Brand new Nano v6, wlan1 dies after 2-10 min, requires unplugging

[DaveMcDave]

Okay, so I just got this. I'm familiar with how it works, but I'm having an issue with wlan1 dying after using it for a while. I've tried soft-resets, hard-resets. I've tried testing and making sure that no additional plugins/modules were installed and I can replicate the issue every time. The dmesg log has nothing of interest, no errors, just... 'usual business'. 

I've seen a bunch of other users in here having similar issues, but let me show what I've done and what I've discovered so far. Hopefully someone can give me some direction other than "It's broken" because I have a hard time believing that so many units could be shipped with the same issue. 

1 - I'm on software 1.1.1
2 - I'm running Zorin 11 linux (Based on Ubuntu 15.10)
3 - I did the things mentioned above (One of the symptoms was having the recon searches coming back with no results, or moving to 100% and never updating past that)
4 - Once I figured out that the hardware seems to be dying, I decided to SSH into it and manually start scanning using airodump-ng. I SSH'd into the Nano, put wlan1 into monitor mode (airmon-ng) and started scanning for networks. This worked fine initially. After monitoring a network for a while, maybe 2-10 minutes, airodump-ng stops giving results. As soon as this happens, I can take wlan1 out of monitor mode and put it back into monitor mode, but still the same problem of no clients found. (Just a blank page)
5 - I tried soft-resetting it, no luck. The only way I've found to get it to come back is to hard reset or unplug from USB

It 'feels' intuitively to me as though the wifi chip is overheating, though I have no good evidence to support what I'm suggesting. That's just kind of how it's behaving. I really want to say it's a firmware problem, but the fact that nothing changes and it just suddenly stops monitoring data packets leads me to believe otherwise. 

I can provide any logs needed, screenshots, more detailed steps, I can do troubleshooting... I'm pretty handy with the terminal for the most part, just let me know something I might have missed. 

 

[DaveMcDave]

Okay, I've found something that might be of interest. 
Immediately after enabling the PineAP (associations, probes, etc) I get this output from the ifconfig: 
 

wlan1mon  Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-C0-CA-90-A9-27-00-44-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
          UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING PROMISC ALLMULTI  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:20528 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:3518961 (3.3 MiB)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

Something is very wrong with the HWaddr and Link encap. 

Here's the output from dmesg which was no different before when it worked and after it stopped: 

