Groups | Search | Server Info | Keyboard shortcuts | Login | Register [http] [https] [nntp] [nntps]

Groups > linux.debian.kernel > #89563 > unrolled thread

Fwd: Re: Bug#1091799: installation-reports: Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 detected, wifi networks seen but no network connection

Back to article view | Back to linux.debian.kernel

This discussion starts older than the indexed window; earlier articles aren't shown. The article labeled Started by below is the oldest one visible, not the original post.

Contents

  Fwd: Re: Bug#1091799: installation-reports: Qualcomm Atheros AR9485  detected, wifi networks seen but no network connection magnus@autistici.org - 2025-10-12 23:10 +0200
    Re: Bug#1091799: installation-reports: Qualcomm Atheros AR9485  detected, wifi networks seen but no network connection magnus@autistici.org - 2025-10-14 02:10 +0200

#89563 — Fwd: Re: Bug#1091799: installation-reports: Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 detected, wifi networks seen but no network connection

Hi Debian Linux kernel maintainers,

As the problem described in this bug is present not only in the
installer but also in the installed system (one time it worked)
I'm asking you for help to debug it: according to Cyril it's

    "most likely a problem with the Linux kernel modules and/or firmware"
    https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1091799#10

I believe that the Linux kernel module is this one:
https://wiki.debian.org/ath9k
According to the firmware-summary attached to my installation
report I suppose that the firmware package is the following:
firmware-atheros

Using the 12.8.0 Netinst I tried to install on 2024-12-05 experiencing
the problem described in the Subject, with the two different mobile
phones. You can find the syslog of the installation attached to the
bug log. Months later instead the wifi network did successful connect,
with an access point of an Internet café and both mobile phones.

On 2025-10-09 I tried to upgrade Bookworm and full-upgrade to Trixie.
But unfortunately there was again the same problem: the wifi network
of my mobile phone was seen but no successful network connection. I
completed both upgrades using my AR9271 USB wifi adapter (which is
using free firmware compiled from source) and my mobile phone.

Feel free to ask me for logs, command outputs, etc! Thank you in
advance!

Kind regards, Magnus


-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: Bug#1091799: installation-reports: Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 
detected, wifi networks seen but no network connection
Date: 2025-10-10 19:42
 From: magnus@autistici.org
To: Pascal Hambourg <pascal@plouf.fr.eu.org>
Cc: 1091799@bugs.debian.org, Cyril Brulebois <kibi@debian.org>, 
magnus@autistici.org

Hi Pascal, hi kibi,

On 2025-02-10 11:28, magnus@autistici.org wrote:

> On 2025-02-05 11:47, Pascal Hambourg wrote:
>> On 05/01/2025 at 19:48, magnus@autistici.org wrote:
>>>> magnus@autistici.org <magnus@autistici.org> (2024-12-31):
>>>>> 
>>>>> The problem during the installation was the following: d-i detected 
>>>>> the
>>>>> Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 wireless network card, but it couldn't 
>>>>> connect
>>>>> for some reason! This problem is present in the installed system, 
>>>>> too:
>>>>> the wifi networks are shown but no connections despite correct 
>>>>> passwords.
>>>>> I tested with two different mobile phones using tethering wifi.
>> (...)
>>> My friend came again to my home with his Notebook. So I prepared a 
>>> USB
>>> stick with the Trixie Alpha 1 Netinst (...)
>>> 
>>> Unfortunately the problem is the same as with the bookworm installer
>> 
>> I am not surprised. Atheros AR9485 is more than 10 years old and 
>> supported since linux 2.6.38 so I did not expect any improvement in 
>> Trixie. Can you try with other access points than mobile phones ?
> 
> Yes, will do when my friend will come again to my home: we will go to a
> nearby coffee shop as we both only have mobile phones as access points.

Time ago my friend and I tried the wifi network of the coffee shop and
it worked. We were surprised that tethering wifi with the two different
mobile phones were successful that time, too!

Yesterday I tried to upgrade the notebook of my friend from Bookworm to
Trixie. But tethering wifi with my mobile phone did not work anymore! 
:-(
The problem is the same: many wifi networks are seen but the connection
does not succeed! I completed the upgrade to Trixie using my AR9271 USB
wifi adapter (which is using free firmware compiled from source) and my
mobile phone.

Would you be willing to debug the problem? Of course, I would provide
all the logs you need. But I have to say that my friend has only this
notebook, therefore I expect that he wants it back quite soon!

Thank you in advance!

