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    DWL-AG530 "no carrier" problem

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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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                                    • A
                                      AceBalboa
                                      last edited by

                                      Hey

                                      I finally got around to following the directions mentioned here: http://www.maroouch.com/ar5215/ar5215.html

                                      I set my RegDomain and now my card works perfectly.  I didn't need to install pfSense v1.2 beta as suggested in an earlier post.

                                      Thanks everyone.
                                      RC

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