[SOLVED] Plagued with AR9642 instability and drop-outs

[GreyGeek]

For months I had been plagued with the instability of my ath9k driver in Precise to stay up. Once it negotiates an IP address from my wifi router it almost immediately drops it and then attempts to reconnect. The time it says up varies between less than 10 seconds to less than 10 minutes, but never more. I have tried all the kernels between 3.2 and 3.9.x with no success.

Someone recommended I try the 3.10 kernel from Liquorix. I added its kernel repository and noticed that the only kernels it had were the 32 and 64 bit versions of 3.11-8 so I installed the 64bit kernel:

3.11-8.dmz.1-liquorix-amd64 #1 ZEN SMP PREEMPT Sun Nov 17 03:04:39 UTC 2013 x86_64 GNU/Linux

BAM! My ath9k connection (AR9642 chip) is now rock solid at 54Mb/s

But, all is not roses. VirutalBox won't run under this kernel and running "vboxdrv setup" does nothing. I only set up my WinXP.vdi because KWheezy came with it pre-installed and I wanted to see how it ran. Smooth as silk. (I still have my Win7 partition, which I visit about once every three months to update Microsoft Security Essentials and all the security updates.)

Also the freezing of the plasma-desktop panel continues. It's an interesting bug because the mouse and keyboard continue to work, and Conky continues to display data. It's just that the panel won't respond to mouse activity. And, when I close an app during the freeze its icon remains in the taskbar. I still have to send the plasma-desktop an "INT" signal to release it and/or activate the panel again.

[zeeone]

Have you tried any other network managers? And what OS is the problem the problem child, Precise or Kwheezy?

[GreyGeek]

Have you tried any other network managers? And what OS is the problem the problem child, Precise or Kwheezy?

Yes. The problem occurs in both Precise and KWheezy. When I upgraded KDE4 on Precise 12.04.3 to KDE 4.10.? the problem remained. I find this interesting because KWheezy is based on Debian Wheezy, NOT Ubuntu, so I believe the problem is entirely within the KDE panel panel and/or system tray plasmoids.


Swapping for wicd doesn't remove the problem. Removing the network manager from the system tray does not help. As long as the keyboard is active I can use Ctrl+Esc to bring up ksysmon and then right mouse on plasma-desktop and select "signals" and then "Interrupt (INT)" and the panel is immediately active again. This suggests that some function in the panel and/or system tray is waiting on some action that never occurs. The keyboard, mouse and all running apps remain active most of the time. I've had a total lock up only 3 times during the last six months the problem has been bothering me, two on Precise and one on KWheezy.

Variations of the problem are widespread and seem to be the subject of several launchpad bug reports. Most recommendations involve trying a different kernel. On Precise I've tried kernels from 3.2 to 3.9 with no joy. On KWheezy, whiich comes with the 3.2 kernel, I installed the Licquorix 3.11.8 kernel and the problem remained. I installed that kernel to see if it fixed my ath9k disconnect problem, which plagued all the kernels in Precise, and it did. Under that kernel my AR9642 wifi chip is as stable as a rock.

I may create another user and use a bare panel in it to see if it is stable. If it is then I will add plasmoids one at a time to see if I can identify the bad one.

[zeeone]

Quote:

"Swapping for wicd doesn't remove the problem. Removing the network manager from the system tray does not help."

It is recommended to purge the KDE network manager out, removing the icon does nothing. KDE network manager has been known to interfere with other loaded
network managers.


Quote:

"I find this interesting because KWheezy is based on Debian Wheezy, NOT Ubuntu".

The Ubuntu's are based on deb more than you think.

Did the modem work ok under Precise? I do not think it is a kernel problem, I think it was the KDE reload/upgrade. You must remember the Ubuntu's are a
rolling updated to the latest and greatest type distro. So some of the updates need maybe are missing or not happy using Precise. Even Kwheezy is a rolling
updated Distro.(and it works well)

How are you running Kwheezy? What version Kwheezy did you load?

[GreyGeek]

The ath9k (for my AR9462 chip) worked on Precise until sometime early this summer, when it began misbehaving. It's failure wasn't all at once, it misbehaved in steps, but sometime around July - August it was apparent that using my wifi only was impossible and I switched to wire. As I mentioned before, I tried all the kernels in Precise from 3.2 to 3.9 with no joy.

This last weekend I installed the Liquorix 3.11.8 kernel and my AR9462 began connecting to my Cisco E2500 running the DD-WRT firmware. It usually runs at 54Mb/s but sometimes drops to 48 or 12, and occasionally 1Mb/s. Making demands seems to kick it up to higher speeds.

I'm running KWheezy 1.3 upgraded to 1.4. I am very pleased with it.

The other big problem that both Precise and KWheezy was giving me as the panel randomly and frequently freezing. Removing the widget "Color Picker" seems to have cleared that up.