Bug 702722

Proposing we add this to common bugs for f15. 

We have seen a number of folks in #fedora hitting this issue, and the workaround in the first comment ('options ath9k nohwcrypt=1') seems to work around the issue for them.

we could, I would suggest that the file be added to F15, or just the settings in the kernel changed, whatever works best.

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Adding 'options ath9k nohwcrypt=1' to /etc/modprobe.d/ath9.conf does not fix this for my system.  After a few minutes, my packet loss rate increases to near 50%, with ping times often as long as 15 seconds.  This is in an area I use frequently, with good reception, and 0% packet loss on the same system booted to Windows.

After upgrading to FC15, this Acer Aspire 5742-6811 / PEW71 system is totally unusable over WiFi, presumably due to the Atheros NIC.

Jesse,
Sorry I made a mistake in the bug report, if you look here: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Bugs/Common#Poor_transfer_speeds_with_Atheros-based_wireless_chipsets its a file called ath9k.conf, I missed the k in my report, I apologize for this.

you can call the file whatever you want, so long as it ends in .conf ; the system cycles through any and all files in /etc/modprobe.d that end in .conf . So if you used ath9.conf it should still have worked.



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Fedora Bugzappers volunteer triage team
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Thanks so much for your quick response, Aaron.  I renamed
/etc/modprobe.d/ath9.conf to /etc/modprobe.d/ath9k.conf, and restarted the
system.  Unfortunately, within a few minutes, network access again slowed to a
crawl and was losing 75% of the packets when trying to ping my wireless router.
 I have triple-checked the contents of the file.

Please let me know if you have additional suggestions.

Jesse,
I`m sorry but I cant think of any other alternatives, other than maybe a re-download of the ISO and a re-install, those sometimes help, what wireless driver are you using? the AR5B97? or something else?

wireless chipset* not driver

Not sure of the chipset, but the model is detected by F15 as AR9287.

Thoughts on increasing the severity of this bug?  My laptop is now a doorstop under F15, since I don't have convenient access to a wired network.  So many packets are dropped that most network transactions fail.  I have to boot to Windows on my laptop to use it until a fix for this is rolled out.

I don't know if this is related, but I have an Acer Aspire One with the Atheros AR5001 chipset (168c 001c), and I've been experiencing very bad connection and transfer under F15 (kernel 2.6.38.7-30). Ping showed around 75% packet loss when I did manage to get a connection, and after having made several more attempts and trying to change some settings, I can't connect to my AP at all (WPA2 PSK, hidden SSID)

I've tried a number of suggestions to fix the issue:
 - unloading and reloading the ath5k kernel module
 - Adding pcie_apsm=off to the kernel options
 - creating /etc/modprobe.d/ath5k.conf containing "options ath5k nohwcrypt=1", as per this thread
but all to no avail!

It could be this bug, fixed upstream:
https://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31452

I've noted some intermittent oddness on my F15 laptop with ath9k, but its always come with poor signal quality at the same time, so I can't be sure.  That patch should apply to the 2.6.35 kernel in F15 without much issue, if someone wants to try it out and confirm or refute this as the fix.

I'm maintaining compat wireless packages, to allow to run current upstream wireless drivers on fedora: http://people.redhat.com/sgruszka/compact_wireless.html .

Hi Stanislaw,

Installed the upstream wireless drivers as suggested - appears to have fixed the issue - I seem have a reliable connection with low ping times again :) Will post any further issues as I test over the next couple of days. Very grateful for your suggestion!

Regards
Paul W

I'm having the same problem.

My wife's laptop and my laptop are almost identical.  Same brand and model, identical lspci output.  I am running F14, she is running F15.  My Atheros AR9287 WiFi works very well under F14, hers works terribly under F15.

I have tried the hwcrypto workaround, doesn't make any difference.

(In reply to comment #15)
> I'm maintaining compat wireless packages, to allow to run current upstream
> wireless drivers on fedora:
> http://people.redhat.com/sgruszka/compact_wireless.html .

Hi Stanislaw,

I'd love to try out the compat_wireless, but it seems the F15 package dirs are empty, thus yum install fails.  (Note, this bug is lodged against F15, not F14).  (And as a minor point, I think your page should be called "compat_wireless.html", not "compact_wireless.html".

Thank you for helping us with compat_wireless RPMs!

