AR5B91 seen as AR928X, wireless fails after minutes

[mafkees]

Hi,

I'm pretty new to the drivers.
I'm having problems with the current installed drivers for my Atheros AR5B91 Wireless Network Adapter.

Specs
Laptop:

Acer Aspire 5536-644G50Mn 
WLAN: Acer Nplify(TM) 802.11b/g/Draft-N
MS Windows Vista says: Atheros AR5B91 Wireless Network Adapter.

uname shows:

Kernel name: Linux 
Kernel release: 2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop 
Kernel version: #1 SMP PREEMPT 2009-10-26 15:49:03 +0100 
Machine, processor, hardware platform: x86_64 
Operating System: GNU/Linux

/sbin/lspci -vnn shows:

06:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) [168c:002a] (rev 01) 
	Subsystem: Lite-On Communications Inc Device [11ad:6600] 
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17 
	Memory at f0400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K] 
	Capabilities: <access denied> 
	Kernel driver in use: ath9k

lsmod shows:

Module	Size		Used by 
ath9k		279444	0 
mac80211	257312 	1 ath9k 
ath			11048 	1 ath9k 
cfg80211		123264	3 ath9k,mac80211,ath

I had Ubuntu 9.10 installed...
The Wi-Fi worked fine for several minutes.
But then the connection with the network was lost and the NetworkManager tried to reconnect.
Unfortunatly the NetworkManager failed completly and couldn't see any wireless networks anymore.

This is what's shown after the failure:
/sbin/lspci -vnn shows:

06:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) [168c:002a] (rev ff) (prog-if ff) 
	!!! Unknown header type 7f 
	Kernel driver in use: ath9k

/var/log/NetworkManager shows:

Dec 28 19:02:41 linux-7pzr NetworkManager: <info>  Config: set interface ap_scan to 1 
Dec 28 19:02:41 linux-7pzr NetworkManager: <info>  (wlan0): supplicant connection state:  disconnected -> scanning 
Dec 28 19:02:56 linux-7pzr NetworkManager: <info>  wlan0: link timed out. 
Dec 28 19:03:06 linux-7pzr NetworkManager: <info>  Activation (wlan0/wireless): association took too long, failing activation. 
Dec 28 19:03:06 linux-7pzr NetworkManager: <info>  (wlan0): device state change: 5 -> 9 (reason 11) 
Dec 28 19:03:06 linux-7pzr NetworkManager: <info>  Activation (wlan0) failed for access point (dlink) 
Dec 28 19:03:06 linux-7pzr NetworkManager: <info>  Marking connection 'Auto dlink' invalid. 
Dec 28 19:03:06 linux-7pzr NetworkManager: <info>  Activation (wlan0) failed. 
Dec 28 19:03:06 linux-7pzr NetworkManager: <info>  (wlan0): device state change: 9 -> 3 (reason 0) 
Dec 28 19:03:06 linux-7pzr NetworkManager: <info>  (wlan0): deactivating device (reason: 0).

I tried wicd instead of NetworkManager but kept the same problem.

Then I installed Fedora 12 and now OpenSuse 11.2 but the problem remains.

Seems to me I have the right driver (ath9k is good what i learned) but wrong configured assuming the "AR928X" output.

Anyone an idea what to do?

Thanks,
Martijn

[javiercarron]

Hi!
I'm having the same exactly problem on Opensuse 11.2.
Did you find any solution?

Thanks!

Javier

[reed9]

First thing to try is installing the latest compat-wireless package and see if updated drivers help.

Download - Linux Wireless

In Ubuntu, they backport more recent drivers. Not sure whether they track the latest compat-wirelss but you can get newer drivers with

sudo apt-get install linux-modules-backports-karmic

No idea if OpenSuse has something similar, so you may be stuck building it yourself.

[mafkees]

Nope.

I'm now using Backtrack 4 wich is based on Ubuntu 8.10.
That means I also use an older kernel.

It's actualy quit a bad solution.

Martijn