Kind regards, Magnus

[toc] | [next] | [standalone]

#89599

Hi John,

When I received you email I recognized your name and
email address:

magnus@debian3:~$ apt-cache show firmware-ath9k-htc | grep 'Maintainer:'
Maintainer: John Scott <jscott@posteo.net>
magnus@debian3:~$

firmware-free: Recommend or Suggest firmware-ath9k-htc
Reported by: John Scott <jscott@posteo.net>
Date: Sun, 27 May 2018 03:42:02 UTC
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=900171

Great!


On 2025-10-13 00:39, John Scott wrote:
> magnus@autistici.org wrote:
>> Hi Debian Linux kernel maintainers,
> 
> Hello! Thanks for the poke. I'm a newcomer to helping with the kernel 
> but know this particular family of devices well, so I'll do my best to 
> help. I apologize that your very detailed report has been stagnant for 
> a while.

Thank you very much! Well, I did not write earlier to d-kernel
as I couldn't help with debugging without the notebook which
was at my friend's home.


>> As the problem described in this bug is present not only in the 
>> installer but also in the installed system (one time it worked) I'm 
>> asking you for help to debug it: according to Cyril it's "most likely 
>> a problem with the Linux kernel modules and/or firmware"
>> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1091799#10
>> 
>> I believe that the Linux kernel module is this one: 
>> https://wiki.debian.org/ath9k
> 
> You're correct. In your initial report, some of this 
> automatically-included hardware information has what we need to know:
>> 02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 Wireless 
>> Network Adapter [168c:0032] (rev 01)
>> 	Subsystem: Lite-On Communications Inc AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter 
>> [11ad:6627]
>> 	Kernel driver in use: ath9k
>> 	Kernel modules: ath9k
> 
>> According to the firmware-summary attached to my installation report I 
>> suppose that the firmware package is the following: firmware-atheros
> That shouldn't be needed. firmware-atheros is the package with non-free 
> firmware for some of Qualcomm Atheros's other products, but non-USB 
> devices in the ath9k family don't require any firmware at all. As 
> you've figured out when using your AR9271, the USB version does require 
> extra firmware, but it's libre and it sounds like that's working okay.

Yes, my AR9271 works like a charm, with the libre firmware build
from source and the Debian package maintained by you. Thank you!


>> Using the 12.8.0 Netinst I tried to install on 2024-12-05 experiencing
>> the problem described in the Subject, with the two different mobile
>> phones. You can find the syslog of the installation attached to the
>> bug log. 
> 
> Here are some lines I find interesting:
>> Dec  5 08:39:41 kernel: [   58.988490] ath9k 0000:02:00.0 wlp2s0: 
>> renamed from wlan0
> ath9k is the non-USB driver, so this means that in all lines that 
> follow, the name "wlp2s0" refers to that internal card (not the USB 
> one).
> 
> Then:
>> Dec  5 08:40:17 netcfg[4247]: INFO: Activating interface wlp2s0
>> Dec  5 08:40:18 netcfg[4247]: INFO: Scan of wireless interface wlp2s0 
>> succeeded.
>> Dec  5 08:40:23 kernel: [  100.645660] wlp2s0: authenticate with 
>> 8e:b5:68:52:60:5f
>> Dec  5 08:40:23 kernel: [  100.645710] wlp2s0: 80 MHz not supported, 
>> disabling VHT
>> Dec  5 08:40:23 netcfg[4247]: INFO: Taking down interface wlp2s0
>> Dec  5 08:40:23 kernel: [  100.664025] wlp2s0: send auth to 
>> 8e:b5:68:52:60:5f (try 1/3)
>> Dec  5 08:40:23 kernel: [  100.664163] wlp2s0: aborting authentication 
>> with 8e:b5:68:52:60:5f by local choice (Reason: 3=DEAUTH_LEAVING)
>> Dec  5 08:40:23 netcfg[4247]: INFO: Network chosen: moto e(7) plus 
>> 3650. Proceeding to connect.

The "moto e(7) plus 3650" is the mobile phone of my friend.


