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Experimental Atheros AR81(31/32/51/52/61/62/71/72) Driver for 10.7/10.8

Shailua

By Shailua,
in LAN and Wireless

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p.H
p.H
Posted
Posted

Thanks for the error report! That's one of my "oh no this should never happen!" messages, so it's easy for me to pinpoint. I've been tinkering with the memory allocation code a bit lately, so I've hopefully fixed it with a more suitable allocation method that isn't a holdover from the original AtherosL1cEthernet code. Asking the kernel to allocate chunks of contiguous physical memory tends to be rather touchy, but I don't think these cards tolerate anything less. I'll double check everything is still working okay on my desktop machine when I'm back home tomorrow and hopefully get 1.0.2 out soon after that. :)

Looking forward to it. This kext should have improved lots lots lots of hackintoshers's experience.

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Shailua
Shailua
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1.0.2 is now up. Hopefully the memory allocation will be more forgiving now, but if the problems persist for some folks then I'll have look into rewriting some of the descriptor stuff. Hmm, unless it's a 32-bit issue. I haven't tried this driver at all in 32-bit mode since I'm on 10.8. One day I might add another HDD and install 10.7 with the 32-bit kernel for testing purposes. I have a old netbook I could also try that has an 8152 chipset in it, but getting Mac OS X working on an AMD Fusion laptop is a bit of a headache. :)

 

Anyway, enough of my ranting. Good luck with testing everyone. Everything's fine on my machine so far while sending several gigabytes back and forth between it and my MacBook. Things definitely seem to transfer in both directions about 10-20MB/s faster with this driver than the AtherosL1cEthernet driver.

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p.H
p.H
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Posted

1.0.2 is now up. Hopefully the memory allocation will be more forgiving now, but if the problems persist for some folks then I'll have look into rewriting some of the descriptor stuff. Hmm, unless it's a 32-bit issue. I haven't tried this driver at all in 32-bit mode since I'm on 10.8. One day I might add another HDD and install 10.7 with the 32-bit kernel for testing purposes. I have a old netbook I could also try that has an 8152 chipset in it, but getting Mac OS X working on an AMD Fusion laptop is a bit of a headache. :)

 

Anyway, enough of my ranting. Good luck with testing everyone. Everything's fine on my machine so far while sending several gigabytes back and forth between it and my MacBook. Things definitely seem to transfer in both directions about 10-20MB/s faster with this driver than the AtherosL1cEthernet driver.

Do you think it's necessary to switch my AtherosL1cEthernet to this new driver?

My spec is AR8152 v1.1

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p.H
p.H
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Posted

1.0.2 is now up. Hopefully the memory allocation will be more forgiving now, but if the problems persist for some folks then I'll have look into rewriting some of the descriptor stuff. Hmm, unless it's a 32-bit issue. I haven't tried this driver at all in 32-bit mode since I'm on 10.8. One day I might add another HDD and install 10.7 with the 32-bit kernel for testing purposes. I have a old netbook I could also try that has an 8152 chipset in it, but getting Mac OS X working on an AMD Fusion laptop is a bit of a headache. :)

 

Anyway, enough of my ranting. Good luck with testing everyone. Everything's fine on my machine so far while sending several gigabytes back and forth between it and my MacBook. Things definitely seem to transfer in both directions about 10-20MB/s faster with this driver than the AtherosL1cEthernet driver.

 

http://d.pr/i/OWAI

here is my problem.

When I'm using just as I always did. Suddenly my hack hanged. I have to press the power button to restart my hack :(

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Shailua
Shailua
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Do you think it's necessary to switch my AtherosL1cEthernet to this new driver?

My spec is AR8152 v1.1

 

The AR8152 is a 100Mb/s (non-gigabit) adapter, so it might not be worth switching if the other driver works fine. Speed is only really an issue if you transfer a lot of files around over your ethernet LAN or have a *really* fast Internet connection.

 

 

 

http://d.pr/i/OWAI

here is my problem.

When I'm using just as I always did. Suddenly my hack hanged. I have to press the power button to restart my hack :(

 

:( That's very unfortunate. The MAC reset errors seem to be the issue. These are sent out by some of the low-level internal hardware code when something goes wrong. Was there any other [ALXEthernet] messages other than the MAC reset errors that you can see in /var/log/system.log from the Console app? If not it might be a problem that can only be fixed with a Linux patch from Atheros themselves. I'll try and investigate further if I can though.

Sometimes I've noticed the ethernet card can go a little odd when a new kext is loaded for the first time though. You could try unplugging all power from your PC for a few seconds and then booting and see if it helps. There's a (very slim) chance that it might help.

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p.H
p.H
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The AR8152 is a 100Mb/s (non-gigabit) adapter, so it might not be worth switching if the other driver works fine. Speed is only really an issue if you transfer a lot of files around over your ethernet LAN or have a *really* fast Internet connection.

 

 

 

:( That's very unfortunate. The MAC reset errors seem to be the issue. These are sent out by some of the low-level internal hardware code when something goes wrong. Was there any other [ALXEthernet] messages other than the MAC reset errors that you can see in /var/log/system.log from the Console app? If not it might be a problem that can only be fixed with a Linux patch from Atheros themselves. I'll try and investigate further if I can though.

Sometimes I've noticed the ethernet card can go a little odd when a new kext is loaded for the first time though. You could try unplugging all power from your PC for a few seconds and then booting and see if it helps. There's a (very slim) chance that it might help.

:D i've switched back to the previous kext.

I want to keep a more stable hack for my personal reasons. Appreciation for this new kext anyway.

