Bug#419486: madwifi-source: Driver frequently hangs in ad-hoc mode

[Mike Brodbelt]

Package: madwifi-source
Version: 1:0.9.3-1
Severity: important

Madwifi drivers seem unable to maintain a usable network in ad-hoc mode.
This frequently happens when starting up the interface:-


#  wlanconfig ath0 destroy
#  wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode adhoc
#  iwconfig ath0 channel 6
#  iwconfig ath0 key <my-wep-key>
#  iwconfig ath0 essid <my-essid>
#  dhclient ath0
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.4
Copyright 2004-2006 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

wifi0: unknown hardware address type 801
wifi0: unknown hardware address type 801
Listening on LPF/ath0/00:05:4e:47:60:18
Sending on   LPF/ath0/00:05:4e:47:60:18
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
DHCPDISCOVER on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 10
DHCPOFFER from 192.168.1.4
DHCPREQUEST on ath0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK from 192.168.1.4
bound to 192.168.1.211 -- renewal in 243 seconds.

So, as can be seen the system gets an address from the DHCP server, and
the routing table is correctly set up as:-


Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags   MSS Window  irtt Iface
192.168.1.0     0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U         0 0          0 ath0
0.0.0.0         192.168.1.4     0.0.0.0         UG        0 0          0 ath0

However, attempts to ping the default gateway (also the DHCP server)
immediately after attaching fail:-

# ping 192.168.1.4
PING 192.168.1.4 (192.168.1.4) 56(84) bytes of data.
>From 192.168.1.211 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
>From 192.168.1.211 icmp_seq=2 Destination Host Unreachable
>From 192.168.1.211 icmp_seq=3 Destination Host Unreachable
>From 192.168.1.211 icmp_seq=4 Destination Host Unreachable
>From 192.168.1.211 icmp_seq=5 Destination Host Unreachable

After some time the interface will usually start working, but will
suffer random hangs during normal usage, where no data moves for periods
ranginf from a few seconds to a couple of minutes. Hardware is an IBM
Thinkpad X40 with Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev
01) adapter. The ndiswrapper/windows driver combination works an order
of magnitude better than madwifi. As best I can tell, ad-hoc mode does
not function at a usable level with the madwifi drivers.

This issue coule be related to http://madwifi.org/ticket/1209

Mike

-- System Information:
Debian Release: lenny/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: i386 (i686)

Kernel: Linux 2.6.20.3 (PREEMPT)
Locale: LANG=en_GB, LC_CTYPE=en_GB (charmap=locale: Cannot set LC_CTYPE to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_MESSAGES to default locale: No such file or directory
locale: Cannot set LC_ALL to default locale: No such file or directory
ANSI_X3.4-1968)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash

Versions of packages madwifi-source depends on:
ii  bzip2                         1.0.3-6    high-quality block-sorting file co
ii  debhelper                     5.0.45     helper programs for debian/rules
ii  module-assistant              0.10.11    tool to make module package creati

madwifi-source recommends no packages.