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I am trying to build a new machine using the Gigabyte GA-970 G1 Gaming motherboard, together with a TP-Link TL-WDN4800 N900 Wireless Dual Band PCI Express Adapter, which shows up as a Qualcomm Atheros AR93xx Wireless Network Adapter in the output of lspci. On this machine, I have installed Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with the 4.4.0-21-generic kernel.

The issue is that while I can see the SSIDs in the network manager, I cannot connect to any of them.

Note: While suggesting any solutions, particularly those which involve installing firmware drivers from the internet, note that I do not have internet on the afflicted machine. The onboard ethernet controller is incompatible with Ubuntu as well, and the attempts that I have made to fix that are a whole another story (question!). So, please account for that in your solutions. :-)

Details:

Miscellaneous

  • Not sure that this is of any consequence, but I have IOMMU disabled enabled in my BIOS settings, since without that half of my USB ports do not work.

lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RD890 PCI to PCI bridge (external gfx0 port B) (rev 02)
00:00.2 IOMMU: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RD990 I/O Memory Management Unit (IOMMU)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RD890 PCI to PCI bridge (PCI express gpp port B)
00:09.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RD890 PCI to PCI bridge (PCI express gpp port H)
00:11.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 40)
00:12.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:12.2 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller
00:13.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:13.2 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SBx00 SMBus Controller (rev 42)
00:14.2 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SBx00 Azalia (Intel HDA) (rev 40)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 LPC host controller (rev 40)
00:14.4 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SBx00 PCI to PCI Bridge (rev 40)
00:14.5 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI2 Controller
00:15.0 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB700/SB800/SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 0)
00:15.1 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB700/SB800/SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 1)
00:15.3 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB900 PCI to PCI bridge (PCIE port 3)
00:16.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB OHCI0 Controller
00:16.2 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] SB7x0/SB8x0/SB9x0 USB EHCI Controller
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 0
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 1
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 2
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 3
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 4
00:18.5 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h Processor Function 5
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: NVIDIA Corporation GF119 [GeForce GT 610] (rev a1)
01:00.1 Audio device: NVIDIA Corporation GF119 HDMI Audio Controller (rev a1)
02:00.0 USB controller: ASMedia Technology Inc. Device 1343
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Qualcomm Atheros Killer E220x Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 10)
05:00.0 USB controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VL805 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 01)
06:00.0 Network controller: Qualcomm Atheros AR93xx Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

lshw

Here is the output of lshw -C network -- the driver being used is ath9k, version 4.4.0-21-generic: 

  *-network
       description: Ethernet interface
       product: Killer E220x Gigabit Ethernet Controller
       vendor: Qualcomm Atheros
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
       logical name: enp4s0
       version: 10
       serial: 40:8d:5c:e4:ba:a1
       capacity: 1Gbit/s
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=alx latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair
       resources: irq:37 memory:fe300000-fe33ffff ioport:d000(size=128)
  *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       product: AR93xx Wireless Network Adapter
       vendor: Qualcomm Atheros
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:06:00.0
       logical name: wlp6s0
       version: 01
       serial: ec:08:6b:0c:9c:44
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k driverversion=4.4.0-21-generic firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn
       resources: irq:19 memory:fe100000-fe11ffff memory:fe120000-fe12ffff

One of the attempts at a fix that I made was to get the backports drivers and install them. I tried installing from source the ath9k, alx & wifi from the latest version of backports 4.4.2-1: https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/backports/stable/v4.4.2/backports-4.4.2-1.tar.gz. However, I got the same strange SSL related errors when doing sudo make install as this question in every case.

When I inspected the output of lspci the driver version had not changed, indicating that the driver installation had not taken.

lsmod

Here is the output of lsmod | grep ath: 

ath9k                  94208  0
ath9k_common           36864  1 ath9k
ath9k_hw              450560  2 ath9k_common,ath9k
ath                    32768  3 ath9k_common,ath9k,ath9k_hw
mac80211              643072  1 ath9k
cfg80211              557056  4 ath,ath9k_common,ath9k,mac80211
compat                 16384  4 cfg80211,ath9k_common,ath9k,mac80211

dmesg

Here is the output of dmesg | grep ath: 

[   30.338046] ath9k 0000:06:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002)
[   30.418133] ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x21
[   30.418135] ath: EEPROM indicates we should expect a direct regpair map
[   30.418136] ath: Country alpha2 being used: AU
[   30.418137] ath: Regpair used: 0x21
[   30.437260] ath9k 0000:06:00.0 wlp6s0: renamed from wlan0
[   40.263768] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   40.403766] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   40.479730] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   63.393710] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   63.597081] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   69.573453] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   69.841450] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   77.562014] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   77.701932] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   77.841982] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   77.917988] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00024e00
[   82.602363] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   83.622332] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   84.478301] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   84.682355] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   88.226671] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   90.086726] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   90.162614] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   90.238726] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   94.339002] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[   94.735039] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  120.524670] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  153.298773] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  196.285427] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  196.425522] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  196.629322] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  249.324642] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00020800
[  249.656674] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  375.292183] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  375.432233] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  375.636259] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  438.348003] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  438.487985] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  438.691882] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00020800
[  501.467787] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00004400
[  501.675643] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  564.483630] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  627.751388] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  690.359206] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  690.627214] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  753.366976] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  753.442967] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  753.518694] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  816.434790] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  879.438564] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400
[  879.770566] ath: phy0: DMA failed to stop in 10 ms AR_CR=0x00000024 AR_DIAG_SW=0x02000020 DMADBG_7=0x00006400

Any pointers as to how to get my wireless adapter working with Ubuntu 16.04 would be very much appreciated.

