On Thursday 05 May 2011 18:40:30 John Nielsen wrote:
> I am trying to set up a 5GHz wireless access point on an Alix 3d2 board
> with an AR9220 (ath9k "Merlin") PCI card. I have done so successfully
> using Fedora 14 on identical hardware but I would greatly prefer to use
> Gentoo so I can use a more recent kernel and customize things
> appropriately for the platform.
>
> I have an up-to-date ~x86 Gentoo build working and I am able to run hostapd
> as a 2.4GHz access point, but trying to run it on a 5 GHz channel in "a"
> mode fails complaining it is unable to set the channel. After some poking
> around I realized that this was due to the regulatory domain not being set
> correctly--the default ("world"?) regdomain doesn't allow IBSS on any 5GHz
> channels.
>
> I made sure I had crda emerged and tried several different kernel settings
> but none of them resulted in any different behavior. I even tried
> statically compiling the regdb ("CONFIG_CFG80211_INTERNAL_REGDB=y") but
> didn't see any difference. I can run "iw reg set US" all day long but
> whenever I run "iw reg get" it always comes back with "country 00" on the
> Gentoo system.
>
> Since I'm a relative newbie to both Gentoo and custom Linux kernel building
> I wanted to make sure I wasn't just missing a setting or kernel config
> flag somewhere before I started looking for things like driver
> regressions. Can anyone suggest different things to try to fix the problem
> or at least pinpoint it better?
>
> Below is some info from both the Gentoo system (regdomain not working) and
> the Fedora system (regdomain working). Let me know what additional
> information would be helpful. Thanks!
>
> JN
>
>
> ### Gentoo ~x86 ###
> # uname -a
> Linux alix2 2.6.38-gentoo-r3 #7 Mon May 2 12:51:18 EDT 2011 i586 Geode(TM)
> Integrated Processor by AMD PCS AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
>
> # relevant dmesg output
> [ 0.107215] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain
> [ 2.228041] ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x0
> [ 2.228056] ath: EEPROM indicates default country code should be used
> [ 2.228072] ath: doing EEPROM country->regdmn map search
> [ 2.228093] ath: country maps to regdmn code: 0x3a
> [ 2.228108] ath: Country alpha2 being used: US
> [ 2.228122] ath: Regpair used: 0x3a
>
> # iw reg set US
> # iw reg get
> country 00:
> (2402 - 2472 @ 40), (6, 20)
> (2457 - 2482 @ 20), (6, 20), PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS
> (2474 - 2494 @ 20), (6, 20), NO-OFDM, PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS
> (5170 - 5250 @ 40), (6, 20), PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS
> (5735 - 5835 @ 40), (6, 20), PASSIVE-SCAN, NO-IBSS
>
> # iw list
> ...
> Frequencies:
> * 5180 MHz [36] (18.0 dBm) (passive scanning, no IBSS)
> * 5200 MHz [40] (18.0 dBm) (passive scanning, no IBSS)
> * 5220 MHz [44] (18.0 dBm) (passive scanning, no IBSS)
> * 5240 MHz [48] (18.0 dBm) (passive scanning, no IBSS)
> ...
>
> # relevant packages
> net-wireless/crda-1.1.1
> net-wireless/iw-0.9.22
> net-wireless/wireless-regdb-20101124
> net-wireless/wireless-tools-30_pre9
> sys-kernel/gentoo-sources-2.6.38-r3
>
>
> ### Fedora 14 ###
> $ uname -a
> Linux alix.jnielsen.net 2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686 #1 SMP Mon Oct 18 23:56:17
> UTC 2010 i586 i586 i386 GNU/Linux
>
> # relevant dmesg output
> [ 13.191924] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain
> [ 13.433288] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated:
> [ 17.134923] ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x0
> [ 17.134943] ath: EEPROM indicates default country code should be used
> [ 17.134961] ath: doing EEPROM country->regdmn map search
> [ 17.134984] ath: country maps to regdmn code: 0x3a
> [ 17.135001] ath: Country alpha2 being used: US
> [ 17.135018] ath: Regpair used: 0x3a
> [ 17.248674] cfg80211: Calling CRDA for country: US
> [ 18.848206] cfg80211: Regulatory domain changed to country: US
>
> $ iw reg get
> country US:
> (2402 - 2472 @ 40), (3, 27)
> (5170 - 5250 @ 40), (3, 17)
> (5250 - 5330 @ 40), (3, 20), DFS
> (5490 - 5600 @ 40), (3, 20), DFS
> (5650 - 5710 @ 40), (3, 20), DFS
> (5735 - 5835 @ 40), (3, 30)
>
> $ iw list
> ...
> Frequencies:
> * 5180 MHz [36] (17.0 dBm)
> * 5200 MHz [40] (17.0 dBm)
> * 5220 MHz [44] (17.0 dBm)
> * 5240 MHz [48] (17.0 dBm)
> ...
>
> # relevant packages
> iw-0.9.22-1.fc14.1.i686
> crda-1.1.1_2010.11.22-1.fc14.i686
> wireless-tools-29-5.1.fc12.i686
> kernel-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686Last time I had a problem like this (some time ago now) I discovered that it was because of the driver - the version or the firmware was not developed enough. A few weeks/months later the version was updated and the functionality was suddenly there. BTW, did you try wpa_supplicant in case it makes a difference? -- Regards, Mick
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