Wireless fails on NC8000 under Linux

[derf_1]

Using the latest CVS madwifi drivers under 2.6.5 in Gentoo (also fails with earlier versions of the drivers) on a brand new NC8000 with the Atheros 5212 chipset integrated 802.11a/b/g wireless.

The madwifi drivers compile and install cleanly. They detect one card, assigned to the interface ath0.

ath0 can be brought up and configured with iwconfig, however it fails to establish a link to any access points, all of which are known to be working with other cards. After booting, it will spend a period of time scanning the a/b/g spectrums at high speed, yet no packets are ever received by the device.

I have set the transmit power to the maximum, and the receive power management off. I have used iwpriv to force it into the correct radio mode, and left it in the default multi-purpose mode. I have disabled WEP encryption and enabled SSID broadcast on the access point for testing purposes. I have set the SSID manually anyway. Most test have been conducted within 6 feet of the access point. None of these have any effect.

Attached are the only messages that appear in the syslog, the output of ifconfig and iwconfig, and of iwlist scanning and iwlist ap.

[Soeren Staun-Pedersen]

I have the exact same problem on my Compaq NW8000 Mobile workstation. I am really interested in a fix for this.

Soeren

[Soeren Staun-Pedersen]

I tried using both the MADWIFI drivers as well as the ndiswrapper, and the effect is pretty much the same. I think that perhaps the problem is somehow connected to not being able to turn the card on.
Have you ever seen the blue led turned on in Linux? (I haven't)

Soeren

[Soeren Staun-Pedersen]

Got it! My Wireless card now works on my NW8000! This report is written without over wlan0 and not eth0. The trick is that you need a 2.6.x kernel. I know that 2.6.6 works.

I made it work using the ndiswrapper provided at ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net, and installed the Windows drivers from the HP Website.

http://h18007.www1.hp.com/support/files/hpcpqnk/us/locate/64_5839.html

Just get the files unpacked and do:

#cd SP27732A
#ndiswrapper -i net5211.inf
#ndiswrapper -m
#modprobe ndiswrapper
#ifconfig wlan0 up
#iwconfig wlan0 essid
#iwconfig wlan0
#dhclient wlan0

(dhclient is on Debian, perhaps you can do ifup wlan0 or similar)

Remember to watch your 'dmesg' for errors.

Best regards,

Soeren

[Soeren Staun-Pedersen]

The madwifi driver from CVS works as well. Just use the 2.6 kernel.

[derf_1]

Did you not see that I am using 2.6.5? Perhaps 2.6.6 will work, but I suspect this is some kind of ACPI conflict, i.e., the card is never getting turned on, and I can't find any way to do it manually.

[Soeren Staun-Pedersen]

I had to boot with the kernel options:
acpi=on apm=off
before it worked... Be sure to use the latest madwifi from CVS! I assume that your "nc8000" was a typo for "nw8000"? Else we may be comparing apples and pears here :)

Soeren

[derf_1]

Hmm, I have not tried explicitly disabling apm on startup. However, NC8000 is not a typo, it is a separate machine. I don't think there is a lot of difference between the two models, however, besides the graphics card.

[derf_1]

No, adding apm=off to the boot parameters did not fix anything.

[Soeren Staun-Pedersen]

Did you try the Ndiswrappers? Both drivers work for me (both ndiswrappers and madwifi). You should see if your chipset is supported here: http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/supported_chipsets.html

You can find your chipset by doing a
#lspci -n
to get the PCI id.

Soeren