root@Pineapple:~# dmesg
[    0.000000] Linux version 3.18.36 (openwrt@19a38d794f6d) (gcc version 4.8.3 (OpenWrt/Linaro GCC 4.8-2014.04 r49403) ) #20 Fri Aug 19 01:58:53 UTC 2016
[    0.000000] MyLoader: sysp=8a14b024, boardp=44b65156, parts=b69f8d32
[    0.000000] bootconsole [early0] enabled
[    0.000000] CPU0 revision is: 00019374 (MIPS 24Kc)
[    0.000000] SoC: Atheros AR9330 rev 1
[    0.000000] Determined physical RAM map:
[    0.000000]  memory: 04000000 @ 00000000 (usable)
[    0.000000] Initrd not found or empty - disabling initrd
[    0.000000] Zone ranges:
[    0.000000]   Normal   [mem 0x00000000-0x03ffffff]
[    0.000000] Movable zone start for each node
[    0.000000] Early memory node ranges
[    0.000000]   node   0: [mem 0x00000000-0x03ffffff]
[    0.000000] Initmem setup node 0 [mem 0x00000000-0x03ffffff]
[    0.000000] On node 0 totalpages: 16384
[    0.000000] free_area_init_node: node 0, pgdat 80355cf0, node_mem_map 81000000
[    0.000000]   Normal zone: 128 pages used for memmap
[    0.000000]   Normal zone: 0 pages reserved
[    0.000000]   Normal zone: 16384 pages, LIFO batch:3
[    0.000000] Primary instruction cache 64kB, VIPT, 4-way, linesize 32 bytes.
[    0.000000] Primary data cache 32kB, 4-way, VIPT, cache aliases, linesize 32 bytes
[    0.000000] pcpu-alloc: s0 r0 d32768 u32768 alloc=1*32768
[    0.000000] pcpu-alloc: [0] 0 
[    0.000000] Built 1 zonelists in Zone order, mobility grouping on.  Total pages: 16256
[    0.000000] Kernel command line:  board=PINEAPPLE-NANO  console=ttyATH0,115200 rootfstype=squashfs,jffs2 noinitrd
[    0.000000] PID hash table entries: 256 (order: -2, 1024 bytes)
[    0.000000] Dentry cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 3, 32768 bytes)
[    0.000000] Inode-cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
[    0.000000] Writing ErrCtl register=00000000
[    0.000000] Readback ErrCtl register=00000000
[    0.000000] Memory: 60944K/65536K available (2467K kernel code, 126K rwdata, 528K rodata, 260K init, 188K bss, 4592K reserved)
[    0.000000] SLUB: HWalign=32, Order=0-3, MinObjects=0, CPUs=1, Nodes=1
[    0.000000] NR_IRQS:51
[    0.000000] Clocks: CPU:400.000MHz, DDR:400.000MHz, AHB:200.000MHz, Ref:25.000MHz
[    0.000000] Calibrating delay loop... 265.42 BogoMIPS (lpj=1327104)
[    0.080000] pid_max: default: 32768 minimum: 301
[    0.080000] Mount-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[    0.090000] Mountpoint-cache hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[    0.100000] NET: Registered protocol family 16
[    0.100000] MIPS: machine is WiFi Pineapple NANO
[    0.380000] Switched to clocksource MIPS
[    0.380000] NET: Registered protocol family 2
[    0.390000] TCP established hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[    0.390000] TCP bind hash table entries: 1024 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[    0.400000] TCP: Hash tables configured (established 1024 bind 1024)
[    0.400000] TCP: reno registered
[    0.410000] UDP hash table entries: 256 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[    0.410000] UDP-Lite hash table entries: 256 (order: 0, 4096 bytes)
[    0.420000] NET: Registered protocol family 1
[    0.420000] PCI: CLS 0 bytes, default 32
[    0.420000] futex hash table entries: 256 (order: -1, 3072 bytes)
[    0.440000] squashfs: version 4.0 (2009/01/31) Phillip Lougher
[    0.440000] jffs2: version 2.2 (NAND) (SUMMARY) (LZMA) (RTIME) (CMODE_PRIORITY) (c) 2001-2006 Red Hat, Inc.
[    0.450000] msgmni has been set to 119
[    0.460000] io scheduler noop registered
[    0.460000] io scheduler deadline registered (default)
[    0.470000] Serial: 8250/16550 driver, 1 ports, IRQ sharing disabled
[    0.470000] ar933x-uart: ttyATH0 at MMIO 0x18020000 (irq = 11, base_baud = 1562500) is a AR933X UART
[    0.480000] console [ttyATH0] enabled
[    0.490000] bootconsole [early0] disabled
[    0.500000] m25p80 spi0.0: found mx25l12805d, expected m25p80
[    0.500000] m25p80 spi0.0: mx25l12805d (16384 Kbytes)
[    0.520000] 5 tp-link partitions found on MTD device spi0.0
[    0.520000] Creating 5 MTD partitions on "spi0.0":
[    0.520000] 0x000000000000-0x000000020000 : "u-boot"
[    0.530000] 0x000000020000-0x000000134ec0 : "kernel"
[    0.540000] 0x000000134ec0-0x000000ff0000 : "rootfs"
[    0.540000] mtd: device 2 (rootfs) set to be root filesystem
[    0.550000] 1 squashfs-split partitions found on MTD device rootfs
[    0.550000] 0x000000dc0000-0x000000ff0000 : "rootfs_data"
[    0.560000] 0x000000ff0000-0x000001000000 : "art"
[    0.560000] 0x000000020000-0x000000ff0000 : "firmware"
[    0.590000] libphy: ag71xx_mdio: probed
[    1.190000] ag71xx ag71xx.0: connected to PHY at ag71xx-mdio.1:04 [uid=004dd041, driver=Generic PHY]
[    1.200000] eth0: Atheros AG71xx at 0xb9000000, irq 4, mode:MII
[    1.200000] TCP: cubic registered
[    1.200000] NET: Registered protocol family 17
