[arch-general] Last couple of updates Knocked my Wireless -- OUT (atheros/madwifi/ath_pci)

[David C. Rankin]

On Tuesday 22 September 2009 08:49:51 am Daenyth Blank wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 22, 2009 at 09:43, David C. Rankin
> 
> <drankinatty at suddenlinkmail.com> wrote:
> > Vincent,
> >
> >        Thank you for the information. At least I know I'm not going
> > crazy... It looks like I will have to downgrade the kernel to test the
> > older madwifi package:
> 
> Could you try to recompile the older madwifi from svn using the latest
> kernel and see if that works? Also testing previous kernel with latest
> madwifi would be good. I'm fairly concerned about this, as I also use
> the madwifi drivers, and my speed is abysmal as it is... A reduction
> like that would put me at dial-up speeds.
> 

Danny,

	I downgraded the kernel and madwifi, by downgrading the following:

kernel-headers-2.6.30.5-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
kernel26-2.6.30.5-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
kernel26-firmware-2.6.30-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
madwifi-0.9.4.3952-5-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
madwifi-utils-0.9.4.3952-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz

	The wireless then started as usual under wlan0/ath0 and performance is back 
to FANTASTIC:

alchemy:~> rsync -uav --progress archangel:~/dsj.wav .
receiving incremental file list
dsj.wav
    23578844 100%    3.10MB/s    0:00:07 (xfer#1, to-check=0/1)

sent 30 bytes  received 23581816 bytes  3144246.13 bytes/sec
total size is 23578844  speedup is 1.00

	compared to the performance with the new kernel/driver:

alchemy:~> rsync -uav --progress archangel:~/dsj.wav .
receiving incremental file list
dsj.wav
    23578844 100%  201.77kB/s    0:01:54 (xfer#1, to-check=0/1)


	That's 3.10MB/s with the old kernel/madwifi combination and only 201.7kB/s 
with the new. 

	The working setup under the old kernel was accomplished by:

ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 essid "skyline"
wpa_supplicant -iwlan0 -Dwext -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -d -B
dhcpcd wlan0

	Done!

[09:50 alchemy:/home/david/archlinux/config/wireless] # ifconfig
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:20 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:20 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:1000 (1000.0 b)  TX bytes:1000 (1000.0 b)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1B:9E:7C:F6:E7
          inet addr:192.168.6.102  Bcast:192.168.6.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::21b:9eff:fe7c:f6e7/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:17096 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:8733 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:25090930 (23.9 Mb)  TX bytes:784205 (765.8 Kb)

wmaster0  Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-1B-9E-7C-F6-
E7-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
          UP RUNNING  MTU:0  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:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

[09:50 alchemy:/home/david/archlinux/config/wireless] # iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wmaster0  no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"skyline"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:23:69:5C:FD:B6
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:***** [3]   Security mode:open
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=51/70  Signal level=-59 dBm  Noise level=-103 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0


	I know the wmaster0/wlan0 combination was weird, but it seemed to work fine. 
I'll change the config to wifi0/ath0 under the old kernel, confirm performance 
under the setup and then I'll reinstall the new kernel and try to build 
madwifi from svn as you have suggested. Let me know if you have any other 
thoughts in the mean time. Thanks.


-- 
David C. Rankin, J.D.,P.E.
Rankin Law Firm, PLLC
510 Ochiltree Street
Nacogdoches, Texas 75961
Telephone: (936) 715-9333
Facsimile: (936) 715-9339
www.rankinlawfirm.com