wavemon gives inconsistant signal level values about wavemon HOT 8 CLOSED

Thanks for reporting. It looks like this is new hardware. To find out whether this is a driver or userland issue, could I get you to provide a few more details, please.

• Since you are using debian, it might be that you are using an older version of wavemon, the current one is 0.8.2?
  • if it is a very old release (pre 0.8.0), it reacts more like iwconfig, since most of the wireless extension calls were removed in 0.8.x
• In order to narrow down the problem, could you give the output of
  • iw dev <yourDevName> station dump
  • iw dev <yourDevName> link

If you see iw reporting the same nonsensical levels, it more likely is a driver problem. We just had a recent issue where the driver reported 0dBm (but not +70), and then fixed in 0.8.2.

from wavemon.

Hi,

the package shipped with Debian stretch is 0.8.1, but I tried with the latest version compiled from the git repo. Also not I'm using a kernel 4.14.17.

sudo iw dev wlp58s0 station dump
Station xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (on wlp58s0)
	inactive time:	79368 ms
	rx bytes:	420225
	rx packets:	4617
	tx bytes:	15265
	tx packets:	67
	tx retries:	7
	tx failed:	0
	beacon loss:	146
	beacon rx:	21036
	rx drop misc:	0
	signal:  	-74 dBm
	signal avg:	72 dBm
	beacon signal avg:	184 dBm
	tx bitrate:	1.0 MBit/s
	rx bitrate:	36.0 MBit/s
	authorized:	yes
	authenticated:	yes
	associated:	yes
	preamble:	long
	WMM/WME:	no
	MFP:		no
	TDLS peer:	no
	DTIM period:	1
	beacon interval:100
	short preamble:	yes
	connected time:	2325 seconds

sudo iw dev wlp58s0 link
Connected to xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (on wlp58s0)
	SSID: xxx
	freq: 2437
	RX: 421335 bytes (4633 packets)
	TX: 15265 bytes (67 packets)
	signal: -72 dBm
	tx bitrate: 1.0 MBit/s

	bss flags:	short-preamble
	dtim period:	1
	beacon int:	100

Indeed, signal avg and beacon signal avg are not exactly the correct scale...

from wavemon.

Thank you for following up. As far as I remember, the print-out reflects directly the values returned via libnl from the kernel internals; which means that the driver has a bug.
It would be good to inform people from linux-wireless and/or the driver maintainer.

If you can give me until next weekend, I can look into finding a work-around in order to sanity-check non-sensical values (similar to the 0dB problem referred to earlier).

from wavemon.

Hi, I have added a work-around for this situation.

Can you please,

• compile from master and let me know if this works for your case,
• let me know the kernel version, in order to inform the driver developers?

Thanks in advance.

from wavemon.

@douardda - did you have time to look into this?

from wavemon.

Not yet, sorry. I'll try this evening and report the results,
thank you.

from wavemon.

Just tried the current head (bd7e970) and wavemon now shows me acceptable values, thanks a lot.

FTR, my kernel is 4.15.11-1~bpo9+1 (from debian stretch-backports).

@grrtrr thanks again

from wavemon.

Thank you for taking the time to confirm. I will add this fix to the changelog and post the details of this issue on the linux-wireless list, for them to take a look at the kernel module.

from wavemon.