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doblejs
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[Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Mon Apr 10, 2023 9:25 pm

Hello, I just installed RouterOS x86 on a mini PC with an Atheros AR9888 wireless card. Everything works fine except the wireless interface, where the AR9888 is detected but unable to scan and does not show any available Wi-Fi networks. It also doesn't work as a access point because it can't broadcast any Wi-Fi SSIDs. I've checked the logs, but I don't see anything that can guide me. I tried to use the wifiwave2 package, but the wireless tables are blank.

wirelesstables.png
pcimikrotik.png
Could you help me? Thanks in advance!
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mkx
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Tue Apr 11, 2023 11:30 am

Which ROS version are you running? If haven't already, try to upgrade to latest v7 (7.9rc2 at this time).
 
doblejs
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Wed Apr 12, 2023 11:15 pm

Which ROS version are you running? If haven't already, try to upgrade to latest v7 (7.9rc2 at this time).
Hello, thanks for answering. Currently I have ros v7.8 installed, I tried to update but forgot to tell you that I am in 24 hour test time, I am not sure if this test is causing the wireless issues, but I think it is not because of that. It won't let me update the system via -> packages until I buy the license, but I don't want to buy it before I fix the wireless card error. I can try to perform a clean install through netinstall making a usb install but i don't know if that affect to current trial license.
 
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Thu Apr 13, 2023 4:18 am

You can also try 6.4x version of ROS in case that changes anything.
Hardware wise only thing that might be different is radio EEPROM, maybe ROS driver looks for something in it that's non-standard?
Comparing it with contents from radio that works (like from NetMetal5) would be interesting... but don't have one here to dump it for you.
Trial license should not change anything (in 24 hours everything should be working same as with licensed ROS version).
And yes, you can reinstall it in trial mode over and over again. Wipe the beginning of the disk in case your old expired trial sticks for some reason.
 
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Tue Jun 13, 2023 9:46 pm

Unfortunately I am facing the exact same problem with my PC Engines APU6B4 and a Compex WLE600VX (=QCA9882).

And I cannot try with ROS 6 since after booting from USB stick and preparing the installation it reports "no harddisk found" but am of little hope that it would help anyhow...

Has anybody found a solution for the "Atheros AR9888" problem in ROS 7?
Last edited by meagain on Thu Jun 15, 2023 12:43 am, edited 1 time in total.
 
meagain
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Fri Jun 30, 2023 11:49 pm

In the meantime I got a response from MikroTik support, that this card / chipset is not supported and also not planned to be supported in ROS 7 for X86. That's a pity as it works so flawlessly on OpenWrt...
 
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Mon Aug 21, 2023 6:16 pm

Unfortunately I am facing the exact same problem with my PC Engines APU6B4 and a Compex WLE600VX (=QCA9882).

And I cannot try with ROS 6 since after booting from USB stick and preparing the installation it reports "no harddisk found" but am of little hope that it would help anyhow...

Has anybody found a solution for the "Atheros AR9888" problem in ROS 7?
Please try ROS 7.6. For me this is latest ROS x86 version where WiFi works. Initially I used WiFi card based on AR9380 chipset. But later I have replaced it with original Mikrotik R11e-2hnd card and this card also doesn't work on latest ROS versions. Just imagine, they broke WiFi on x86 platform starting from ROS 7.7 and couldn't fix this till now (ROS7.11).
 
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Mon Aug 21, 2023 6:34 pm

A suggestion is to use CHR on Hyper-V. There is minimal overhead, and it eliminates the need to worry about chipset and device driver support, which are instead handled by the Host OS (Windows).
 
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Mon Aug 21, 2023 6:55 pm

A suggestion is to use CHR on Hyper-V. There is minimal overhead, and it eliminates the need to worry about chipset and device driver support, which are instead handled by the Host OS (Windows).
Interesting idea, but, nevertheless, I don't understand why I have to deal with such perversions even using the original adapter Mikrotik R11e-2hnd ?
 
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Mon Aug 21, 2023 7:14 pm

A suggestion is to use CHR on Hyper-V. There is minimal overhead, and it eliminates the need to worry about chipset and device driver support, which are instead handled by the Host OS (Windows).
I am not sure that Hyper-V will work on my Celeron based router. And how hypervisor will represent WiFi adapter to CHR ? How it will be visible in CHR ?
 
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Mon Aug 21, 2023 10:11 pm

It doesn’t matter what type of nic (eth, wireless, etc) is available in windows; you simply add an arbitrary one and it will appear as a virtual nic in hyperv

I'm running RoS using hyperv without any issues on a 10-year-old Intel NUC equipped with a Celeron.
 
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Tue Aug 22, 2023 9:20 am

The good and bad (at the same time) thing about virtualization is that virtualization layer hides details about actual hardware from virtual machine. So proper operation depends on availability and quality of drivers run on host machine. The good side is if host drivers are good so guest OS doesn't need to support hardware directly, it only needs support for virtual hardware. The bad side is if host drivers are not great and thus hardware will not run good (neither in host OS nor in guest OS).