(In reply to comment #18)
> I'd love to try out the compat_wireless, but it seems the F15 package dirs are
> empty, thus yum install fails.  (Note, this bug is lodged against F15, not
> F14).  
Yes, F-15 kernel is 2.6.40 which is renamed 3.0, what is the latest stable compat-wireless release, hence there is no sense to have these compact packages. 

I just updated compat-wireless-next, you might try that.

(And as a minor point, I think your page should be called
> "compat_wireless.html", not "compact_wireless.html".
Thanks. Currently compact_wireless.html is a link to compat_wireless.html.

(In reply to comment #19)
>
> Yes, F-15 kernel is 2.6.40 which is renamed 3.0, what is the latest stable
> compat-wireless release, hence there is no sense to have these compact
> packages. 
> 
> I just updated compat-wireless-next, you might try that.

I am trying compat-wireless-next, so far I think it's a definite improvement.  Too early to tell whether it's a good fix though, so I'll keep using it for a few days.

My wife's been trying it out.  For very light duties, it works ok, but for anything involving more than a few seconds of activity (for example, loading GMail), performance becomes terrible.  There is nothing significant in the system log.

What should I do next?

Can you suggest anything I can do to get diagnostic information that will help narrow down where the problem is?

(In reply to comment #21)
> My wife's been trying it out.

Oh, I should say that "it" is compat-wireless-next.

My /etc/depmod.d/dist.conf is thus:

---- 8< ---------------
#
# depmod.conf
#

# override default search ordering for kmod packaging
search extra updates built-in weak-updates
---- 8< ---------------

And just to make sure I'm loading the right module:

# ifconfig wlan0 down
# rmmod ath9k
# modprobe -n -v ath9k
insmod /lib/modules/2.6.40.6-0.fc15.x86_64/updates/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/ath9k.ko nohwcrypt=1
# rpm -q -f /lib/modules/2.6.40.6-0.fc15.x86_64/updates/drivers/net/wireless/ath/ath9k/ath9k.ko
kmod-compat-wireless-next-2011_10_10-0.fc15.1.x86_64

> Can you suggest anything I can do to get diagnostic information that will help
> narrow down where the problem is?

Since this is upstream driver problem you can report it to Atheros/Qualcomm folks (See ATH9K entry here: http://linuxwireless.org/en/developers/maintainers). If they'll ignore your request, let me know, I'll try to look at that problem more closely.

Also you can always try to solve bug by yourself if this is regression, using bisection. It can be done by compiling kernel sources using git-bisect or by compiling compat-wireless tarballs like described here: 
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=716988#c14

(In reply to comment #19)
> (In reply to comment #18)
> > I'd love to try out the compat_wireless, but it seems the F15 package dirs are
> > empty, thus yum install fails.  (Note, this bug is lodged against F15, not
> > F14).  
> Yes, F-15 kernel is 2.6.40 which is renamed 3.0, what is the latest stable
> compat-wireless release, hence there is no sense to have these compact
> packages. 
> 
> I just updated compat-wireless-next, you might try that.

Hello Stanislaw,

Your F15 packages have disappeared, are you able to make them reappear?

Thanks,

Mitch.
> 
> (And as a minor point, I think your page should be called
> > "compat_wireless.html", not "compact_wireless.html".
> Thanks. Currently compact_wireless.html is a link to compat_wireless.html.

compat-wireless-next seems to be there:

http://people.redhat.com/sgruszka/compat-wireless-next/F-15/

> [DIR] Parent Directory                 -
> [TXT] VERSION-compat-wireless-2011-11-22      28-Nov-2011 05:27       0
> [TXT] VERSION-kernel-2.6.41.1-1.fc15  28-Nov-2011 05:27       0
> [ ]   kmod-compat-wireless-next-2011_11_22-0.fc15.1.i686.rpm  28-Nov-2011 05:23       25M     RPM package file
> [ ]   kmod-compat-wireless-next-2011_11_22-0.fc15.1.x86_64.rpm        28-Nov-2011 05:27       27M     RPM package file
> [ ]   kmod-debug-compat-wireless-next-2011_11_22-0.fc15.1.i686.rpm    28-Nov-2011 05:35       26M     RPM package file
> [ ]   kmod-debug-compat-wireless-next-2011_11_22-0.fc15.1.x86_64.rpm  28-Nov-2011 05:32       28M     RPM package file
> [DIR] repodata/

As told before compat-wireless are not provided as the same wireless bits are already in shipped fedora kernel.

I believe this bug is fixed.