Atheros Wireless requires manual start.

Unknown_User · 10-06-2008, 04:13 PM

Hi all,

I'm afraid that a wireless problem is defeating me, grateful if anyone has any ideas.

I have a laptop with an Atheros wireless chipset, the wifi card is supported natively in the kernel.

When I boot the laptop Ubuntu shows the appropriate driver as being loaded but not used. There is no wifi0 or ath0 and none of the applets can see the card to start it.

If I unload the driver and reload it, hey presto, ath0 is created and the laptop happily connects to my wireless access point. Unfortunately I seem to have to do this manually every time I boot.

Grateful for any ideas as to how I can get it to load properly.

tredegar · 10-07-2008, 02:03 PM

Something is out-of-sync with your boot process. I have had this with kubuntu 6.06 and 8.04.
Easy solution:
Put the commands you need to fire up your wireless in the file /etc/rc.local just before the final exit 0 line.

Code:

# restart wireless networking, or it doesn't work
ifdown eth1
ifup eth1

exit 0

Works for me.

jbuckley2004 · 10-07-2008, 02:07 PM

I think that's going to be
ifdown ath0
ifup ath0

though, Unknown.

tredegar · 10-07-2008, 02:12 PM

Well, those are the commands I need to get it to work, I just gave an example of how the end of the /etc/rc.local file should look.

Unknown_User is supposed to substitute the commands he needs.
I thought I'd made that clear, obviously not.

Unknown_User · 10-07-2008, 02:20 PM

Thanks for the replies, much appreciated.

After a little work I am now able to bring up the interface by using /sbin/modprobe ath_pci but this is a manual process every time.

Am I right in thinking that until modprobe has done its stuff that "ifdown ath0" etc won't work as ath0 doesn't exist until the module is loaded?

Do you know how I can make modprobe occur automatically other than using a script? The interface used to work prior to a routine update (I don't know what change caused the problem - newer kernel, madwifi version and lots more were changed) so I'm guessing that something has affected the way in which the module is now not loaded.

Thanks...

Jykke · 10-07-2008, 02:25 PM

Ubuntu's wireless howtos actually advice creating /etc/init.d/wireless-restart with content:

#!/bin/sh
/etc/init.d/networking restart

and then linking this to for example
/etc/rcS.d/S42wireless

with sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/wireless-restart /etc/rcS.d/S42wireless

in rc.local the restart of the interface occurs relatively late and may produce problems elsewhere...

tredegar · 10-07-2008, 04:37 PM

Quote:

After a little work I am now able to bring up the interface by using /sbin/modprobe ath_pci but this is a manual process every time.

This is linux, there are many ways to solve your problem, all of them different, and they'll all probably work. Which method you choose is up to you.

Whatever commands you have to enter "manually" to get your wireless to work, you need to put at the end of the file /etc/rc.local just before the final exit 0 as above.

Just put them in that file, it'll work.

Or, you can follow Jykke's post. As I said, there are many ways to achieve what you want