[SOLVED] prism firmware timing out on Inventel UR054g

Mikro · 04-08-2010, 11:06 AM

Hi, I can't bring up an Inventel UR054g usb card id 1435:0427 with Slackware 13 custom kernel 2.6.32.4 SMP

Using firmware 2.13.24.0.lm87.arm (supposed to work) gives a time-out

dmesg:

Code:

[ 6611.484643] usb 1-2: firmware: requesting isl3887usb
[ 6611.488702] phy11: p54 detected a LM87 firmware
[ 6611.488705] p54: rx_mtu reduced from 3240 to 2384
[ 6611.488707] phy11: FW rev 2.13.24.0 - Softmac protocol 5.9
[ 6611.488709] phy11: cryptographic accelerator WEP:YES, TKIP:YES, CCMP:YES
[ 6613.489081] usb 1-2: modprobe timed out on ep1out len=512/2048
[ 6613.489085] usb 1-2: (p54usb) firmware upload failed!
[ 6613.489105] p54usb: probe of 1-2:1.0 failed with error -110
[ 6613.489128] usbcore: registered new interface driver p54usb

I've tried using other firmwares and also extracting them myself from the windows drivers; always gives a time-out.

Used this card before with Slackware 12 and worked correctly. Any idea?

Thanks in advance

Dån

Mikro · 04-09-2010, 05:49 AM

It is now solved;

Magic trick:

1) Boot with Windows, load the drivers, test if card was broken... no, it works
2) Boot with Slackware 13 stock kernel 2.6.29.6 SMP - works (uh? It didn't before...)
3) Boot with Slackware 13 custom kernel 2.6.32.4 - WORKS (wtf????)

Don't know why, but now it works correctly. Maybe the usb card came to life with the windows drivers (eprom refreshed or whatever).

I dunno.

For the record, I tried

Kernel 2.6.29.6
Kernel 2.6.32.4
Kernel 2.6.33.2

FW 2.13.24.0 -> works currently with it
FW 2.13.7.0 -> from the windows drivers, does not work (phy3: not all required entries found in eeprom!)

So, finally works compat-wireless kernel drivers and fw 2.13.24.0 I suppose the kernel drivers from 2.6.32.4 should work too, but I have not tried them yet.

Dån

laraaj5 · 06-01-2010, 10:58 AM

i have the same device and i'm running slackware 13.1 with a custom kernel. can you please tell me how you got yours to work.

Mikro · 06-06-2010, 09:21 AM

What error are you getting? Is the firmware timing out? Are you using compat-wireless? uname -a? dmesg?

I got it working the way it was supposed to (see the post above), the problems I had were weird and they were solved "magically" (my best bet is that something in the card was frozen (eeprom maybe), and using it under windows brought it to life again)
but maybe if you post some more info I can help you

Dån

laraaj5 · 06-06-2010, 06:47 PM

thanks alot for your replay i already got it to work, your post was very helpful because
i didn't have that much experience with wireless devices and linux and i didn't know
if my device supported or not and i was very confused with the old posts about having
to emulate windows prism drivers on linux.

your post was really what directed me in the right path i just downloaded the right firmware.
and search a little more about how to install it.
and it worked perfectly. the only thing that's not working is the blue led of my device it keeps
blinking under windows. but it's completely off in linux. it's not very important anyway most important
thing is that i can use it all the ways i want. i'm mainly using it as an adhoc to connect my 2 computers
and get rid of the cables and Ethernet cards.
as for your problem i think you are right that maybe something went wrong with the eprom which linux driver
couldn't handle while windows driver can.
does the led of your device works with linux if it has one too. i just wanna makes sure everything is alright.

here is my uname -a

Quote:

Linux laraajlinux 2.6.33.4 #1 SMP Sat May 29 01:51:52 Local time zone must be set--see zic x86_64 Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

as for compact-wireless i actually never heard about it before i just read about it i'm using the native drivers that comes with my kernel.
do you think there is any good reason why i have to use compact-wireless instead of the drivers that comes with my kernel. everything is working great right now but if you think there is any reasons why i should use compact-wireless please tell me.

by the way my kernel load this driver p54usb for my device. i think it would be same like yours mostly. i just mentioned that maybe it's not.

Mikro · 06-08-2010, 11:12 AM

Glad to hear you got it working!

I can't remember if my usb p54 had it's leds working; I'm not using it now. But if you compiled your kernel yourself, AFAIK there is a config option for the leds: grep the config and search for something like this

Code:

CONFIG_P54_LEDS=y

Or, if you set it to build as a module, check it is loaded.

It should handle the leds in the usb stick if it can (at least, it looks that it should)

The compat-wireless is a compilation of linux wireless drivers (including bluetooth) that comes very handy sometimes. It is very very useful if you are using an old kernel, for example, that doesn't include the required drivers natively. This is not your case, 2.6.33.4 is new enough for p54

I use it because I have an atheros based SMC pci card, and it seems to reject working in monitor mode with the kernel stock mac80211 driver (and I've tried a lot to make it work with it!) But, if your p54 is transmitting and receiving as it should, you don't need the compat-wireless stuff.

