Wireless card recognized but does not scan

[Chais]

This is starting to get on my nerves here. I used to use Debian on my previous laptop (which used the b43 driver and needed ndiswrapper prior to Lenny, so I'm not exactly new to wireless configuration), but I decided to use Arch for a while on my current laptop since Lenny wasn't yet considered stable and it had taken care of all my configuration for me. I've been dissatisfied with it though so figured I'd return to my true (Linux distro) love. Lenny's being a bit of a pain though.

I know my card uses ath5k and I've gotten everything working to a certain point. The kernel loads ath5k without an issue and it recognizes my card just fine. However, it cannot pick up wireless networks and I'm literally ten feet away from my router.

Here's my /etc/network/interfaces file:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface - use DHCP to find our address
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp

It DHCPDISCOVERs just fine during the boot sequence, but no DHCPOFFERs are received. When trying to scan using iwlist wlan0 scanning, I get this error:

wlan0 Interface doesn't support scanning : Network is down

The editing of my /etc/network/interfaces was all I needed on my last machine with b43, but I'm not quite sure what I'm lacking here with ath5k. According to Ubuntu 9.04's LiveCD (which is how I'm posting this right now), my Ethernet card is:

05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

However in Lenny it shows as an AR242x which is supposed to be supported by ath5k. Neither Arch nor Ubuntu seem to have trouble using it, so I'm kind of confused here.

[reed9]

What is the output of

dmesg | grep ath

[reed9]

You may also want to try the madwifi drivers instead.
UserDocs/Distro/Debian - madwifi-project.org - Trac
UserDocs/MiniPCI - madwifi-project.org - Trac

[the bassinvader]

Another option is to use the squeeze kernel. I had problems with the ath5k module supplied by lenny but found the 2.6.30 kernel solved them. G'luck

[Chais]

I've tried the Squeeze kernel but still no luck. In fact, I just did an install of Squeeze using the testing CD and now when I click on Network Manager, wireless says "device not managed."

As requested, here's dmesg | ath:

avalith@avzero:~$ dmesg | grep ath
[    6.326367] ath5k 0000:05:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[    6.326377] ath5k 0000:05:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[    6.326391] ath5k 0000:05:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[    6.326449] ath5k 0000:05:00.0: registered as 'phy0'
[    6.506708] ath5k phy0: Atheros AR2425 chip found (MAC: 0xe2, PHY: 0x70)

It's loading and recognizing things, but for some reason won't do anything with scanning.

As for the madwifi drivers, I'll pass unless there's just absolutely no way to get ath5k to work with my card. I'm a bit biased toward kernel modules after b43 and ndiswrapper on my last notebook.

[Chais]

I've done a bit of research and playing around in the last hour or so. While I've still not come to a resolution for this, I've resolved Network Manager's gripe in my previous post about wlan0 not being managed. Apparently it doesn't like /etc/network/interfaces referencing its devices (see the Debian wiki for more information; new user restrictions prevent me from posting a direct link). After commenting out my wlan0 entries in interfaces, I no longer see the device not managed message, but I still can't scan.

I've also fixed the error stating that wlan0 doesn't support scanning (I forgot how; it's been a long day at work between when I fixed it and the time of this post ), only instead it just says "no scan results."

If it helps, here's what lshw -C network shows in Ubuntu 9.10 on an identical machine to the one I'm having issues with:

  *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       product: AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter
       vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0
       logical name: wmaster0
       version: 01
       serial: 00:24:d2:12:76:64
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: bus_master cap_list logical ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath5k ip=192.168.1.101 latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg
       resources: irq:18 memory:d3100000-d310ffff

[reed9]

As for the madwifi drivers, I'll pass unless there's just absolutely no way to get ath5k to work with my card. I'm a bit biased toward kernel modules after b43 and ndiswrapper on my last notebook.

I have the same card on a laptop running Arch. Used to use ath5k, but after an update it broke. I switched to madwifi and it has worked perfectly since. I've considered checking out the state of ath5k, since it's been a couple kernel releases since, but...I'm lazy.

[the bassinvader]

Do you get any errors in /var/log/messages?
What about if you try to set the card using iwconfig, what happens?
What does the output of ifconfig wlan0 give you?

[Chais]

Nov  6 23:41:33 avzero kernel: [   12.568875] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready

That's the only message in /var/log/messages and it repeats itself a few times for the various times I've tried setting things manually with iwconfig. I can set my ESSID, but it won't obtain an access point and I can't set one manually using either an actual access point or "any."

avalith@avzero:~$ sudo iwconfig wlan0 ap 00:1C:10:3D:6C:ED
avalith@avzero:~$ sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
avalith@avzero:~$ sudo iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wmaster0  no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"thor"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 B   
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

I have the same card on a laptop running Arch. Used to use ath5k, but after an update it broke. I switched to madwifi and it has worked perfectly since. I've considered checking out the state of ath5k, since it's been a couple kernel releases since, but...I'm lazy.

ath5k was still running just fine for me after the update to 2.6.31 a few weeks ago for me on Arch, so I don't see why it wouldn't work in Debian. =/

[the bassinvader]

Do you leave your eth0 connection up when you're trying to use wireless?

In the past I've had to disable it after bringing the wireless connection up with ifconifg. Try scanning after doing this