Hostap mode

wallabybob

What particular variant of the Atheros WiFi chipset is in your card? (A starting point would be to provide the output of the pfSense shell command pciconf -l )

It's an Atheros AR9220.

What reports the card as AR9220? the startup?

The output of the pfSense shell command pciconf -l could be helpful to identify the particular revision or variant of the "AR9220", not that I know that will be significant.

stephenw10

@torontob:

The firmware upgrade image is about 65MB and it's uploaded on 21st of the month while main image is from 19th. I am assuming there is a significant difference?!

Those images are all old now. The snapshot build server is back up and running you should use one of the images from there or manually update. Once you are on one of those images it will update from there.

You may simply be able to select the dev snaphots as your update URL in System: Firmware: Settings: otherwise look here:
http://snapshots.pfsense.org/

@torontob:

It's an Atheros AR9220.

This is interesting. As I understood it this card shouldn't work at all. It's supported by the new Atheros drivers but they are only in 9(head). Have they been backported? Or perhaps that's only 'n' support?

Steve

torontob

You may simply be able to select the dev snaphots as your update URL in System: Firmware: Settings: otherwise look here:
http://snapshots.pfsense.org/

I don't see any NANOBSD version here. Should I still update the URL to that? Of course I can't slap the full version onto Alix board.

This is interesting. As I understood it this card shouldn't work at all. It's supported by the new Atheros drivers but they are only in 9(head). Have they been backported? Or perhaps that's only 'n' support?

Well, it shows up all right and detected well but it doesn't work from there on. I bought this in hopes to have it working at least in "n" version. Are there any development going on for 9(head)?

Is there anything you can advise for me to test to see why the card is no supported or not working?

Thanks

stephenw10

There are full NanoBSD images:
http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD_RELENG_8_3/i386/pfSense_HEAD/nanobsd/?C=M;O=D

and NanoBSD update files:
http://snapshots.pfsense.org/FreeBSD_RELENG_8_3/i386/pfSense_HEAD/updates/?C=M;O=D

Steve

torontob

Thanks stephenw10. But I am assuming that it won't help me if it's not FreeBSD 9 with this chip?

stephenw10

That's what I thought except that it's clearly working for you to some degree so either my earlier recollection was incorrect or the driver has since been backported.

Steve

torontob

This shows supported under HAL_4 in list of FreeBSD 8.

A bug is filed and fixed for this device. Probably same should be done for pfSense?

http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-bugs/2011-August/045242.html

Also, confirmed fix posted here:
http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-wireless/2011-September/000690.html

Thanks

stephenw10

Both of those are quite old, before 8.3 was branched from 8-stable. I would expect that code to be in already. However the first link is a kernel panic in 9beta running on Atheros CPU (MIPS?), not relevant here I think. The second link references -head which is also 9.
Where are you seeing this listed as supported by 8?

Steve

torontob

steve, you are right. Those two might be old.

Though here is the 8.1 supported device list:
http://www.freebsd.org/releases/8.1R/hardware.html#SUPPORT

Shows all Atheros supported except for a specific one which is not AR9220.

What is the deep down dirty way that I can check in SSH to see if it's really supported or not?
Results of: pciconf -l
ath0@pci0:0:12:0: class=0x028000 card=0x2096168c chip=0x0029168c rev=0x01 hdr=0x00

Using the latest developmental image, in Access mode (b/g), I can see "up" but "n" shows "no carrier". Despite showing up in b and g mode, I can't see the SSID though when I search for it. Could it be due to my 5Mhz antennas?

Thanks

stephenw10

The 8.1 HCL was probably correct when it was written. If you look at the man page it actually only supports AR5XXX chipsets.
The fact that it has attached to the ath driver (you have an ath0 device) shows that it is at least partly supported. Though reading this thread shows a similar level of support in 2.0.

The 5MHz antenna would make it practically useless at 2.4MHz but I would still expect to be able to 'see' it if you're very close, antennas are not perfect.

Steve