prism 2.5 nic stopped working after upgrade from sarge to ubuntu, was: hostap driver 0.4.7 on ubuntu breezy

Karl H. Beckers karl.h.beckers
Tue Dec 6 08:46:49 PST 2005 

Hi all,

suppose I was a little unspecific in my previous post ...
here's some more detail:

(keep in mind that the card worked ok in sarge with a 2.6.9 kernel and
an older driver version ... don't remember which one exactly. I'm always
one to wonder what's different if smth. stops to work, but I'm stuck
here)

When I load the driver, I get:

[4294888.517000] hostap_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
[4294888.523000] hostap_pci: 0.4.7 - 2005-11-20 (Jouni Malinen
<jkmaline at cc.hut.fi>)
[4294888.525000] ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:02.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level,
low) -> IRQ 18
[4294888.528000] hostap_pci: Registered netdevice wifi0
[4294888.528000] wifi0: Original COR value: 0x0
[4294888.734000] prism2_hw_init: initialized in 201 ms
[4294888.735000] wifi0: NIC: id=0x8013 v1.0.0
[4294888.736000] wifi0: PRI: id=0x15 v1.0.7
[4294888.736000] wifi0: STA: id=0x1f v1.4.9
[4294888.737000] wifi0: defaulting to bogus WDS frame as a workaround
for firmware bug in Host AP mode WDS
[4294888.740000] wifi0: Intersil Prism2.5 PCI: mem=0xf0000000, irq=18
[4294888.741000] wifi0: registered netdevice wlan0


As far as I've gathered from howtos on flashing firmware on prism nics
the firmwares should be alright for this NIC version as long as I don't
want to set up an AP, no?
Or has there been some change in recent driver versions that would
suggest upgrading the firmware?


A while later, I get:

[4294707.289000] prism2: wlan0: operating mode changed 3 -> 2
[4294707.290000] wifi0: LinkStatus=2 (Disconnected)
[4294707.290000] wifi0: LinkStatus: BSSID=00:90:96:72:20:5c
[4294707.377000] wifi0: LinkStatus=2 (Disconnected)
[4294707.378000] wifi0: LinkStatus: BSSID=44:44:44:44:44:44

This is quite probably NetworkManager at work. However, if I kill
NetworkManager, down the interface, unload the modules, load them again
and manually:
ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 mode managed
iwconfig wlan0 essid any
iwlist wlan0 scan

I still get no results and iwconfig says:

wifi0     IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point:
44:44:44:44:44:44
          Bit Rate:2 Mb/s   Sensitivity=1/3
          Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off

wlan0     IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:""
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point:
44:44:44:44:44:44
          Bit Rate:2 Mb/s   Sensitivity=1/3
          Retry min limit:8   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/70  Signal level=-73 dBm  Noise level=-73 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:33   Missed beacon:0

I'm talking about a laptop on a table with the AP right under the table.

Can a shared interrupt be the problem? Maybe the new kernel is doing irq
distribution differently? here, the used irq 18 is shared with usb.

from /proc/interrupts:
          CPU0       CPU1       
  0:    1316457          0    IO-APIC-edge  timer
  1:       2742          0    IO-APIC-edge  i8042
  5:          1          0    IO-APIC-edge  wbsd
  7:          0          0    IO-APIC-edge  parport0
  9:       6807          0   IO-APIC-level  acpi
 12:      33089          0    IO-APIC-edge  i8042
 14:      15081          0    IO-APIC-edge  ide0
 15:      11310          0    IO-APIC-edge  ide1
 16:      76512          0   IO-APIC-level  uhci_hcd:usb1, ohci1394,
yenta, radeon at pci:0000:01:00.0
 17:       1590          0   IO-APIC-level  Intel 82801DB-ICH4, eth0
 18:       1243          0   IO-APIC-level  uhci_hcd:usb3, wifi0
 19:          0          0   IO-APIC-level  uhci_hcd:usb2
 23:          0          0   IO-APIC-level  ehci_hcd:usb4
NMI:          0          0 
LOC:    1316091    1315080 
ERR:          0
MIS:          0

(note this is a P4 and smp kernel with ht enabled, but the symptoms were
the same on a standard i386 kernel)


Are there other tweaks I should be aware of? Like setting tx power or
things?
Some other stuff about the current config from /proc/net/hostap/wlan0
though I have no idea what to make of it:

ap_debug:
BridgedUnicastFrames=0
BridgedMulticastFrames=0
max_inactivity=300
bridge_packets=1
nullfunc_ack=0
autom_ap_wds=0
auth_algs=3
tx_drop_nonassoc=0

debug:
next_txfid=4 next_alloc=4
FID: tx=0127 intransmit=FFFF
FID: tx=013C intransmit=FFFF
FID: tx=0151 intransmit=FFFF
FID: tx=0166 intransmit=FFFF
FID: tx=017B intransmit=FFFF
FID: tx=0190 intransmit=FFFF
FID: tx=01A5 intransmit=FFFF
FID: tx=01BA intransmit=FFFF
FW TX rate control: 0
beacon_int=100
dtim_period=1
wds_max_connections=16
dev_enabled=1
sw_tick_stuck=0
pri_only=0
pci=1
sram_type=-1
no_pri=0

stats:
TxUnicastFrames=0
TxMulticastframes=4
TxFragments=4494
TxUnicastOctets=0
TxMulticastOctets=396
TxDeferredTransmissions=4990
TxSingleRetryFrames=0
TxMultipleRetryFrames=0
TxRetryLimitExceeded=0
TxDiscards=0
RxUnicastFrames=46
RxMulticastFrames=0
RxFragments=46
RxUnicastOctets=2467
RxMulticastOctets=0
RxFCSErrors=123
RxDiscardsNoBuffer=0
TxDiscardsWrongSA=0
RxDiscardsWEPUndecryptable=0
RxMessageInMsgFragments=0
RxMessageInBadMsgFragments=0


All ideas, pointers, RTFMs, hints for further research welcome.
Thanks for your help,

Karl.

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