Re: /dev/ath log messages

Beech Rintoul wrote:
> I have noticed that for about the past month or so I've been getting hundreds 
> of the following every day in /var/log/messages:
> 
> +ath0: link state changed to DOWN
> +ath0: link state changed to UP
> 
> It doesn't seem to affect connectivity, but it's really annoying in the 
> security report. Is there anything I can do to stop this? I'm running 
> -CURRENT from yesterday. I have built Sam's new drivers, but this problem 
> started long before that and was not affected by the upgrade. The lease on 
> the AP I'm connecting to is good for 24 hours so I don't think that's an 
> issue. I looked at the traffic with ethereal and everything looks normal. I'm 
> getting sorely tempted to go back to isc-dhclient and see if this goes away, 
> but I thought I would ask here first.

sysctl net.link.log_link_state_change=0

will make the msgs go away.  I do this on all my laptops.

The issue (which should be in an FAQ) is that your station is 
reassociating to the ap, typically because you are idle.  Each time this 
happens the link state goes down+up.  The dhcp lease is not relevant. 
You might be able to tweak ap parameters to increase the idle timeout 
but aside from the link state msgs there's no reason to.

	Sam