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Rouge1
Rouge1
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:( That's very unfortunate. The MAC reset errors seem to be the issue. These are sent out by some of the low-level internal hardware code when something goes wrong. Was there any other [ALXEthernet] messages other than the MAC reset errors that you can see in /var/log/system.log from the Console app? If not it might be a problem that can only be fixed with a Linux patch from Atheros themselves. I'll try and investigate further if I can though.

Sometimes I've noticed the ethernet card can go a little odd when a new kext is loaded for the first time though. You could try unplugging all power from your PC for a few seconds and then booting and see if it helps. There's a (very slim) chance that it might help.

 

Working fine with 1.0.2 driver, no mac reset errors on the log.

 

MB: GA-Z77-DS3H v1.1

NIC: AR8161

OS: 10.8.2

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p.H
p.H
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Thanks for this! It's working perfectly, at full gigabit rates, with my GA-Z77-D3H (F14) and 10.8.2. :thumbsup_anim:

 

I had zero success with Maolj's Atheros kext.

Maolj's kext is really quite old. :D

congrats

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Shailua
Shailua
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Glad to hear it's working for those it's working for. :)

 

I've been tinkering with my AO522 netbook and managed to get Snow Leopard working on it, albeit rather poorly given it's an AMD C-50 processor with only fallback 800x600 graphics working. It's been good enough to allow me to install a Snow Leopard build of ALXEthernet however, so now I have an AR8152 v2.0 chipset to test things out on as well. I discovered a previously reported bug with running 32-bit drivers compiled with Xcode 4.5, so I'm back to using 4.4 for now. Xcode 4.4 with the Snow Leopard APIs and a minor code change later and the driver was working fine on the netbook. Still going to do some more testing but then I should be able to release builds for 10.6 as well as 10.7/10.8.

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slipnfall
slipnfall
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Basic functionality confirmed (obtained DHCP, HTTP traffic OK):

 

Gigabyte GA-H77M-D3H (v1.1) BIOS F9

(AR8161 chipset).

ML 10.8.2

 

Thanks for your contribution - my first hackintosh is now actually usable. :thumbsup_anim:

 

(Note, that version 1.0 of the above MB would work 'out of the box' with the existing Atheros driver in ###### - would not work with this v1.1 chipset)

 

ALX Ethernet Driver:
Name: Qualcomm Atheros AR8161 Gigabit Ethernet
Type: Ethernet Controller
Bus: PCI
Vendor ID: 0x1969
Device ID: 0x1091
Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x1458
Subsystem ID: 0xe000
Revision ID: 0x0010
Link Width: x1
BSD name: en0
Kext name: ALXEthernet.kext
Location: /System/Library/Extensions/ALXEthernet.kext
Version: 1.0.2

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p.H
p.H
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Posted

Works great, but still cannot connect to iCloud, App Store, etc.

 

Running a GA H77 DS3H

That's not the case here. You need to search for solution elsewhere in the forum.

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  • 2 weeks later...
the_gael
the_gael
Posted
Posted (edited)

Hello Shailua and thank you for your work! I tried your kext as it is included in ###### 5.2 and I had no trouble loading it and everything appeared fine until I used a VPN connection.

 

My board is Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H F14 and I am using Chimera as bootloader.

 

My problem is that after disconnecting the VPN yunnel my ethernet no longer works. I still have an IP address and I can renew the lease from the DHCP server but internet just does not work. I then have to reboot the machine in order to regain functionality. This behaviour is intermittent with the fault appearing somewhere between 30-40% of the time after closing a VPN tunnel. On my post on the subject over at tonymacx86.com I notice another user has reported inability to connect using the driver when the VPN is configured on his router. In his case removing the VPN from the router addressed his issue or using maolj's kext also addressed the issue.

 

In my case I also had slow performance over VPN using your kext from ###### 5.2. Reverting to maolj's kext resolved my connection problems and the slow speed over VPN issue.

 

Are you aware of issues using VPN? I am happy to load the kext again and provide verbose output if it will help.

 

edited to add - Shailua I just spotted that where the word _Multi_beast_ is hashes have replaced the letters in my post - but version 5.2 of that is what I am using.

Edited by the_gael
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  • 3 weeks later...
Tauio111
Tauio111
Posted
Posted

Looks nice, but for some reason I cant change my MAC address in any way. I need it to connect to the internet because my ISP only allows connection from certain MAC address. The AtherosL1c kext doesnt connect after wake from sleep, but allows the MAC address to be changed.

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MrWouter
MrWouter
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Hi, tried to install the kext v1.0.2 included in [url="http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/topic/279450-why-insanelymac-does-not-support-tonymacx86/"]#####[/url] but i'm getting a kernal panic. It usually happens when there is a high network load, with different programs trying to acces the web.

 

Photo: http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/827/photo3ohl.jpg/

 

Specs:

i3 3220

z77x-d3h

4gb memory

 

Hope you can fix it, cause there aren't good alternatives.

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  • 3 weeks later...
ovof
ovof
Posted
Posted

Hi all,

 

under big load, crash with the kext with GA Z77 DS3H.

 

I was able to reproduce the crash 3 times.

Like it was a memory leak

 

i use an old kext AtherosL1cEthernet.kext, no crash, but pb with network browsing/discovering

 

 

Is there another version > 1.0.2 to fix the issues ?

 

regards

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ovof
ovof
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Strange :)

 

i got AtherosL1cEthernet.kext source code v 1.2.3

 

with xcode, i upgraded the project from SDK 10.7 to 10.8

 

compile and tadatdatda

 

bonjour is now working flawless after sleep/wake on Z77 DS3H 1.0

and i've got network speed @ 108MB/s :)

 

the kext was compiled in debug mode, so ive got debug strings on console, but it doesnt matter at all

 

autosleep is working

 

i've tried several times, it seems ok.

 

Let see over time if its ok, perhaps Bonjour Issues was only an SDK issue

 

wait and see carefully

 

Epal

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