Re: NetBSD and ASUS's EeeBox

[Anders Lindgren <ali%df.lth.se@localhost>]

On Fri, 5 Sep 2008, Joel CARNAT wrote:

> Wireless works since you patch your source tree with the patch that is
> indicated on the Eee support status page.

No luck for me there.

> I keep a copy of my 4.99.72 kernel here :

I tried your kernel -- I get the exact same failure as with 4.99.72 
GENERIC+atheee.patch from 20080816, and a GENERIC+atheee.patch kernel I 
built tonight just for reference:

- if WEP encryption is enabled in the AP, wiconfig ath0 -D finds nothing 
unless I first set both ssid and nwkey on the interface in advance. After
ssid+nwkey are set, it does find the AP -- but not always on the first 
run.

- setting the nwkey with ifconfig produces the error(?) "setting keyix 0 
w/o power".

- If I turn off WEP, wiconfig ath0 -D immediately finds the AP.

- dhclient has problems acquiring an IP address, and must sometimes be 
run 2-3 times before succeeding.

- after the network is finally up, a constant 32-35% packet loss is 
experienced, seemingly in bursts. This is app. 4m from the AP, and the old 
laptop has 0% packetloss everywhere in the house.

- while any kind of traffic is passing over the interface (also during 
DHCPDISCOVER), spurious

  "ath0: device timeout (txq 1, txintrperiod N)" (N=1..5)

messages are produced. Setting txintrperiod to 1 on boot in sysctl.conf 
seems to improve the rate at which it happens, sometimes.

I've tried disabling ACPI on boot (remembering old posts about interrupt 
routing problems), but I didn't notice any difference apart from 
"poweroff" failing to actually power off the computer. It just halts and 
prompts for a keypress to reboot instead.

Very weird that your kernel works on your eee900 but not mine. I will test 
these kernels on other networks this weekend to rule out incompatibility 
with this particular old DLink900AP+ (802.11b AP), but it looks a lot more 
like an interrupt problem given the frequent TX queue device timeouts.

Grateful for clues,
ali:)