> and the lines that follow show it trying to connect to the access 
> point, but failing to authenticate and timing out over and over again. 
> After some time the following messages can be seen:
>> Dec  5 08:42:17 main-menu[312]: (process:4246): SIOCSIWMODE: Invalid 
>> argument
>> Dec  5 08:42:17 main-menu[312]: (process:4246): Successfully 
>> initialized wpa_supplicant
> 
> The SIOCSIWMODE ioctl() is used to set what kind of wireless user you 
> want to be: a client ("station"), an access point, a passive 
> eavesdropper ("monitor"), or whatever else. wpa_supplicant should be 
> using this command to affirm that you'd like to be an ordinary client; 
> it strikes me as odd that this would fail here.
> The second line is more interesting: this is the first time it appears, 
> even though you've been attempting authentication for almost two 
> minutes by the time that appears. That seems weird.
> 
> There's nothing blatantly wrong here but we do see it set the 
> regulatory domain as follows:
>> Dec  5 08:39:41 kernel: [   58.940089] ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x60
>> Dec  5 08:39:41 kernel: [   58.940090] ath: EEPROM indicates we should 
>> expect a direct regpair map
>> Dec  5 08:39:41 kernel: [   58.940092] ath: Country alpha2 being used: 
>> 00
>> Dec  5 08:39:41 kernel: [   58.940093] ath: Regpair used: 0x60
> 
> The details are fuzzy, but I think seeing on the linux-wireless mailing 
> list that there was some kind of issue with ath9k handling the '00' 
> country code differently from how it used to. Also, I believe the 0x60 
> regpair maps to this same "world" regulatory domain concept.
> 
> It is a long-standing issue that, unfortunately, the majority of 
> GNU/Linux wireless devices don't have their regulatory domain correctly 
> set to indicate where the user is actually located. There is no 
> interface for a user to conveniently do this to my knowledge, nor is it 
> a thing most users are aware they need to do. There's an open issue in 
> Network Manager to consider if they want to pick up that job, and I 
> hope to see that happen in the future. In the meantime, this needs to 
> be addressed. (Newer versions of the Debian Installer *might* handle 
> this, but I'd have to look into it, and that's only a crutch for the 
> problem at large.) Possibly-old wiki documentation suggests the "world 
> regpair" was specially interpreted as meaning "United States" by these 
> Atheros drivers.
> 
> If I may ask, in what country is your friend using this computer? 
> Setting the regulatory domain appropriately might help, and my hunch is 
> informed by this:

We are living both in Italy.


>> Months later instead the wifi network did successful connect, with an 
>> access point of an Internet café and both mobile phones.
> Perhaps merely being near the café enticed any of these devices to pick 
> different wireless channels than they normally would. This would 
> explain why a change in location helped even if you were just intent on 
> connecting to the same cell phones.
> 
> So, in addition to letting me know what country the computer is being 
> used (or planned to be used) in, could you run this command in a 
> terminal and let us know what it says: sudo iw reg get

root@debian2:~# iw reg get
global
country 00: DFS-UNSET
         (755 - 928 @ 2), (N/A, 20), (N/A), PASSIVE-SCAN
         (2402 - 2472 @ 40), (N/A, 20), (N/A)
         (2457 - 2482 @ 20), (N/A, 20), (N/A), AUTO-BW, PASSIVE-SCAN
         (2474 - 2494 @ 20), (N/A, 20), (N/A), NO-OFDM, PASSIVE-SCAN
         (5170 - 5250 @ 80), (N/A, 20), (N/A), AUTO-BW, PASSIVE-SCAN
         (5250 - 5330 @ 80), (N/A, 20), (0 ms), DFS, AUTO-BW, 
PASSIVE-SCAN
         (5490 - 5730 @ 160), (N/A, 20), (0 ms), DFS, PASSIVE-SCAN
         (5735 - 5835 @ 80), (N/A, 20), (N/A), PASSIVE-SCAN
         (57240 - 63720 @ 2160), (N/A, 0), (N/A)

phy#0
country 99: DFS-UNSET
         (2402 - 2472 @ 40), (N/A, 20), (N/A)
         (2457 - 2482 @ 40), (N/A, 20), (N/A), PASSIVE-SCAN
         (2474 - 2494 @ 40), (N/A, 20), (N/A), NO-OFDM, PASSIVE-SCAN
         (5140 - 5360 @ 80), (N/A, 30), (N/A), PASSIVE-SCAN
         (5460 - 5860 @ 80), (N/A, 30), (N/A), PASSIVE-SCAN

root@debian2:~#


> If the output suggests the regulatory domain is still nonsense, we can 
> try to address that. I'll provide directions on how to set it right.

Ok, thank you!


> Also from your email address I guess you might already be familiar with 
> Jabber/XMPP (info at

Well, I have never used Jabber/XMPP but if you thing that the
debugging is easier I'm willing to try it to help you!


[>] https://www.autistici.org/docs/jabber/ about it). If it'd make 
troubleshooting this easier, we can try to work this out in real-time if 
you'd like. I can be reached at xmpp:me@johnscott.me and in the meantime 
I'll also be doing more research on your card in particular.

Thank you very much!

Kind regards, Magnus

[toc] | [prev] | [standalone]

Back to top | Article view | linux.debian.kernel

csiph-web