Gentoo 2.6.28 kernel and wireless for EEE-PC 1000HA

sparc86 · 02-03-2009, 12:14 PM

Hi!

I will try to be the most precise as possible in my explanation, hopefully someone here can help me.

I don't have a vast experience with wireless troubleshooting, since I bought a laptop (actually a netbook) for the very first time, but I know how linux work.
Well, as the subject suggest, I got an "eee-pc 1000HA", it comes with WindowsXP but I also installed Gentoo Linux on it, now I have dual-boot but I cannot have my wireless working.

The chipset I really don't know if it's a AR5006EG or a AR5007EG,. When I boot using WindowsXP I get AR5007EG but booting by the 2.6.28 linux kernel I get AR5006EG.

The only thing I'm sure is that it's a pci-express card.

I also have been searching for some documentation to know if my card could work with the ATH5K kernel driver, some say yes it work, some say that I should use the madwifi drivers.

For the first time I have tried ATH5K and I could find my home access point but couldn't connect to it. I have used "iwlist wlan0 scan" and then I got a list of the networks, now I can't even do it. At the moment I just get it "wlan0 Interface doesn't support scanning : Network is down".

I will copy and paste a part of my kernel config file, maybe someone can find something wrong on it.

Quote:

# Wireless LAN
#
# CONFIG_WLAN_PRE80211 is not set
CONFIG_WLAN_80211=y
# CONFIG_IPW2100 is not set
# CONFIG_IPW2200 is not set
# CONFIG_LIBERTAS is not set
# CONFIG_LIBERTAS_THINFIRM is not set
# CONFIG_AIRO is not set
# CONFIG_HERMES is not set
# CONFIG_ATMEL is not set
# CONFIG_PRISM54 is not set
# CONFIG_USB_ZD1201 is not set
# CONFIG_USB_NET_RNDIS_WLAN is not set
# CONFIG_RTL8180 is not set
# CONFIG_RTL8187 is not set
# CONFIG_ADM8211 is not set
# CONFIG_MAC80211_HWSIM is not set
# CONFIG_P54_COMMON is not set
CONFIG_ATH5K=m
# CONFIG_ATH5K_DEBUG is not set
# CONFIG_ATH9K is not set
# CONFIG_IWLCORE is not set
# CONFIG_IWLWIFI_LEDS is not set
# CONFIG_IWLAGN is not set
# CONFIG_IWL3945 is not set
# CONFIG_HOSTAP is not set
# CONFIG_B43 is not set
# CONFIG_B43LEGACY is not set
# CONFIG_ZD1211RW is not set

Now my lspci output related to my wireless card:

Quote:

01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5006EG 802.11 b/g Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

lsmod output:

Quote:

Module Size Used by
ipv6 199732 12
snd_seq_dummy 2884 0
snd_seq_oss 25216 0
snd_seq_midi_event 5888 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 40112 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 5964 3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss 32928 0
snd_mixer_oss 12480 1 snd_pcm_oss
ehci_hcd 28492 0
usbcore 109392 2 ehci_hcd
ath5k 88512 0
led_class 3716 1 ath5k
evdev 8480 0

iwconfig output:

Quote:

iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wmaster0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Tx-Power=0 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr

ff Fragment thr=2352 B
Encryption key

ff
Power Management

ff
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

iwpriv output:

Quote:

iwpriv
lo no private ioctls.

eth0 no private ioctls.

wmaster0 no private ioctls.

wlan0 no private ioctls.

So, does anyone here owns the same chipset as I do, use ath5k on 2.6.28 kernel and it works properly?

Thanks in advance for your help!

farslayer · 02-03-2009, 03:14 PM

I have seen a couple posts where that chip has a tendency to misreport itself as 5006..
I would say it is actually the ar5007 and you need the open_HAL driver to make it work
(Same wireless chip is in my Acer Aspire One netbook)

Link for driver and instructions are here:
http://madwifi-project.org/ticket/1192

I use the ath_pci and ath_hal modules with mine. .works flawlessly connecting to wpa2 AP

also using wicd to handle config in the GUI, works great.

Also might want to look at the Gentoo ath5XXX page..

Quote:

MadWifi Hal (Formerly AR242x Patch)

Some Atheros devices currently require an updated version of madwifi to make them work. This version is the madwifi-hal branch. See also MadWifi ticket #1192.

You can download this ebuild from AllenJB's Overlay (as net-wireless/madwifi-hal). To resolve the dependency on madwifi-ng-tools by wpa_supplicant, add "net-wireless/madwifi-ng-tools-9999" to /etc/portage/profile/package.provided (create the file and directories if they do not already exist).

Note: When emerging this package, you will be asked to accept the SSL certificate for MadWifi's source repository. To continue and not be asked again, press 'p' (accept permanently).

Please note that as this package uses the most recent development code, it cannot always be guaranteed to work. If it does not work, please try the snapshot package below.

sparc86 · 02-04-2009, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by farslayer

I have seen a couple posts where that chip has a tendency to misreport itself as 5006..
I would say it is actually the ar5007 and you need the open_HAL driver to make it work
(Same wireless chip is in my Acer Aspire One netbook)

Link for driver and instructions are here:
http://madwifi-project.org/ticket/1192

I use the ath_pci and ath_hal modules with mine. .works flawlessly connecting to wpa2 AP

also using wicd to handle config in the GUI, works great.

Also might want to look at the Gentoo ath5XXX page..

Farslayer: Excuse me, but are you using the version 0.9.5 or 0.9.4 of madwifi?

In the case it's the current version, then is this the right file to download?
http://snapshots.madwifi-project.org...current.tar.gz

Thanks in advance.

farslayer · 02-04-2009, 03:40 PM

no I am using the madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6 driver downloaded from the link I provided.. 9.4 and 9.5 do not work properly with the ar5007..

sparc86 · 05-03-2009, 06:01 PM

Hi again! (after a long time)

So, I really don't know what else I can do to fix it.

I just downloaded the madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-current.tar.gz, compiled and installed everything according to the manual.

I got all the needed modules up, as it follows:

Quote:

Module Size Used by
wlan_scan_sta 9696 0
ath_rate_sample 11296 1
ath_pci 185944 0
wlan 179888 4 wlan_scan_sta,ath_rate_sample,ath_pci
ath_hal 285344 3 ath_rate_sample,ath_pci

But I don't have the ath0:

Quote:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:23:54:92:58:4a
inet addr:192.168.0.11 Bcast:255.255.255.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::223:54ff:fe92:584a/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:935784 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:941565 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:2
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:851145470 (811.7 MiB) TX bytes:446442720 (425.7 MiB)
Interrupt:17

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:4 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:240 (240.0 B) TX bytes:240 (240.0 B)

sit0 Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4
NOARP MTU:1480 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wifi0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-22-43-57-02-4C-65-74-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:280
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:19

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:22:43:57:02:4c
BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

After check "dmesg", I just saw it:

Quote:

udev: renamed network interface ath0 to wlan0

Then when I try creating it, I get:

Quote:

# wlanconfig wlan0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode sta

wlanconfig: ioctl: Input/output error

So I don't know what to do, it seems like nobody else fell on the same problem, therefore I cannot find a solution.

Even if I try to list for any AP, it doesn't works:

Quote:

# iwlist wlan0 scan

wlan0 No scan results

Thanks in advance.