Dån

laraaj5 · 06-10-2010, 07:45 PM

thanks alot for your replay and your help.

i checked the .config of my kernel the option you told me about was already like this "CONFIG_P54_LEDS=y" which means it's already compiled as a part of the kernel. maybe there is something wrong with the firmware.

i tried this version compat-wireless-2.6.34.tar.bz2 of compat-wireless to patch it so i can activate injection to use it with Aircrack-ng.
but something goes wrong with D-bus or hald or the kernel itself. once i install them and plugin my wireless device or restart while it's plugged in my desktop freezes or actually takes a while to deliver the signals clicks takes a while to take effects like 5 seconds or so. applications takes the same time to run. the only thing that works properly is starting of a new tab in Konsole or Alt-F2 Alt-F3 ... and the shell .
at first i thought it maybe something wrong with the new modules dependency so i ran depmod. but still nothing works until i uninstall compat-wireles. i didn't investigate that much so i don't really know what's wrong. i will try with another version later.

i think there is something wrong with the bandwidth of my device under Linux. i tried changing the channels frequency and many things but still the bandwidth is limited at 1 Mb/s.
what i'm actually trying to use it for is to stream Satellite TV from my Desktop computer which i get with a PCI card to my laptop over the ad-hoc wireless network using mythTV.
for a while it works sometimes but the network keeps disconnecting if i'm streaming from linux to windows. from linux to linux the network is stable but the bandwidth is limited at 1 Mb/s.
by the way streaming a video from windows to windows works great i have linux and windows 7 multiboot on both computers.
it's a little confusing but it may takes me a while to figure out what's wrong.
if you have any ideas what may be the problem i will really appreciate your help.

Mikro · 06-11-2010, 09:51 AM

I think you don't need compat-wireless drivers for the p54 to work in monitor mode, 2.6.33.4 kernel ones will do.

I also had weird problems with wireless cards before, like the SMC atheros based hanging the computer when changing the MAC address and so... switching to compat-wireless drivers from madwifi-ng fixed them. Could you post the relevant parts of dmesg when the system freezes? And what is the id (lsusb) of your nic?

About the transmission rate, I'm afraid I can't help; maybe there is something we can find out taking a look at dmesg, but if everything looks correct, the only thing I can suggest is

Code:

iwconfig wlan0 rate auto

or

Code:

iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M

My nic likes 11M (more than 54M or auto), giving its best performance at 500 Kb/s. It is connecting a router with a lot of walls in between and a lot of networks around.

By the way, how did you know your transmission rate was 1Mb/s? By iwconfig?

Dån

laraaj5 · 06-12-2010, 01:55 PM

i just tried a different version of compat-wireless and it worked perfectly
this one compat-wireless-2.6.35-rc2.

here is the output of my dmesg after installing it restarting and plugging the device.

Code:

ISO 9660 Extensions: Microsoft Joliet Level 3
ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A
usb 1-3: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
usb 1-3: New USB device found, idVendor=1435, idProduct=0427
usb 1-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=0
usb 1-3: Product: Cohiba 3887 rev0
usb 1-3: Manufacturer: GlobespanVirata
cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain
cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated:
    (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
    (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
    (2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
    (2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
    (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
    (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
usb 1-3: reset high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 4
usb 1-3: firmware: requesting isl3887usb
phy0: p54 detected a LM87 firmware
p54: rx_mtu reduced from 3240 to 2384
phy0: FW rev 2.13.24.0 - Softmac protocol 5.9
phy0: cryptographic accelerator WEP:YES, TKIP:YES, CCMP:YES
phy0: hwaddr 00:0b:6b:9e:d2:f7, MAC:isl3887 RF:Frisbee
phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel'
Registered led device: p54-phy0::assoc
Registered led device: p54-phy0::tx
Registered led device: p54-phy0::rx
Registered led device: p54-phy0::radio
usb 1-3: is registered as 'phy0'
usbcore: registered new interface driver p54usb
ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready

it's strange how this version worked while the other one didn't.

what i was trying to patch the compat-wireless for is packet injection fragmentation attacks not monitoring. because that's what they said on Aircrack-ng website.
http://www.aircrack-ng.org/doku.php?id=mac80211
http://forum.aircrack-ng.org/index.p...e&topic=4743.0
and i patched with this new patch http://patches.aircrack-ng.org/mac80...radiotap.patch
it seems to be working i didn't try yet.

i already tried to set the bit rate which stabilized the connection.
here is the script i'm using to start an ad-hoc.

Code:

#!/bin/sh
#
iptables -t nat -F

ifconfig wlan0 down
iwconfig wlan0 mode ad-hoc
#iwconfig wlan0 channel 14
iwconfig wlan0 freq 2.462G
iwconfig wlan0 rate 11M 
#iwconfig wlan0 key s:amber 
iwconfig wlan0 key off
iwconfig wlan0 essid Laraajnix
ifconfig wlan0 192.168.2.1 netmask 255.255.255.0
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s 192.168.2.2 -o ppp0 -j MASQUERADE

now everything is working great i wasn't really sure that i can do all this with such a cheap wireless card i bought coincidentally.
i can play TV on my laptop one floor downstairs with the ability to do anything changing channels ... like the mythbackend is running locally
what really surprises me is that i'm using sasc-ng to decrypt channels with CCcam to read softcam and sometimes i use sasc-ng for online sharing severs too it's just a crazy combination of softwares.

sorry for my last post i meant to say transfer rate not bandwidth.
i just copied a file over smb and watched what was the transfer rate.
i thought i may need more than that so i can stream TV and the network suppose to have a better transfer rate than that because the computers were next to each other. but i guess it's working great with that transfer rate. the problem is that it wasn't stable.

the network wasn't stable before because i didn't set any value for bit rate it's still not stable between linux and windows but it's working great between linux and linux.