contrib/dev/ath/ah.h documents the error 3 as: HAL_EIO = 3, /* Hardware didn't respond as expected */ I can run /etc/rc.d/netif start dhclient ath0 to reset the interface and reconnect to the wireless network after this happens. I'm thinking that ath_hal doesn't like my card as much as the old ath driver system did, or perhaps there's some tunable that I need to adjust. This is an old laptop. It's a Sony Vaio PCG-Z505S - a celeron 133MHz "designed for MS Windows 98". In the best of circumstances, it can never establish a wireless connection before ntp comes up at boot time. wpa_supplicant always "gives up" the first time it attempts to connect because this hardware is so slow. I'm saying it's slow. I wonder if it's so slow that it's not responding as fast as ath_hal wants it to respond whenever it decides to rescan for channels. I know that such problems can sometimes be solved with sysctls or adjustment of constants. Would anyone have any suggestions? The wireless card is a DWL-G650 pccard, revision B2 pciconf -vlbc says this about it: ath0@pci0:2:0:0: class=0x020000 card=0x32021186 chip=0x0013168c rev=0x01 hdr=0x00 vendor = 'Atheros Communications Inc.' device = 'AR5212, AR5213 802.11a/b/g Wireless Adapter' class = network subclass = ethernet bar [10] = type Memory, range 32, base 0x88000000, size 65536, enabled cap 01[44] = powerspec 2 supports D0 D3 current D0