Hi there,

I have a very strange and annoying problem. I haev been running a wireless AP for several years now (4-5) without a single problem. This was built using Debian Etch and an Atheros card using the Madwifi module and a pretty simple iptables script. Worked beatifully, all devices (pc/laptop/WII/phones/etc) find it, connect and it's all good.

Last weekend I [foolishly?] decided to upgrade to Debian Squeeze. First Madwifi was not available, so I downloaded the src, built and installed. This is where it started to go wrong. It caused my new install to freeze, requiring a forced reboot. Thankfully, I kept my original Etch install and booted back into it but now I'm getting 'Beacon missed' errors and client machines disconnect!!

How on earth could running the card on another OS cause this fault? And how the heck do I fix it?

like I say, it was and has been working lovely for years. It hasn't physically altered, I haven't removed it from the machine, I have simply installed another OS (on the same physical machine) then switched back to the original.

Please, can anybody suggest any fix for this?

cheers,

mat

Hi again,

I'm updating this myself, as perhaps it will help somebody else.

It appears Madwifi is old and pretty much unsupported now. Various other people have complained about lock-ups.

I've 'fixed' it by scrapping of madwifi and just use Ath5k and hostapd for my AP configuration (instead of using plain-old Master-mode on the Atheros card)

It seems to work really nicely and as a bonus I have WPA instead of the fairly useless WEP!

so, to summerize: forget madwifi, for AP use ath5k/hostapd!

mat