[    1.210000] bridge: automatic filtering via arp/ip/ip6tables has been deprecated. Update your scripts to load br_netfilter if you need this.
[    1.220000] 8021q: 802.1Q VLAN Support v1.8
[    1.230000] VFS: Mounted root (squashfs filesystem) readonly on device 31:2.
[    1.240000] Freeing unused kernel memory: 260K (8036f000 - 803b0000)
[    2.630000] init: Console is alive
[    2.630000] init: - watchdog -
[    5.310000] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbfs
[    5.310000] usbcore: registered new interface driver hub
[    5.320000] usbcore: registered new device driver usb
[    5.370000] SCSI subsystem initialized
[    5.380000] ehci_hcd: USB 2.0 'Enhanced' Host Controller (EHCI) Driver
[    5.390000] ehci-platform: EHCI generic platform driver
[    5.390000] ehci-platform ehci-platform: EHCI Host Controller
[    5.400000] ehci-platform ehci-platform: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 1
[    5.410000] ehci-platform ehci-platform: irq 3, io mem 0x1b000000
[    5.430000] ehci-platform ehci-platform: USB 2.0 started, EHCI 1.00
[    5.430000] hub 1-0:1.0: USB hub found
[    5.430000] hub 1-0:1.0: 1 port detected
[    5.440000] ohci_hcd: USB 1.1 'Open' Host Controller (OHCI) Driver
[    5.450000] ohci-platform: OHCI generic platform driver
[    5.460000] uhci_hcd: USB Universal Host Controller Interface driver
[    5.470000] usbcore: registered new interface driver usb-storage
[    5.700000] init: - preinit -
[    5.810000] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci-platform
[    6.480000] random: procd urandom read with 10 bits of entropy available
[    6.480000] hub 1-1:1.0: USB hub found
[    6.490000] hub 1-1:1.0: 4 ports detected
[    6.710000] mount_root: loading kmods from internal overlay
[    6.960000] usb 1-1.1: new high-speed USB device number 3 using ehci-platform
[    7.010000] jffs2: notice: (325) jffs2_build_xattr_subsystem: complete building xattr subsystem, 0 of xdatum (0 unchecked, 0 orphan) and 0 of xref (0 dead, 0 orphan) found.
[    7.020000] block: attempting to load /tmp/jffs_cfg/upper/etc/config/fstab
[    7.040000] block: extroot: not configured
[    7.070000] jffs2: notice: (322) jffs2_build_xattr_subsystem: complete building xattr subsystem, 0 of xdatum (0 unchecked, 0 orphan) and 0 of xref (0 dead, 0 orphan) found.
[    7.200000] block: attempting to load /tmp/jffs_cfg/upper/etc/config/fstab
[    7.210000] block: extroot: not configured
[    7.220000] mount_root: switching to jffs2 overlay
[    7.230000] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-platform
[    7.280000] procd: - early -
[    7.290000] procd: - watchdog -
[    7.770000] usb-storage 1-1.2:1.0: USB Mass Storage device detected
[    7.860000] scsi host0: usb-storage 1-1.2:1.0
[    8.320000] procd: - ubus -
[    8.860000] scsi 0:0:0:0: Direct-Access     Generic  STORAGE DEVICE   0933 PQ: 0 ANSI: 6
[    9.230000] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] 122142720 512-byte logical blocks: (62.5 GB/58.2 GiB)
[    9.250000] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write Protect is off
[    9.250000] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Mode Sense: 21 00 00 00
[    9.250000] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Write cache: disabled, read cache: enabled, doesn't support DPO or FUA
[    9.280000]  sda: sda1 sda2
[    9.300000] sd 0:0:0:0: [sda] Attached SCSI removable disk
[    9.330000] procd: - init -
[   12.410000] EXT4-fs (sda1): couldn't mount as ext3 due to feature incompatibilities
[   12.430000] EXT4-fs (sda1): couldn't mount as ext2 due to feature incompatibilities
[   12.530000] EXT4-fs (sda1): recovery complete
[   12.530000] EXT4-fs (sda1): mounted filesystem with ordered data mode. Opts: (null)
[   12.990000] Adding 1004024k swap on /dev/sdcard/sd2.  Priority:-1 extents:1 across:1004024k 
[   13.110000] Loading modules backported from Linux version v4.4-rc5-1913-gc8fdf68
[   13.120000] Backport generated by backports.git backports-20151218-0-g2f58d9d
[   13.280000] ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x0
[   13.280000] ath: EEPROM indicates default country code should be used
[   13.280000] ath: doing EEPROM country->regdmn map search
[   13.280000] ath: country maps to regdmn code: 0x3a
[   13.280000] ath: Country alpha2 being used: US
[   13.280000] ath: Regpair used: 0x3a
[   13.290000] ieee80211 phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel_ht'
[   13.290000] ieee80211 phy0: Atheros AR9330 Rev:1 mem=0xb8100000, irq=2
[   13.310000] usb 1-1.1: ath9k_htc: Firmware ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw requested
[   13.320000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ath9k_htc
[   13.450000] RPC: Registered named UNIX socket transport module.
[   13.450000] RPC: Registered udp transport module.
[   13.460000] RPC: Registered tcp transport module.
[   13.460000] RPC: Registered tcp NFSv4.1 backchannel transport module.
[   13.500000] tun: Universal TUN/TAP device driver, 1.6
[   13.500000] tun: (C) 1999-2004 Max Krasnyansky <maxk@qualcomm.com>
