[Airo-linux-general] Cisco aironet troubles

[Christoph T. <ct...@fl...>]

Hi,

I'm having serious troubles with a Cisco Aironet AIR-LMC350 PCMCIA wireless LAN card (that's the model without an internal antenna). When inserted into the cardbus slot, the card is recognized and associates with the nearest Access Point for little more than 10 seconds and then somehow ceases to function. I can ping the AP a few times, then all packets are lost, and I need to restart the PCMCIA subsystem. Likewise, Cisco's acu software reports an excellent connection for a few moments, then it claim that the card is not associated with an access point and reports a low signal.

I have a Sony Vaio PCG-9G1M (a.k.a. FX805) laptop which features a Texas Instruments PCI1420 cardbus bridge. My system is Debian 3.0 with a vanilla 2.4.22 kernel, PCMCIA and Cardbus support built into the kernel. The hardware is okay, I guess, as the Aironet card work fine under WinXP.

I've deactivated PCMCIA kernel support and used the pcmcia-cs package instead, vsions 3.1.33 and 3.2.2, alternatively with the drivers from Cisco's web site (v. 2.0), the original pcmcia-cs drivers, and the Debian patched versions. I've also tried to boot from a Knoppix 3.2 CD (a Debian based live-CD distribution), and with a 2.4.20 vanilla kernel. The result has been the same in each case.

Here's what /proc/net/wireless says after inserting the card:

Inter-| sta-|   Quality        |   Discarded packets               | Missed
 face | tus | link level noise |  nwid  crypt   frag  retry   misc | beacon
  eth1: 003f   13.  240.  166.       0      0      0      0      3        0
 wifi0: 003f   13.  240.  166.       0      0      0      0      3        0

And this is the situation some moments later:

Inter-| sta-|   Quality        |   Discarded packets               | Missed
 face | tus | link level noise |  nwid  crypt   frag  retry   misc | beacon
  eth1: 000f   11.  240.  166.       0      0      0      0    155        1
 wifi0: 000f   11.  240.  166.       0      0      0      0    155        1

Cisco's graphical acu tool reports those "misc" packets as "PLPC CRC Errors". I also get "PLCP Format Errors" and a lot of "Overrun Errors" and/or "Mac CRC Errors".

Another interesting field is the status field: What do 003f and 000f mean? AFAIK these codes are hardware-dependent. Does anyone know what they tell about the Aironet card?

Here's what the logs say after inserting the card:

/var/log/debug:

Aug 28 23:12:04 asahi kernel: airo: Doing fast bap_reads

What are fast bap_reads, and are they a bad sign?

/var/log/daemon:

Aug 28 23:12:04 asahi cardmgr[2553]: socket 0: 350 Series Wireless LAN Adapter
Aug 28 23:12:04 asahi cardmgr[2553]: executing: 'modprobe airo_cs'
Aug 28 23:12:04 asahi cardmgr[2553]: executing: './network start eth1'
Aug 28 23:12:04 asahi cardmgr[2553]: + usage: /sbin/cardctl command [socket #]
Aug 28 23:12:04 asahi cardmgr[2553]: +     or /sbin/cardctl [-c configpath] [-f scheme] [-s stab] scheme [name]
Aug 28 23:12:04 asahi cardmgr[2553]: +     commands: status config ident suspend resume reset eject insert
Aug 28 23:12:04 asahi dhclient-2.2.x: wifi0: unknown hardware address type 801
Aug 28 23:12:05 asahi last message repeated 2 times
Aug 28 23:12:05 asahi dhclient-2.2.x: DHCPREQUEST on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
Aug 28 23:12:05 asahi dhclient-2.2.x: DHCPACK from 192.168.7.9
Aug 28 23:12:05 asahi dhclient-2.2.x: bound to 192.168.7.161 -- renewal in 129600 seconds.
Aug 28 23:12:06 asahi dhclient-2.2.x: wifi0: unknown hardware address type 801
Aug 28 23:12:06 asahi dhclient-2.2.x: DHCPREQUEST on eth1 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
Aug 28 23:12:06 asahi dhclient-2.2.x: DHCPACK from 192.168.7.9
Aug 28 23:12:06 asahi dhclient-2.2.x: bound to 192.168.7.161 -- renewal in 129600 seconds.

I don't know what cardmgr complains about. Apparently it is called with wrong options - but the /etc/pcmcia/network script is executed nonetheless, and the DHCPREQUEST succeeds.

What is the wifi0 interface for, and what does "unknown hardware address type 801 mean"?

/var/log/messages:

Aug 28 23:12:04 asahi kernel: airo:  Probing for PCI adapters
Aug 28 23:12:04 asahi kernel: airo:  Finished probing for PCI adapters
Aug 28 23:12:04 asahi kernel: airo: MAC enabled eth1 0:d:65:5b:68:a
Aug 28 23:12:04 asahi kernel: eth1: index 0x05: Vcc 5.0, Vpp 5.0, irq 3, io 0x0100-0x013f
Aug 28 23:12:04 asahi /etc/hotplug/net.agent: invoke ifup eth1
Aug 28 23:12:04 asahi /etc/hotplug/net.agent: invoke ifup wifi0

The Debian Howto's say that cardbus cards are managed by hotplug. ifup eth1 and ifup wifi0 do nothing, though, as these interfaces are not configured in /etc/network/interfaces. I've added an entry to that file for eth1 and de-configured /etc/pcmcia/network.opts and wireless.opts once, but that didn't help either.

The whole thing is becoming frustrating, and I'm back to using a cheap prism2 card now, although I'd bought the Aironet for its supposedly great features and Linux support. Apparently it's working fine for everyone else but me.

I'd appreciate any hints on what to try next.