[PROBLEM] Netgear WNDA3200 (Atheros)

[Sam0r]

Hi guys and gals

I previously had a perfectly working xbian installation with working wifi etc. except I was playing about and buggered it all up.

I tried openelec which works great, but the wifi keeps dropping out.

With xbian it was perfect, airplay didn't work but I'm sure I could've figured that out.

Anyway, I'm onto xbian again to try and set it up how I had it working before, but I can't seem to get the wifi to work at all.

I had to ssh to it using a cable, ran xbian-config and did a scan for wifi networks, connected to mine (Atlantis 5g), I'm sure that was all I had to do.

But this time around (same pi, same wifi dongle, same powered hub) it just won't find any access points at all. If I try and configure it manually it won't connect.

I know about the virtual CDROM issue with this card, but lsusb comes back with the wifi dongle, not the Atheros virtual CDROM so it's seeing the dongle.

I'm sure I ran a couple of shell commands the first time, but I can't remember where I got them from. I don't think it was anything to do with the wifi though.

Anyone care to help? Cheers

[rikardo1979]

not sure, but can this be an issue?
http://forum.xbian.org/thread-738-post-8768.html#pid8768

[Sam0r]

Well, I set it all up statically through xbian-config and it hung on restarting wlan0. Had to reboot the pi, but it worked when it came back up. So I removed the network cable and did another reboot but it won't come up.

Oddly, the xbmc GUI won't scan wlans, but looking at the ssid it's trying to it says "Atlantis" not "Atlantis 5g" which it should be. I do have another ssid but it's on 2.4ghz and that's called "Atlantis", but I didn't type that in anywhere and since the scanning just plain doesn't work I can't see how it's got that.

Maybe it's the space in the ssid?

[IriDium]

There is a known problem with spaces in the SSID. Just rename it to say "Altantis5G" and see if that works.

[Sam0r]

(1st Sep, 2013 12:47 AM)IriDium Wrote:  There is a known problem with spaces in the SSID. Just rename it to say "Altantis5G" and see if that works.

I've created another SSID/Network for it now, but it hangs at "Restarting wlan0" - Can't ping it either.

I'll give it a restart and see if it connects.

---

Nope, nothing. Says it's down. Interestingly I couldn't get to it over ethernet either.

---

Ok, odd. It looks like it's assigning both static IP addresses to eth0. I just got it pinging 192.168.10.3 (wlan0) and 192.168.10.111 (eth0), unplugged the cable and both dropped out.

---

Here's the output of some commands:

Terminal

root@DiningRoomMC:/etc/network# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9512 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 05ac:1003 Apple, Inc. Hub in Pro Keyboard [Mitsumi, A1048]
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 05e3:0608 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB-2.0 4-Port HUB
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 05ac:020c Apple, Inc. Extended Keyboard [Mitsumi]
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0846:9018 NetGear, Inc. WNDA3200 802.11abgn Wireless Adapter [Atheros AR7010+AR9280]

Terminal

root@DiningRoomMC:~# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr b8:27:eb:9d:0b:80
inet addr:192.168.10.111 Bcast:192.168.10.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:118 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:96 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:11142 (10.8 KiB) TX bytes:13398 (13.0 KiB)

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:65536 Metric:1
RX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1104 (1.0 KiB) TX bytes:1104 (1.0 KiB)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr e0:46:9a:10:43:a7
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

Terminal

root@DiningRoomMC:~# iwconfig
wlan0 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

[IriDium]

I'd suggest that you start working on one problem first.

Have you setup WHICH device to use in XBMC-Xbian-config?

Unplug ethernet and reboot with just the wifi, and see what happens. I'll try and see if I can replicate.

Also please read the rules about posting an issue as detailed in my signature. (It's not nice to see reams of debug information in a post - either use an attachement or http://www.pastebin.com or xbmclogs.com

[rikardo1979]

(1st Sep, 2013 11:52 PM)IriDium Wrote:  I'd suggest that you start working on one problem first.

Have you setup WHICH device to use in XBMC-Xbian-config?

Unplug ethernet and reboot with just the wifi, and see what happens. I'll try and see if I can replicate.

Also please read the rules about posting an issue as detailed in my signature. (It's not nice to see reams of debug information in a post - either use an attachement or http://www.pastebin.com or xbmclogs.com

or for this short commands out use the terminal

Terminal

terminal

or code

Code:

code

tags

[IriDium]

My NW was not found in XBMC when I had the dongle in the hub but it was unpowered. Powering up the hub and scanning again - found it straight away.

So it would seem that the dongle draws significant power to cause issues. So don't plug directly into the RPi and always use a powered hub for it.

However, it would not connect either. Says trying to connect but doesn't.

I eventually managed to get it to work by
1) exitting xbmc.
2) unplug ethernet
3) Run xbian-config
4) setting wlan - scan and entererd pass code. It worked perfectly
5) Restarted xbmc
6) XBMC Xbian-config, was still on eth0 so changed to WLAN and it was there up an running.
7) Plugging the ethernet back in and rebooted.

It's working but... only just

So looks like there might be an issue with eth0 and wlan0 at the same time.

[Sam0r]

(2nd Sep, 2013 01:19 AM)IriDium Wrote:  My NW was not found in XBMC when I had the dongle in the hub but it was unpowered. Powering up the hub and scanning again - found it straight away.

So it would seem that the dongle draws significant power to cause issues. So don't plug directly into the RPi and always use a powered hub for it.

However, it would not connect either. Says trying to connect but doesn't.

I eventually managed to get it to work by
1) exitting xbmc.
2) unplug ethernet
3) Run xbian-config
4) setting wlan - scan and entererd pass code. It worked perfectly
5) Restarted xbmc
6) XBMC Xbian-config, was still on eth0 so changed to WLAN and it was there up an running.
7) Plugging the ethernet back in and rebooted.

It's working but... only just

So looks like there might be an issue with eth0 and wlan0 at the same time.

This is one of my main problems actually, when i exit XBMC, it either freezes with the quit dialogue on the screen, or it'll quit X (Is it still Xfree? been a long time since i messed with linux and a GUI!) but sit there. Bash doesn't load.

Are you saying that xbian can only use ONE network at a time? I didn't realise this, its always defaulted to eth0, i thought this was just a way of changing the displayed interface status etc. I'll give what you've suggested a go. Are you using the same dongle?

Sorry about the spam, I actually thought it looked alright but I'll use pastebin next time, cheers for the heads up.

Edit:

Ok, sussed it.

You CANT have the ethernet cable plugged in (at least with an IP address) - also, the dongle MUST be showing an orange light. Not blue, or purple. If the light is off, power down your USB hub, and the pi then power them both back on again. It's something to do with the virtual CDROM drive if the lights off, if its purple, it's stuck in scanning mode i think.

Anyway, all I had to do was basically follow IriDium's steps, except I had to switch to TTY2 by pressing CTRL + ALT + F2, login as root, or xbian and launch xbian-config, from there i was actually able to scan for WiFi networks and configure it. Make sure there are no details at all configured for eth0, i think that's where I tripped up. I didn't need to change anything in the xbmc gui (including the xbian config application).

Cheers for the help guys Now I just need to get airplay working, but that can wait!

Edit 2:
Scratch that, rebooted a couple of times and it won't connect or scan or anything basically. I'd use the 2.4ghz dongle that came with the kit but it's pants and I need to use 5ghz due to the amount of 2.4 ghz stuff I have and there are a LOT of networks around here.