[Voyage-linux] Dual Atheros miniPCI wifi on an ALIX3 card

[Howard Lowndes]

This is a project on which I am currently working in Nepal and am having
some trouble configuring Atheros cards.

The ALIX3 card from PC Engines GmbH has 2 Senao 400mW Atheros based radio
cards.

Configuing one card is not a problem, but when I try to configure them
both they appear to have a conflict of personality.

This is the relevant piece out of the /etc/network/interfaces file:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto ath0
iface ath0 inet static
        address 10.5.3.1
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        pre-up wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode adhoc
        # madwifi-base wifi0
        # wireless-mode Ad-hoc
        up iwpriv ath0 mode 3
        up iwconfig ath0 channel 2
        up iwconfig ath0 mode ad-hoc
        up iwconfig ath0 essid RIDS-Nepal-03
        up iwconfig ath0 txpower auto
        up iwconfig ath0 enc 524944534E6570616C53525333
        up iwconfig ath0 rate auto
        #up nat.sh ath0 eth0 "10.1.20.0/24"

auto ath1
iface ath1 inet static
        address 10.5.2.2
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        pre-up wlanconfig ath1 create wlandev wifi1 wlanmode adhoc
        # madwifi-base wifi1
        # wireless-mode Ad-hoc
        up iwpriv ath1 mode 3
        up iwconfig ath1 channel 7
        up iwconfig ath0 mode ad-hoc
        up iwconfig ath0 essid RIDS-Nepal-02
        up iwconfig ath0 txpower auto
        up iwconfig ath0 enc 524944534E6570616C53525332
        up iwconfig ath0 rate auto
        #up nat.sh ath0 eth0 "10.1.20.0/24"



This is the relevant piece of what I see with ifconfig, and it all looks
fine:

ath0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:02:6F:49:EF:65
          inet addr:10.5.3.1  Bcast:10.5.3.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::202:6fff:fe49:ef65/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:3 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:230 (230.0 b)

ath1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:02:6F:49:EF:64
          inet addr:10.5.2.2  Bcast:10.5.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::202:6fff:fe49:ef64/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING 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:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

wifi0     Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr
00-02-6F-49-EF-65-30-3A-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:254 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:64
          TX packets:276 errors:23 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:199
          RX bytes:11684 (11.4 KiB)  TX bytes:31080 (30.3 KiB)
          Interrupt:9

wifi1     Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr
00-02-6F-49-EF-64-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:827 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:395
          TX packets:753 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:199
          RX bytes:97324 (95.0 KiB)  TX bytes:34638 (33.8 KiB)
          Interrupt:11



This is what I see with iwconfig:

ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"RIDS-Nepal-02"  Nickname:""
          Mode:Ad-Hoc  Frequency:2.417 GHz  Cell: 02:02:6F:49:EF:65
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power:18 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:5249-4453-4E65-7061-6C53-5253-32   Security
mode:restricted
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=38/94  Signal level=-55 dBm  Noise level=-93 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

ath1      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:""  Nickname:""
          Mode:Ad-Hoc  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Cell: Not-Associated
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power:18 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/94  Signal level=-94 dBm  Noise level=-94 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0



In the latter you will note the following:

ath0 has grabbed the ESSID and the key of the config for ath1, and poor
old ath1 has neither ESSID nor key.  ath0 appears to have grabbed the
correct channel (2), but ath1 appears to either default to channel 1 or
picks up a locally strong channel (11).

It has to be something pretty obvious but I am not seeing it.

TIA


-- 
Howard
LANNet Computing Associates <http://lannet.com.au>
When you want a computer system that works, just choose Linux;
When you want a computer system that works, just, choose Microsoft.