[   13.570000] usbcore: registered new interface driver rt2800usb
[   13.590000] usbcore: registered new interface driver rtl8187
[   13.640000] usbcore: registered new interface driver rtl8192cu
[   13.690000] sd 0:0:0:0: Attached scsi generic sg0 type 0
[   13.700000] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_acm
[   13.710000] cdc_acm: USB Abstract Control Model driver for USB modems and ISDN adapters
[   13.720000] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_wdm
[   13.740000] nf_conntrack version 0.5.0 (956 buckets, 3824 max)
[   13.780000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ums-alauda
[   13.790000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ums-cypress
[   13.800000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ums-datafab
[   13.820000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ums-freecom
[   13.830000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ums-isd200
[   13.840000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ums-jumpshot
[   13.840000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ums-karma
[   13.850000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ums-sddr09
[   13.860000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ums-sddr55
[   13.870000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ums-usbat
[   13.890000] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial
[   13.890000] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbserial_generic
[   13.900000] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for generic
[   13.940000] usb 1-1.1: ath9k_htc: Transferred FW: ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw, size: 51008
[   13.960000] xt_time: kernel timezone is -0000
[   13.970000] usbcore: registered new interface driver asix
[   13.980000] usbcore: registered new interface driver ax88179_178a
[   13.990000] usbcore: registered new interface driver cdc_ether
[   14.000000] ip_tables: (C) 2000-2006 Netfilter Core Team
[   14.020000] usbcore: registered new interface driver pl2303
[   14.030000] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for pl2303
[   14.040000] PPP generic driver version 2.4.2
[   14.050000] NET: Registered protocol family 24
[   14.050000] usbcore: registered new interface driver qmi_wwan
[   14.060000] usbcore: registered new interface driver rndis_host
[   14.070000] usbcore: registered new interface driver sierra_net
[   14.090000] usbcore: registered new interface driver option
[   14.090000] usbserial: USB Serial support registered for GSM modem (1-port)
[   14.190000] ath9k_htc 1-1.1:1.0: ath9k_htc: HTC initialized with 33 credits
[   14.430000] ath9k_htc 1-1.1:1.0: ath9k_htc: FW Version: 1.4
[   14.440000] ath9k_htc 1-1.1:1.0: FW RMW support: On
[   14.440000] ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x0
[   14.440000] ath: EEPROM indicates default country code should be used
[   14.440000] ath: doing EEPROM country->regdmn map search
[   14.440000] ath: country maps to regdmn code: 0x3a
[   14.440000] ath: Country alpha2 being used: US
[   14.440000] ath: Regpair used: 0x3a
[   14.450000] ieee80211 phy1: Atheros AR9271 Rev:1
[   23.790000] device eth0 entered promiscuous mode
[   26.890000] eth0: link up (100Mbps/Full duplex)
[   27.340000] br-lan: port 1(eth0) entered forwarding state
[   27.340000] br-lan: port 1(eth0) entered forwarding state
[   29.340000] br-lan: port 1(eth0) entered forwarding state
[   29.870000] device wlan0 entered promiscuous mode
[   30.160000] br-lan: port 2(wlan0) entered forwarding state
[   30.170000] br-lan: port 2(wlan0) entered forwarding state
[   30.440000] random: nonblocking pool is initialized
[   32.170000] br-lan: port 2(wlan0) entered forwarding state
[   50.810000] br-lan: port 2(wlan0) entered disabled state
[   51.160000] device wlan0 left promiscuous mode
[   51.160000] br-lan: port 2(wlan0) entered disabled state
[   79.450000] device wlan0 entered promiscuous mode
[   79.450000] br-lan: port 2(wlan0) entered forwarding state
[   79.460000] br-lan: port 2(wlan0) entered forwarding state
[   79.550000] device wlan0-1 entered promiscuous mode
[   79.560000] br-lan: port 3(wlan0-1) entered forwarding state
[   79.560000] br-lan: port 3(wlan0-1) entered forwarding state
[   79.630000] eth0: link down
[   80.080000] br-lan: port 3(wlan0-1) entered disabled state
[   80.080000] br-lan: port 1(eth0) entered disabled state
[   80.280000] br-lan: port 3(wlan0-1) entered forwarding state
[   80.290000] br-lan: port 3(wlan0-1) entered forwarding state
[   81.460000] br-lan: port 2(wlan0) entered forwarding state
[   81.630000] eth0: link up (100Mbps/Full duplex)
[   81.630000] br-lan: port 1(eth0) entered forwarding state
[   81.640000] br-lan: port 1(eth0) entered forwarding state
[   82.290000] br-lan: port 3(wlan0-1) entered forwarding state
[   83.640000] br-lan: port 1(eth0) entered forwarding state
[  216.460000] device wlan1mon entered promiscuous mode
 

