latest madwifi-ng locks my machine [Maybe Solved]

mikegpitt · Advocate Joined: 22 May 2004 Posts: 3140

So I'm having some wireless issues...

I just upgraded to the 2.6.16-suspend2-sources, and accordingly I needed to upgrade my madwifi-ng.

Previous to this I was running 2.6.13, with net-wireless/madwifi-driver-0.1_pre20050420-r1 and connected to my ap using iwconfig (/etc/conf.d/wireless) method.

The problem:
The latetest version of madwifi-ng (0.1531.20060427) locks my machine, and requires a reboot whenever I try to startup the interface via /etc/init.d/ath0 start. The other version of madwifi-ng in portage also doesn't work.

I read somewhere on the forums that there may be a problem with madwifi-ng and iwconfig, and to instead use wpa_supplicant, however I have never been able to properly setup wpa_supplicant.

If anyone has any tips, my /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf looks like this (it's just an open ap):

dkostic · Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2006 1:40 am Post subject:

I'm using madwifi-ng 0.1531.20060427 without any problems (at least nothing that serious) and without wpa_supplicant. I can't help you with wpa_supplicant but maybe I can help with the current madwifi. Can you lsmod (before you try to start madwifi) and post the results? There may be some kind of conflict between modules you have loaded.
_________________
Toshiba Satellite A105 laptop, 1.7 mHz Celeron M, 100 Gb hard disk, 512 Mb RAM, 2006.0, 2.6.16-r7 kernel
Homemade desktop, 3.2+ mHz AMD Athlon 64 processor, 120 Gb hard disk, 1 Gb RAM, 2005.0, 2.6.14-r2 kernel

mikegpitt · Advocate Joined: 22 May 2004 Posts: 3140

Thanks for the help... actually I ended up following the advice in this thread:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-474299.html

I had problems with the madwifi-old drivers today as well. Somehow they wouldn't reconnect to the ap until I rebooted. I'm not sure if this had to do with my suspend to disk, but I never had problems int he past with the 2.6.13 suspend2 and marwifi.

Anyways, I updated to the subversion madwifi. Things still seem a little flakey, but working better than before.

I will wish I coudl be wpa_supplicant going, since people seem to think it works better.

Actually what gentoo really needs is gnome NetworkManager. I've seen it as part of the gentopia project, but that should be merged into the main portage branch.

I'll post here, if anything else goes wacky...

mikegpitt · Advocate Joined: 22 May 2004 Posts: 3140

Well I guess things really weren't solved. The latest svn, and latest stable snapshop off the madwifi website did not work out either. After a period of time I would keep getting disconnected form the ap, and I'd need to reconnect.

This morning, after having my machine hibernate to disk overnight, it wouldn't connect at all... also saying my card doesn't support scanning. This happened even after rmmoding all the modules and modprobing them back. Very frustrating.

Right now I'm back in my 2.6.13 kernel. Apparently it kept the old drivers around too (which I was suprised about... I thought they always got overwritten). Maybe I'll try this out again later on, because it's nice to have updated software, but only when it works.

I can't believe more people aren't having problems here... I thought the Atheros card I have is pretty common.

mikegpitt · Advocate Joined: 22 May 2004 Posts: 3140

My problems may finally be solved. I just upgraded to the 2.6.17-suspend2-r3 sources with madwifi-ng-0.9.2 drivers, and so far no lockups. I guess before was a fluke or something. I'm not 100% convinced the problems are over, since I have only been using them for a few mins. If I have more problems I'll report back.

mikegpitt · Advocate Joined: 22 May 2004 Posts: 3140

After using my new setup for a night/morning, it seems to work pretty decent. I have had no lockups, and no dropped signal. My only complaint it seems that when I first start up net.ath0 I need to run it a few times to get it to work. The other times comes up with "Failed to associate access point".