Bug 14512

Summary: Atheros AR5211 unable to connect to WPA-Personal AP
Product: Drivers Reporter: Leann Ogasawara (leann.ogasawara)
Component: network-wirelessAssignee: drivers_network-wireless (drivers_network-wireless)
Status: CLOSED INSUFFICIENT_DATA    
Severity: normal CC: bjaglin, joolli, leann.ogasawara, linville, me
Priority: P1    
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Kernel Version: 2.6.31 Subsystem:
Regression: No Bisected commit-id:
Attachments: BootDmesg.txt
CurrentDmesg.txt
Lspci.txt
WifiSyslog.txt
logs when using madwifi (compiled without any specific option from SVN) on the same hardware and kernel

Description Leann Ogasawara 2009-10-29 20:01:19 UTC
Created attachment 23586 [details]
BootDmesg.txt

I'm opening this new bug on behalf of an Ubuntu user, bjaglin. Will attach
their relevant debug files and comments they had posted to a bug in Launchpad:

https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/463581

bjaglin wrote:

"1) Confirming this remains with the Karmic 9.10 release candidate (2.6.31 based kernel)
    http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/karmic/
2) Confirming this remains after having installed and tested with linux-backports-modules-wireless-karmic-generic (contains stable compat-wireless-2.6.32-rc4)

I can't connect at all to my home WPA-Personal AP. I could not get any better results by getting closer to the signal. AFAIK, I was using madwifi under Jaunty on the same hardware, and despite a slow rate that I thought was due to the old 802.11b adapter, it was reliable. I have a rt2870sta USB dongle which had a similar symptom (association to the AP failing); installing linux-backports-modules fixed the problem for it, but not for the built-in adapter.

The same hardware at the exact same distance from the AP works just fine in Win7. If I had no USB dongle, this would be a showstopper for me."
Comment 1 Leann Ogasawara 2009-10-29 20:01:39 UTC
Created attachment 23587 [details]
CurrentDmesg.txt
Comment 2 Leann Ogasawara 2009-10-29 20:02:04 UTC
Created attachment 23588 [details]
Lspci.txt
Comment 3 Leann Ogasawara 2009-10-29 20:02:30 UTC
Created attachment 23589 [details]
WifiSyslog.txt
Comment 4 John W. Linville 2009-10-30 13:43:49 UTC
(Ignoring rt2870sta...)

Looks like he associates most of the time, but has trouble getting an IP address via DHCP.  Then the connection drops pretty quickly -- some sort of calibration issue?
Comment 5 Bob Copeland 2009-11-01 00:44:30 UTC
> Oct 27 00:03:26 leo kernel: [   29.081864] wlan0: deauthenticating from
> 00:1b:11:74:10:66 by local choice (reason=3)

I dunno, it goes from connected to 'deauth by local choice' (i.e. NM drops the connection, not mac80211) in just over a couple of seconds.  I've had this kind of thing happen with NM before where using the wpa_s directly would work fine.  Ath5k has a pretty long scan time, I think it might hit some timeouts in NM or something like that.  Or maybe, as you say, dhcp doesn't work so NM bails on the connection.
Comment 6 bjaglin 2009-11-09 18:31:21 UTC
I compiled the latest madwifi from SVN (4100) and tried it on the same hardware, and it did work, even if the speed was not there... However, looking at the logs, it looks like the driver throw a lot of warnings. I am attaching syslog.
Comment 7 bjaglin 2009-11-09 18:37:21 UTC
Created attachment 23715 [details]
logs when using madwifi (compiled without any specific option from SVN) on the same hardware and kernel
Comment 8 John W. Linville 2010-03-04 19:35:59 UTC
The madwifi stuff is a distraction, please don't post it unless someone requests results from specific testing.

Are you still experiencing this issue with 2.6.33?
Comment 9 Julius 2010-05-03 02:02:29 UTC
Hello,

I just installed compat-wireless 2010-04-26 and I cannot get a connection. I'll include more information or debug logs if desired.
Comment 10 Julius 2010-05-03 02:07:03 UTC
My cards pci-id is 168c:0012 so it's a AR5211
Comment 11 John W. Linville 2010-08-13 15:46:21 UTC
I never got an answer from comment 8, so I'm closing this.  Please reopen if the problem persists with 2.6.35 (or later) kernels.