All of this was immediately after hard-resetting, configuring and then immediately checking the wlan1mon mode. It was just fine until I enabled the PineAP stuff. 

[Foxtrot]

Please, use the [ spoiler ] [ /spoiler ] (Without spaces) tags when posting long logs.

The "issue" with the HWAddr and Link Encap isn't an indication of any issue at all, it is normal to see such output, because its a monitor interface. Disable wlan1mon and run ifconfig and you will see it return to a more normal output.

 

 

[DaveMcDave]

9 minutes ago, Foxtrot said:

Please, use the [ spoiler ] [ /spoiler ] (Without spaces) tags when posting long logs.

The "issue" with the HWAddr and Link Encap isn't an indication of any issue at all, it is normal to see such output, because its a monitor interface. Disable wlan1mon and run ifconfig and you will see it return to a more normal output.

 

 

I tried to go back and edit it, I just didn't see any obvious way to do that. Sorry about the long post. 

Funny enough, that's not quite what happened. When I turned off wlan1mon, it stayed as wlan1mon with the same info, and the interface is still 'broken'

 

[DaveMcDave]

There's another thread where someone mentioned that theirs started showing only 1 bssid at a time, and then eventually stopped outputting altogether. I think I have it narrowed down - When I enable all 6 options under the PineAP tab. I can enable 5, and things are okay. As soon as I enable the 6th one, within a few seconds all hell breaks loose. I don't know if it's just coincidence, but I'm going to test more when I have more time and see if I can repro the issue more specifically. 

[bad2da]

What does your CPU consumption look like during this period?

[nastyolbstrd]

Mine is usually pegged at 80-90% with no modules running. Overheats after about 7 minutes.

[Foxtrot]

Unless the device is rebooting when it's warm, or is melting the chassis, it is probably doing okay temperature wise. The CPU% indicator in the UI is "inflated" because the call to get the CPU% generates usages itself. Use top to get a more accurate reading.

[nastyolbstrd]

44 minutes ago, Foxtrot said:

Unless the device is rebooting when it's warm, or is melting the chassis, it is probably doing okay temperature wise. The CPU% indicator in the UI is "inflated" because the call to get the CPU% generates usages itself. Use top to get a more accurate reading.

Thank You! Real data is REAL! If you subtract the Idle% The true CPU usage is shown. With just the Pine AP running it's peaking at around 35%. This sure is a cool little tool!

[barrien]

I'm getting much the same stuff happening on my Nano, haven't had a lot of chance to look into it yet though. It seems random as to how long before wlan1 fails, sometimes it is quick(2-3 minutes), and I've had it run as long as 15-20 minutes in continuous recon with associations allowed.

 

Generally run it through my phone via the management AP, but a hard reboot always brings it right back up(though that's a bit annoying, especially if it happens after 2-3 minutes).