WN722N crashes shortly after start

[Treyor]

Hi all,

My TL-WN722N wireless adaptor is starting just fine but it crashes about 2-4 mins in.

ping: sendmsg: No buffer space available

I monitor it with ping. When it crashes, ping will turn to No buffer space available with no new entries in dmesg, anything in /var/log/*, VBox.log or my Mac's syslog. No logs anywhere...

Any scripts that are using it will hang (Ctrl+C doesn't stop them). At this point I need to detach the USB through VirtualBox. If I physically remove the USB straightaway, the entire VM will usually freeze.

I'm running things like bettercap. Any activity will cause it to crash eventually, but bettercap is reliably fast at doing so.

The green light on the WN722N will usually be flashing when working, and then solid green when it crashes. I'll then have to reboot for it to successfully reconnect.

Does anyone know what could be the cause?

On plugging in:

Jan 15 13:36:56 kali kernel: [  422.440113] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using ehci-pci
Jan 15 13:36:57 kali kernel: [  422.591669] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0cf3, idProduct=9271
Jan 15 13:36:57 kali kernel: [  422.591674] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=16, Product=32, SerialNumber=48
Jan 15 13:36:57 kali kernel: [  422.591676] usb 1-1: Product: USB2.0 WLAN
Jan 15 13:36:57 kali kernel: [  422.591677] usb 1-1: Manufacturer: ATHEROS
Jan 15 13:36:57 kali kernel: [  422.591679] usb 1-1: SerialNumber: 12345
Jan 15 13:36:57 kali kernel: [  422.765103] usb 1-1: ath9k_htc: Firmware ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw requested
Jan 15 13:36:57 kali kernel: [  422.765772] usbcore: registered new interface driver ath9k_htc
Jan 15 13:36:57 kali kernel: [  422.772921] usb 1-1: firmware: direct-loading firmware ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw
Jan 15 13:36:57 kali kernel: [  423.104244] usb 1-1: ath9k_htc: Transferred FW: ath9k_htc/htc_9271-1.4.0.fw, size: 51008
Jan 15 13:36:57 kali kernel: [  423.371602] ath9k_htc 1-1:1.0: ath9k_htc: HTC initialized with 33 credits
Jan 15 13:36:58 kali kernel: [  424.119136] ath9k_htc 1-1:1.0: ath9k_htc: FW Version: 1.4
Jan 15 13:36:58 kali kernel: [  424.119141] ath9k_htc 1-1:1.0: FW RMW support: On
Jan 15 13:36:58 kali kernel: [  424.148630] ieee80211 phy0: Atheros AR9271 Rev:1
Jan 15 13:36:58 kali NetworkManager[406]: <info>  [1484487418.6478] (wlan0): using nl80211 for WiFi device control
Jan 15 13:36:58 kali NetworkManager[406]: <info>  [1484487418.6480] device (wlan0): driver supports Access Point (AP) mode
Jan 15 13:36:58 kali NetworkManager[406]: <info>  [1484487418.6571] manager: (wlan0): new 802.11 WiFi device (/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/2)
Jan 15 13:36:58 kali NetworkManager[406]: <info>  [1484487418.6888] rfkill0: found WiFi radio killswitch (at /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0b.0/usb1/1-1/1-1:1.0/ieee80211/phy0/rfkill0) (driver ath9k_htc)
Jan 15 13:36:58 kali NetworkManager[406]: <info>  [1484487418.7339] devices added (path: /sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0b.0/usb1/1-1/1-1:1.0/net/wlan0, iface: wlan0)

root@kali:~# uname -a
Linux kali 4.6.0-kali1-686-pae #1 SMP Debian 4.6.4-1kali1 (2016-07-21) i686 GNU/Linux

root@kali:~# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0cf3:9271 Atheros Communications, Inc. AR9271 802.11n
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 80ee:0021 VirtualBox USB Tablet
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

root@kali:~# iwconfig
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"BTHub-xxx"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.462 GHz  Access Point: xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx 
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=53/70  Signal level=-57 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:7  Invalid misc:195   Missed beacon:0

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

root@kali:~# lsmod|grep ath
ath9k_htc              61440  0
ath9k_common           32768  1 ath9k_htc
ath9k_hw              413696  2 ath9k_common,ath9k_htc
ath                    24576  3 ath9k_common,ath9k_htc,ath9k_hw
mac80211              520192  1 ath9k_htc
cfg80211              438272  4 ath,ath9k_common,mac80211,ath9k_htc
usbcore               184320  6 ohci_hcd,ohci_pci,ehci_hcd,ehci_pci,usbhid,ath9k_htc

VirtualBox w/ Extension Pack v5.1.12 running on MacOS

Some solutions for ping: sendmsg: No buffer space available suggested increasing the ARP cache size but to no avail:

root@kali:~# grep thresh /etc/sysctl.conf 
net.ipv4.neigh.default.gc_thresh3 = 4096
net.ipv4.neigh.default.gc_thresh2 = 2048
net.ipv4.neigh.default.gc_thresh1 = 1024

[JonasJR]

Hello!
I have also had this problem for some time now! Been searching the web for solutions but nothing...
Have you found a solution?

[awfulwaffle]

try this:

First Reboot, than type: ps -e | grep dh

*Is there more than one dhclient process running? If so kill the process with kill -9 "PID-of-process-here" than start a fresh dhclient process

*Possible this is a kernel bug that thinks you are in China(CN) instead of United States(US).

[Treyor]

After successfully testing the wifi card on a Nexus 5 and VMware (on my Mac), the problem only exists with VirtualBox.

First Reboot, than type: ps -e | grep dh

*Is there more than one dhclient process running? If so kill the process with kill -9 "PID-of-process-here" than start a fresh dhclient process

Running that on both the working VMware and non-working VirtualBox, I see a dhclient process for each of my 2 interfaces (they start and stop as the wifi card is in/out).

*Possible this is a kernel bug that thinks you are in China(CN) instead of United States(US).

I get this too on the working VMware box:

 kali kernel: [   51.332187] ath: Country alpha2 being used: CN

[leafle]

I am having the exact same issue. If there is anything I can do figure out the problem, just ask!

[Treyor]

I am having the exact same issue. If there is anything I can do figure out the problem, just ask!

My temporary solution was switching from virtualbox to vmware