Thanks.

Update 1:

  1. The discussion indicated that the culprit might be the BIOS settings, here are the relevant settings:

    • IOMMU: Enabled
    • XHCI Hand-Off: Enabled
    • EHCI Hand-Off: Enabled
    • Network Stack: Enabled

  2. I have also created a new file in /etc/modprobe.d/ath9k.conf with the line:

    options ath9k nohwcrypt=1

    since this was a recommendation in some threads.

  3. There was also some mention in the threads of this being a router security issue, so I have changed two router level parameters as well:

    • WPA Encryption: AES (from TKIP + AES)
    • Group Key Update Interval: 3600 (from 0)

    since this was suggested in some threads.

Update 2:

As I mentioned in the comments, I acquired a brand new PCI NIC, and when I installed it in the slot that the WiFi adapter was installed, I was still not able to connect to the internet. This then definitely pointed to problems with the board, and so I switched the slot on which I was installing the NIC and the WiFi adapter. So it turns out that I had the WiFi adapter installed in the PCIex1 slot (see image -- yellow box), and when I switched either to the PCIex4 slot (see image -- red box) both the adapters worked perfectly.

enter image description here

The question then is, is it just this board, or should I not expect to be able to run a WiFi adapter/NIC on a PCIex1 slot? Thanks for all your help, especially @jeremy31 and @chili555.

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tchakravarty
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    Please see post #34 here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2205970&page=4 In his original question, he had the exact same "DMA failed to stop" errors. – chili555 Jun 19 '16 at 11:21
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    Go into the backports-4.4.2-1 and run sudo make uninstall as the backports are not helping. The ethernet might work also after following chili555's comment – Jeremy31 Jun 19 '16 at 11:56
  • @chili555 There are 3 BIOS settings that concern me: IOMMU, xHCI & eHCI. Contrary to what I said in the question, I checked in my BIOS, and IOMMU was enabled, so I tried setting it off, and none of my USB ports now work. So if disabling IOMMU is the key, then I am not sure that it will work for me. However, from the thread, the issue was resolved when IOMMU was enabled, so I am not sure what is going on. – tchakravarty Jun 19 '16 at 12:42
  • @Jeremy31 Thanks for the comment. So, just to be clear, my BIOS settings are: IOMMU: Enabled, XHCI Hand-Off: Enabled, EHCI Hand-off: Enabled, and I continue to get the issues above. As I mentioned to chili555, when I disable IOMMU (were it to be the suggested solution), all my USB ports are dead, so that is not a feasible solution. – tchakravarty Jun 19 '16 at 12:51
  • @chili555 I am also a little concerned about the country code that I see in the dmesg output: [ 30.418136] ath: Country alpha2 being used: AU. That is categorically not my country code. :-) Would that have anything to do with what is going on? – tchakravarty Jun 19 '16 at 14:40
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    I doubt it has anything to do with "DMA failed to stop..."; however, you can edit /etc/default/crda to set it. Let me know if you need step-by-step instructions and let us see dmesg | grep ath after a reboot. – chili555 Jun 19 '16 at 15:28
  • @chili555 Happy to try any number of things to get this working, and yes, detailed instructions would be welcome. :-) – tchakravarty Jun 19 '16 at 15:39
  • @chili555 I don't think that detailed instructions to edit /etc/default/crda will be required. I have just included the line REGDOMAIN=356, and will add the result of dmesg to the question. – tchakravarty Jun 19 '16 at 15:50
  • @chili555 Changing REGDOMAIN=356 does not change the country alpha2 in the result of dmesg. – tchakravarty Jun 19 '16 at 15:51
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    I never heard of the country 356!?! JK. It should be a two-letter code from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_3166-1_alpha-2 In my case, it is REGDOMAIN=US. – chili555 Jun 19 '16 at 16:22
  • @chili555 I added REGDOMAIN=IN and rebooted, but still getting country alpha2 AU. But as you say, maybe that is tangential to this issue. – tchakravarty Jun 19 '16 at 16:27
  • I regret that I haven't any further suggestions. Perhaps my colleague @Jeremy31 will jump in. – chili555 Jun 19 '16 at 20:46
  • Have you uninstalled the backports? See if the ethernet will function with setting the MTU to 8192, I have a fix for it but it does require internet access. I would remove the card and try another slot on the motherboard. I have never seen this behavior from either of my 3 atheros wifi cards – Jeremy31 Jun 19 '16 at 21:48
  • @Jeremy31 So I caved in (somewhat) and bought a $10 NIC PCI card. So now I have internet. What next? :-) And no, I did not uninstall backports because I was installing from /tmp and lost the build after a reboot. If you think it is critical, I can rebuild and run uninstall. – tchakravarty Jun 22 '16 at 17:23
  • No big deal if everything works and the backported drivers will be gone when a new kernel is installed through updates. Where did you buy the card with the Atheros chip. It could possibly have been used on a windows pc and had the eeprom programmed with that strange country code – Jeremy31 Jun 22 '16 at 20:59
  • @Jeremy31 Please see the latest update. My issue is resolved, but there is a question that I have that you might have a ready answer to. Thanks a lot for your help. :-) – tchakravarty Jun 23 '16 at 15:49
  • @chili555 Please see the latest update. My issue is resolved but there is a question that I have that you might have a ready answer to. Thanks a lot for your help. :-) – tchakravarty Jun 23 '16 at 15:49
  • Sorry; I have no experience with PCIex1 slots and have no suggestions. – chili555 Jun 23 '16 at 18:14

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