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    DWL-AG530 "no carrier" problem

    Scheduled Pinned Locked Moved Wireless
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    • A
      AceBalboa
      last edited by

      Hey

      I'm running pfSense 1.2-RELEASE.  I followed the WIFI tutorial here: http://doc.pfsense.org/smiller/Add_WiFi_Interface.htm

      Everything seemed to go well … I could see and assign the wireless card, enable it, and enable DHCP ... but I don't see it when I scan for wireless networks from a laptop.  I noticed, under the "Status:Interfaces", that it says "Status no carrier" (on my system) instead of "Status associated" (as shown in the tutorial).

      I've tried an assortment of different settings under "Interfaces:OPTI1" and I keep getting "Status no carrier".

      I booted up with the PCLinuxOS CD to test the wireless card works and was able to connect to a wireless router, so I know it works.

      What do I need to do to fix the status?

      Thanks,
      RC

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      • GruensFroeschliG
        GruensFroeschli
        last edited by

        I suspect you've set in the config the mode to "Infrastructure" instead of "Access Point"

        We do what we must, because we can.

        Asking questions the smart way: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

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        • A
          AceBalboa
          last edited by

          Hey

          I've tried all three modes (Infrastructure, Ad-Hoc & Access Point) and it always says "no carrier" under "Status:Interfaces".  I've also tried all the different standards (802.11a, 802.11b, 802.11g & 802.11a 11g) and always "no carrier" under "Status:Interfaces".

          RC

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          • GruensFroeschliG
            GruensFroeschli
            last edited by

            First you have to know what your goal is.
            After that configure it properly.

            Maybe we could help you if you tell us what you're trying to achieve.

            We do what we must, because we can.

            Asking questions the smart way: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

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            • A
              AceBalboa
              last edited by

              I'd like to use pfSense as a wireless access point for mobile devices in my home (instead of using a Wireless Router).

              RC

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              • GruensFroeschliG
                GruensFroeschli
                last edited by

                ok.
                Set the mode to "Access Point".
                Select a Mode (a,b,g) and a Channel you know your card and your client supports.
                Also be sure you select a channel which is allowed in your country.
                The driver might block it if you select a channel you cannot use where you are.

                At first dont set any security features.

                First thing you have to get going is that you see the SSID from a client.

                We do what we must, because we can.

                Asking questions the smart way: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

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                • A
                  AceBalboa
                  last edited by

                  Hey

                  I've picked 'Access Point' and '802.11g'.  I picked channel 6, which is the channel that my D-Link Router is using (so I assume it's allowed here).  But when I SSH to my pfSense box and run "ifconfig ath0", it shows "ssid TEST channel 10".  So I typed "ifconfig ath0 channel 6", but "ifconfig ath0" still shows "ssid TEST channel 10".

                  RC

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                  • GruensFroeschliG
                    GruensFroeschli
                    last edited by

                    Could you show a screenshot of the config page of your WLAN?
                    Are you certain that you enabled the interface?

                    We do what we must, because we can.

                    Asking questions the smart way: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

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                    • A
                      AceBalboa
                      last edited by

                      Is this the page you're looking for?

                      http://members.shaw.ca/acebalboa/Interfaces_Optional1.jpg

                      RC

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                      • GruensFroeschliG
                        GruensFroeschli
                        last edited by

                        yes. Thank you.

                        The config looks good.
                        It should just work like this.

                        If that doesnt work, i'm out of ideas…

                        It might be worth a try to unassign the interface (interfaces --> assign),
                        restart,
                        and reassign the interface.

                        We do what we must, because we can.

                        Asking questions the smart way: http://www.catb.org/esr/faqs/smart-questions.html

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                        • A
                          AceBalboa
                          last edited by

                          Tried un-assigning and re-assigning.  Didn't work.

                          It's strange because I can change every setting except the channel and status.  And I don't get any error messages.

                          RC

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                          • A
                            AceBalboa
                            last edited by

                            Hey

                            I finally got my wireless card working as an access point.  I tried many things before stumbling over success.

                            First, I tried booting up with the FreeSBIE-2.0.1 (Live CD) to see if it could get my wireless card working … it could not (although PCLinuxOS could).

                            Next, I moved the card to a different computer ... it still didn't work.

                            Then, I moved the wireless card back to the first computer.  I placed the card in the 3rd slot (instead of the 1st slot) this time, re-installed pfSense, and the wireless card worked.

                            So it appears that moving the wireless card to a different slot seemed to work.  I'm sure a clean install didn't hurt!

                            RC

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                            • A
                              AceBalboa
                              last edited by

                              Okay,

                              I think the clean install had more to do with my earlier success then the different PCI slot.  After installing a few packages (snort, squid, phpSysInfo, nmap & bandwidthd) and rebooting, my wireless card stopped working.  Same problem as before.

                              RC

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                              • A
                                AceBalboa
                                last edited by

                                Un-installed the 5 packages (snort, squid, phpSysInfo, nmap & bandwidthd) then rebooted and my wireless card works again.

