[ubuntu] Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

[gabsik]

Hi All!
I have an acer aspire 5520 amd64 athlon and our dear hardy heron operating on it .
Fresh install , i see the "configure third party and propietary drivers" applet confirming with green flags all drivers are supported , in my case the nvidia , the atheros HAL and the atheros 802.11 .For the nvidia few clicks and the 3d desktop got sorted , no stress , but not the wi-fi ! WHY ? I have installed the hardy heron for amd64 , so drivers should be the right ones , i don't see the presence of any wireless interface , i have removed the "gnome network manager" and i installed wicd , great prog , but it doesn't see a wireless 'if' either . I think i don't need to download and compile anything more than what already is on my pc where also the ndiswrapper module is present . In a previous install , i don't remember if i installed both madwifi and ndiswrapper , but i had two wireless extensions an ath0 and a wifi0 , they handled the connection to the router but no browsing , all really bad !!!!

05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

This is my wireless interface , i don't think i need to download anything more and i'm sure i can already now configure wireless for my pc . I modprobed all the ath* drivers , what else should i do ? Module-assistant ? Am i going all wrong ? Thanks!

[porchrat]

I had the same card...madwifi worked for me...didn't need ndiswrapper

[gabsik]

SUCCESS !
I only installed a subversion madwifi package , after finished i have closed the terminal and i couldn't make any 'copy and paste' of the entire operation to have a detailed share of the success here . I saw this thread basically in any linux forum of cyberspace , so i will be really short and essential .

"The 5 rules to have wifi working with Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron on "AMD64 AthlonX2 Acer ASPIRE 5520 and Atheros AR242x 802.11abg" .

It was a week ago , so they are well tested .

1 ) First purge any presence or activity of any form of ndiswrapper. After reboot the Hardware drivers listed in System/HardwareDrivers must have a red light aside .

2 ) Remove from /etc/modprobe/blacklist any reference of ath_pci and ath_hal you removed before ...

3 ) Download:

svn co https://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/branches/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6

4 ) Install it reading the INSTALL files inside the package.

5 ) Enable back both drivers , reboot , enjoy !!!!

P.S.
If you don't know much of compiling generally ( and this case is about compiling a module ) launch apt-get install module-assistant . Than launch it on its own in a terminal window and it prompts you with a list of options . Choose "PREPARE" it is to prepare the system for compiling modules and it downloads for you all kernel headers and compilers you need . It's best if you do this before you launch "make && make install" after the driver download !!!!

[gabsik]

Still a week later after nvidia drivers gave me propblems on resolution screen ( 900x800 ) and after i have installed the envyng package as last resort (mine is a nvidia geforge 7000m not fully supported ) and sorted out the video , ath_pci stopped working ! Yeah ! You got it ! i have no wireless again now ....

[porchrat]

navigate to the madwifi driver directory and do a make clean then redo the install on the madwifi drivers?

hopefully that will help

[reasoner]

Thanks so much to those above for figuring this out for me. Let me spell out the installation in a little more detail to save those after me some time.

I did this on a fresh Ubuntu 8.04 install on a Compaq Presario C770US Laptop with an ethernet cable plugged into my router.

The device string displayed by lspci -v was as follows:

01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 137a
	Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
	Memory at 91300000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
	Capabilities: <access denied>

First under System/Administration/HarwareDrivers disable both the Atheros HAL and the Atheros wireless thing and then reboot.

The kernel headers and the compiler are needed to build this driver so I started by installing build-essential. In a terminal window (Applications/Accessories/Terminal) enter:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

The driver code will be downloaded with the subversion source code manager so I installed subversion:

sudo apt-get install subversion

I needed a place to put the driver source without mixing it up with other stuff so I changed directory to my home directory:

cd ~

Created a directory:

mkdir madwifi

And changed to the new dirctory:

cd madwifi

Use subversion to download (checkout) a copy of the code:

svn co https://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/branches/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6

The above command failed for me at first because subversion couldn't find svn.madwifi.org
Madwifi will probably have their DNS problems worked out by the time you read this. But if not then see the section at the bottom of this post titled "Cant find svn.madwifi.org" for a solution before continuing.

After the driver code is downloaded by subversion, change to the directory, which should be madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6

cd madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6

Run the make script to have the compiler build the driver:

make

Install the driver

sudo make install

Add the Atheros kernel module to the list of modules to be automatically loaded at boot by adding "ath_pci" (without the quotes) to the end of the /etc/modules file. I used the vi editor which I won't describe here. Gedit is probably easy to use so try:

sudo gedit /etc/modules

Now you can reboot and it should work. To get it working without a reboot you need to load the module manually:

sudo modprobe ath_pci

That should do it. The little wireless button seems to always stay lit orange. When I press it it seems to disable the wireless but it still stays lit orange. WPA works for me. I assume WEP will also. I haven't tried WPA2



CANT FIND svn.madwifi.org

If subversion has a hard time finding svn.madwifi.org then add it's IP address to your hosts file. I found this page http://madwifi.org/ticket/1982 at madwifi.org that gives the IP address 217.24.1.142 of svn.madwifi.org in one of the last messages. I tried just giving subversion the command to connect to the IP address instead of the domain name, but it failed before finishing the checkout. Edit the file /etc/hosts and add "217.24.1.142 svn.madwifi.org" (without the quotes). I added it just after the 127.0.1.1 line

sudo gedit /etc/hosts

Now you can continue with the subversion checkout. You should probably remove this line from your hosts file when you're done with this so that if you want to go back there some day and they've moved it then DNS will give the most recent IP address.

[xox]

this post (reasoner) was a huge help - previous to this i had tried other madwifi install methods and the ndiswrapper with both atheros and broadcom wireless xp drivers.

i managed to install both xp drivers, but never detected any wireless networks. with this post, i now see available wireless networks - but - i am unable to connect to them.

i tried connecting both from the wireless drop down list, and through manual configuration, without any luck.

i both followed reasoner's steps (successfully) and tried, and then also re-enabled the two wireless driver in hardware settings as gabsik mentioned - no luck either time.

any suggestions would be great - cheers

[gabsik]

I have formatted and installed back the lot . I have formatted my previous installation cause after madwifi subversion install , if i'm not wrong , nvidia stopped working , giving a really low resolution i could not get around for the low resolution and gave up .
I will install the package fron madwifi.org and i will tell u ...

[gabsik]

Ok giving for damn sure that if you want wireless working on your acer aspire 5520 with atheros wireless card you have to follow this tutorial http://forumubuntusoftware.info/view...php?f=7&t=1278 ,no ndiswrapper of whatever .
Nvidia also stopped working cause i have upgraded the kernel .
On this new install i have the big orange star of new available updates staying on the top of the desktop and i'm not going to do any update for now . When i will , cause i will , i have to cd back in madwifi sorces dir launch a make clean && make && make install , and then i will have my wireless devices up again , am i wrong ? Thanks !
p.s.
What for nvidia ?

[spynga]

this worked like a charm my windows went down so i had to find a solution for my wireless and this worked after like 50 other tutorials i tried