Another bad side is if drivers need some special configuration (e.g. they expose some kind of management API) but that is not supported by virtual hardware. I.e. one can not take wireless network interface and make it available to guest OS via generic wired network interface ... because later does not allow configuring wireless parameters. This problem can be cured if it's possible to pass such device in more-or-less raw form to virtual machine. But then this also means that guest OS needs driver for such device ... which is actual problem, faced by @OP. Another possibility is to configure wireless interface in host OS, but that is very awkward.
 
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Tue Aug 22, 2023 9:39 am

Well, simply put: you either wait forever to get support for an odd chipset/NIC on bare metal or utilize virtualization.

In general, if the NIC is working properly in Windows, it usually works in Hyper-V as well.
 
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Tue Aug 22, 2023 1:31 pm

Another bad side is if drivers need some special configuration (e.g. they expose some kind of management API) but that is not supported by virtual hardware. I.e. one can not take wireless network interface and make it available to guest OS via generic wired network interface ... because later does not allow configuring wireless parameters. This problem can be cured if it's possible to pass such device in more-or-less raw form to virtual machine. But then this also means that guest OS needs driver for such device ... which is actual problem, faced by @OP. Another possibility is to configure wireless interface in host OS, but that is very awkward.

In the meantime I use my APU for something different, but as far as I remember this was exactly my problem when I tried to run ROS with Proxmox. You had to pass-through the hardware to make ROS aware of the wireless card but obviously it was not supported then (or it would have worked bare metal as well ;-))
 
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Tue Aug 22, 2023 2:22 pm

It doesn’t matter what type of nic (eth, wireless, etc) is available in windows; you simply add an arbitrary one and it will appear as a virtual nic in hyperv
...and ROS will see this virtual nic as usual ethernet. And how I should configure wireless AP if ROS doesn't see any wireless interfaces ?
 
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Tue Aug 22, 2023 5:09 pm

Settings not available using the V-NIC have to be administered by the host.

Check: “hyper-v add wifi adapter
 
meagain
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Tue Aug 22, 2023 7:28 pm

...and ROS will see this virtual nic as usual ethernet. And how I should configure wireless AP if ROS doesn't see any wireless interfaces ?
It just doesn't work... That's also what MikroTik support responded to my issue and there are no plans to support it (see my former post viewtopic.php?p=1020606#p1010808). I guess we are out of luck, since even if you could configure the wifi in a hypervisor and pass it to the VM, it still would be a simple nic and we lose all the ROS wifi features that we actually want...
 
DeGlucker
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Tue Aug 22, 2023 8:06 pm

...and ROS will see this virtual nic as usual ethernet. And how I should configure wireless AP if ROS doesn't see any wireless interfaces ?
It just doesn't work... That's also what MikroTik support responded to my issue and there are no plans to support it (see my former post viewtopic.php?p=1020606#p1010808). I guess we are out of luck, since even if you could configure the wifi in a hypervisor and pass it to the VM, it still would be a simple nic and we lose all the ROS wifi features that we actually want...
Even if MT doesn't plan to support Atheros AR9888, what about original Mikrotik radio interface R11e-2Hnd based on Atheros AR9582 ??? I have bought this card and can't use it !!! MT has broke its functionality in ROS 7.7 and still can't fix the issue !!!
Are I the only one who uses WiFi on the X86 platform around the world ???
Why MT does not rush to fix this problem ?
 
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mkx
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Tue Aug 22, 2023 8:13 pm

Even if MT doesn't plan to support Atheros AR9888, what about original Mikrotik radio interface R11e-2Hnd based on Atheros AR9582 ??? I have bought this card and can't use it !!! MT has broke its functionality in ROS 7.7 and still can't fix the issue !!!

Did you report this bug through official support channels? This forum is not one of them ...
 
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Tue Aug 22, 2023 8:24 pm

It just doesn't work... That's also what MikroTik support responded to my issue and there are no plans to support it (see my former post viewtopic.php?p=1020606#p1010808). I guess we are out of luck, since even if you could configure the wifi in a hypervisor and pass it to the VM, it still would be a simple nic and we lose all the ROS wifi features that we actually want...

Well, it does work as intended. However, if you're looking for pure RoS AP control, that is a completely different matter. Then, you are out of luck and need to use MT-supported x86-64 hardware for your home lab.

Furthermore, one should not have high expectations that MT will constantly develop new support for all possible old and new x86-64 chipsets or network cards. The current focus is on the ARM platform.
 
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Re: [Issue] Atheros AR9888 not working

Tue Aug 22, 2023 8:35 pm

Even if MT doesn't plan to support Atheros AR9888, what about original Mikrotik radio interface R11e-2Hnd based on Atheros AR9582 ??? I have bought this card and can't use it !!! MT has broke its functionality in ROS 7.7 and still can't fix the issue !!!

Did you report this bug through official support channels? This forum is not one of them ...
SUP-104565
It was opened already since ROS 7.7 was released.
And all this time MT feeds me unsubscribes that the fix is not ready yet.
I already tired to wait. I want to attract as much attention to this problem as possible.

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