Cannot set modes other than 'Managed' on Atheros based wifi card

[Jason Gerard DeRose]

Just switched to Edgy, and running my Atheros based PCI wifi card as an access point no longer works (it works under Dapper).

The problem in particular seems to be that switching to any mode other than 'Managed' results in an error. for example:

sudo iwconfig ath0 mode Master
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
    SET failed on device ath0 ; Invalid argument.

here is the relevant bit from lspci:

00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
        Subsystem: D-Link System Inc DWL-G520 Wireless PCI Adapter
        Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 193
        Memory at e4100000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        Capabilities: <access denied>

[Snark (julien-puydt)]

I can confirm this with a netgear card.

I did have some problems when upgrading :
(1) linux-restricted-modules-2.6.17-10-generic couldn't load the module because of unresolved symbol issues ;
(2) linux-restricted-modules-2.6.17-10-386 can load the module but cannot set mode to non-managed.

So I'm still using 2.6.15(-27).

Hope those informations help.

[Snark (julien-puydt)]

(1) is perhaps related to bug #60938 ; I ran "depmod -a" and it fixed the issue.

Now both linux-restricted-modules-2.6.17-10-generic and linux-restricted-modules-2.6.17-10-386 have the only-managed problem.

[Snark (julien-puydt)]

The upgrade to 2.6.17-10.29 didn't solve that : only managed is available.

[jahhan (linuxguru72)]

I have experienced the same issue of not being able to change to any other mode than Managed with my Atheros card. I get the same error as above:
sudo iwconfig ath0 mode Master
 Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
     SET failed on device ath0 ; Invalid argument

It worked perfectly in Dapper and the config I have is identical in Edgy as I pasted the contents of the old config to the new.

This is on a clean install of Edgy using linux-restricted-modules-2.6.17-10-generic

[R. Pereira Braga (rpereira)]

I have the same error on a clean install.

lspci:
01:06.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)

iwconfig:
ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"VE"
          Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power:18 dBm Sensitivity=0/3
          Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/94 Signal level=-95 dBm Noise level=-95 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

rpereira@joaopaulo2:~$ sudo iwconfig ath0 mode master
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
    SET failed on device ath0 ; Invalid argument.
rpereira@joaopaulo2:~$ sudo iwconfig ath0 mode Master
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
    SET failed on device ath0 ; Invalid argument.

I have D-Link DWL520 Rev. B3.

[Snark (julien-puydt)]

Eh, I have wonderful news : I got a wifi router, which meant I could use 'managed'.

And with managed, I get Rx invalid nwid by the hundred of thousands!

With 2.6.15-27-k7 in mode managed, I have only one such at the end of the day!

[GianPietro (gsaggior)]

I got the same issue with an Allied Telesyn PCMCIA card:

sudo lspci -v

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
Subsystem: Allied Telesyn International Unknown device 1204
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 168, IRQ 11
Memory at f4000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2

The workaround is available with the Mad Wifi tools installed :

sudo apt-get install madwifi-tools

ifconfig ath0 down
wlanconfig ath0 destroy
wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode [sta|adhoc|ap|monitor|wds|ahdemo]

Source of the workaround:

http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/ChangingMode

Hope this helps.

[Malte Cornils (malte)]

Bug #66481 might be a duplicate. We still have this problem on feisty's 2.6.20 kernel.

[Malte Cornils (malte)]

The upstream issue about this seems to be: http://madwifi.org/ticket/572

[Marco Carvalho (marco-carvalho)]

the problem of changing mode in past kernels is becouse madwifi drivers changed the way to configure the device.

In past vesions you do:

iwconfig ath0 mode xxxxx

but now you have to configure this way (http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/AdHocInterface):

wlanconfig ath0 destroy
wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode adhoc

This worked for me, but the signal quality slugish my network. The init.d scripts aren't doing they job right. The drivers chnged the way to configure it and init.d script are the same of old version. The bad signal problem is a driver ensue.

[Timo Aaltonen (tjaalton)]

Please try with Hardy alpha6 if the issue is fixed.

[Mackenzie Morgan (maco.m)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don't hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to "New". Thanks again!

[Mathias Menzer (mfm)]

May this be the relating issue in the MadWifi Bug Tracker: http://madwifi.org/ticket/1269

[Dmitry Katsubo (dma-k)]

I have found out that team is not yet working on Access Point modeL http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath5k#notworkingyet
The relative issue: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=237757