                                I'll (eventually) re-install them one at the time (and reboot between each) to figure out which package causes the problem.

                                RC

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                                • C
                                  cmb
                                  last edited by

                                  @AceBalboa:

                                  Un-installed the 5 packages (snort, squid, phpSysInfo, nmap & bandwidthd) then rebooted and my wireless card works again.

                                  I'll (eventually) re-install them one at the time (and reboot between each) to figure out which package causes the problem.

                                  Let us know, that's odd. Maybe promiscuous mode messes with hostap, though I haven't heard of that being an issue. If that's the case, either snort or bandwidthd could be the culprit.

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                                  • A
                                    AceBalboa
                                    last edited by

                                    I've re-built my firewall a dozen times since my last post … seems like there's some kind of bug around renaming the Optional Interface Configuration Description (from 'OPT1' to anything else ... I tried 'WLAN'). Anyways ... I've re-installed from scratch, again, and didn't rename OPT1, and now I can't get my ATH WIFI card to work in any mode except for Ad-Hoc.  Before re-installing, I moved my ATH card up one slot and replace a pair of D-Link 10/100 NICs with a dual-head Compaq NIC.

                                    RC

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                                    • A
                                      AceBalboa
                                      last edited by

                                      I noticed, on the monitor plugged into my pfSense firewall, that it says: "ath0: Unable to reset hardware; hal status 0" (several times … probably once for every time I tried to bring my wireless card up).  I've tried rebooting and it didn't go away.  So I did a little googling and found several 'ath' man pages (such as http://www.ipnom.com/FreeBSD-Man-Pages/ath.4.html) that say:

                                      ath%d: unable to reset hardware; hal status %u  The Atheros Hardware Access Layer was unable to reset the hardware as requested.  The status code is explained in the HAL include file sys/contrib/dev/ath/ah.h.  This should not happen.

                                      … this shouldn't happen?  Well, it is happening!  I'm not sure where the ah.h file is located in pfSense, so I googled it and found a copy of it on kernel.org (http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/mcgrof/openhal-2006-08-03/ah.h) ... I know it's Linux, not BSD, but I'm assuming/hoping the error codes are the same.  Looks like "Hal status 0' means "No error".

                                      So I'm getting an error that I shouldn't get that's telling me there's no error?  Anyone have any idea what's going on here?

                                      Thx,
                                      RC

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                                      • D
                                        deepdish
                                        last edited by

                                        @AceBalboa:

                                        I noticed, on the monitor plugged into my pfSense firewall, that it says: "ath0: Unable to reset hardware; hal status 0" (several times … probably once for every time I tried to bring my wireless card up).  I've tried rebooting and it didn't go away.  So I did a little googling and found several 'ath' man pages (such as http://www.ipnom.com/FreeBSD-Man-Pages/ath.4.html) that say:

                                        ath%d: unable to reset hardware; hal status %u  The Atheros Hardware Access Layer was unable to reset the hardware as requested.  The status code is explained in the HAL include file sys/contrib/dev/ath/ah.h.  This should not happen.

                                        … this shouldn't happen?  Well, it is happening!  I'm not sure where the ah.h file is located in pfSense, so I googled it and found a copy of it on kernel.org (http://kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/mcgrof/openhal-2006-08-03/ah.h) ... I know it's Linux, not BSD, but I'm assuming/hoping the error codes are the same.  Looks like "Hal status 0' means "No error".

                                        So I'm getting an error that I shouldn't get that's telling me there's no error?  Anyone have any idea what's going on here?

                                        Thx,
                                        RC

                                        Look into this web-site as it is describing the same problem I had a few months ago:
                                        http://www.maroouch.com/index.php/D-Link_AG530_/_%27_ath0:unable_to_reset_hardware%3B_hal_status_0%27_error

                                        Once thats done, upgrade your pfsense to v1.2 beta, the one that is using the FreeBSD 6.3 kernel. You can find the link here:
                                        http://cvs.pfsense.org/~sullrich/testing_images/6/FreeBSD_RELENG_6_3/pfSense_RELENG_1_2/

                                        Afterwards, your wireless should be working fine. Even though you will see a lot of in/out errors they can be safely ignored as it does not seem to be performance impacting.

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                                        • A
                                          AceBalboa
                                          last edited by

                                          Hey

                                          Looks like you might be right.  I did a little searching on Google and found a web page (Gentoo Wiki) the suggests I run "sysctl dev.wifi0.regdomain".  This command returned "dev.wifi0.regdomain = 18" … which they say means unknown regdomain.  They say I can fix it by running "ath_info -w

                                          <address>regdomain <regdomain></regdomain>", but ath_info doesn't appear to be included in pfSense.  I haven't had much time to work on this issue lately, but I'll post the results once I find time.

                                          Thanks,
                                          RC</address>

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                                          • J
                                            jmontes4
                                            last edited by

                                            I had this exact problem with this card, changing the country worked for me.

                                            http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,1407.0.html

                                            Good luck and let us know how it all works out.

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