ath5k not working with Thinkpad t61, need ath_pci

[Dustin Kirkland ]

The ath5k driver does not appear to work with the IBM/Lenovo atheros chipset used in the popular Thinkpad t60 and t61 lines. The module loads, however, it is not able to establish a wireless connection with any access point.

I'm afraid that the ath_pci driver is going to be needed until such time that the open ath5k driver works with this hardware.

lspci -v says:
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)
 Subsystem: IBM Device 058a
 Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 2296
 Memory at df2f0000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
 Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
 Capabilities: [50] Message Signalled Interrupts: Mask- 64bit- Queue=0/0 Enable+
 Capabilities: [60] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
 Capabilities: [90] MSI-X: Enable- Mask- TabSize=1
 Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting <?>
 Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel <?>
 Kernel driver in use: ath5k_pci
 Kernel modules: ath5k

dmesg says:
[ 24.222770] ath5k_pci 0000:03:00.0: registered as 'phy0'
[ 24.433317] ath5k phy0: Atheros AR5424 chip found (MAC: 0xa3, PHY: 0x61)

:-Dustin

[James Westby (james-w)]

Hi Dustin,

Would you be able to try the kernel from http://kernel.ubuntu.com/pub/next/2.6.27-rc3/
which contains an updated ath5k with lots of fixes?

Thanks,

James

[Dustin Kirkland  (kirkland)]

On Fri, Aug 15, 2008 at 8:46 AM, James Westby <email address hidden> wrote:
> Would you be able to try the kernel from http://kernel.ubuntu.com/pub/next/2.6.27-rc3/
> which contains an updated ath5k with lots of fixes?

Let me just clarify, to make sure I reported this problem correctly...

My current kernel is:
Linux t61p 2.6.26-5-generic #1 SMP Sun Aug 10 20:28:44 UTC 2008 x86_64 GNU/Linux

My current "ath" looking modules are:
$ lsmod |grep ath
ath5k 113408 0
mac80211 251520 1 ath5k
cfg80211 37136 2 ath5k,mac80211
ath_rate_sample 21248 1
ath_pci 108912 0
wlan 232096 6
wlan_tkip,wlan_ccmp,wlan_scan_sta,ath_rate_sample,ath_pci
ath_hal 226032 3 ath_rate_sample,ath_pci
dm_multipath 28432 0
dm_mod 71280 14
dm_multipath,dm_crypt,dm_mirror,dm_log,dm_snapshot

As you can see, I have both ath5k and ath_pci loaded. Is this
supposed to be the case? Or should ath5k work alone?

:-Dustin

[James Westby (james-w)]

Hi Dustin,

That does look odd, and I don't think they should both be loaded, but
I'm no expert.

In your original report you said

> I'm afraid that the ath_pci driver is going to be needed until such time that the open ath5k driver
> works with this hardware.

I was suggesting you try the .27 previews to see if the updated ath5k supported
your hardware. If it does then it may be more incentive to backport it.

Thanks,

James

[Ben Collins (ben-collins)]

I suggest removing the linux-restricted-modules package, or disabling ath in it, to avoid conflict with ath5k