wireless wont work -Atheros AR242x 802.11abg
 

Hi forum,

I just installed fedora 9 and I'm trying to get wireless to work.

I've tried installing madwifi because I have a live CD that wireless works on and uses madwifi-ng.

lspci tells me my card is:

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

iwconfig:
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

pan0 no wireless extensions.

Hi Tac90,

What version of MadWifi do you have? According to their wiki your card should be supported, but...

If you're using a Notebook (such as an Acer Aspire) there is a link on the compatibility field: http://madwifi.org/ticket/1679

That ticket relates to support-patches that were created to enable this card.

As I have an Acer notebook myself and am running Slack on it, I intend to use MadWifi to enable my system. When I implement, I'll post back any learnings from my experience if I think they could help you with yours.

Thanks,

Lyle

I tried that patch and some other things such as blacklisting ath5k and it still didn't work. I ended up just using the live cd that I know works for now. Maybe when I get more knowledgeable in linux I'll figure out why the live cd works.

Not that it's going to do you any AMAZING amount of good, but when you're booted up in your Live CD, since they usually throw just about every module at the problem until something works, try lsmod and see which modules are loaded pertaining to wifi.

It's possible you're missing a few items from your running kernel under your HDD-based OS... Did you compile your own kernel?

You need to check compatibility with the MadWiFi drivers: not all chips
work right now.

In particular, many current Wistron laptops (Acer, Fujitsu, HP, some
others) have the Atheros 2425 AKA AR5007EG AKA AR5BXB63. This chipset has
just now finally been supported in the proprietary HAL courtesy of a new
release by Sam Leffler.

This HAL is now in the latest snapshots and subversion but NOT in stable.
To use it, you'll need to download and compile one of those. If you
don't compile your own kernel, you'll need to blacklist "ath5k" as well.

Obviously this won't help you if you're using a live-CD/DVD, though. :(

Mike

# lspci -v
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
Subsystem: Askey Computer Corp. Device 7128
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
Memory at 94600000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: <access denied>
Kernel driver in use: ath5k_pci
Kernel modules: ath5k




# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wmaster0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2352 B
Encryption key:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0



I am also having no luck with this hardware.

someone posted a fix :)

http://www.drewwithers.com/content/d...ite-a215-s4747

And just in case you want to go all the way back to the madwifi-project ticket this originated in...
http://madwifi-project.org/ticket/1192

but that is the driver I use in my Acer Aspire one Netbook running Debian Lenny. and it works perfectly.

I am also running Debian Lenny. I just bought a Toshiba Satellite L305-S5919. I started to sell the laptop because I thought it was incompatible. It was VERY difficult to get Linux to run on my laptop. Did you run into issues other than getting your wireless to work?

Funny enough it appears your laptop has the exact same network interfaces as the Acer Aspire One..
http://wiki.debian.org/DebianAcerOne

No I did not have any other specific issues, all my difficulties were addressed in that Debian Acer One Wiki article.
Unfortuntely i don't see a similar article for your model laptop..

http://swinky-linuxblog.blogspot.com...lite-l305.html

Ubuntu 8.10 is reported to have everything functional out of the box on your laptop/

Ubuntu 8.10 would not work for me. I have Debian Lenny on the laptop now. It was difficult to get everything working correctly, but every thing works correctly now.

I have done everything in the post referencing Drew Withers, but wireless still doesn't work. I think I'm still having trouble with the config in /etc/network/interfaces. I'm running WPA with a pre-shared key. This is what I have in the config:

auto ath0
iface ath0 inet dhcp
#wpa-ap-scan 2
#ipa-scan-ssid 1
wpa-driver wext
wpa-ssid my-ssid
wpa-psk my-psk
#wpa-auth-alg SHARED
#wpa-proto WPA
#wpa-key-mgmt WPA-PSK

I don't know if the driver is correct or I need something else to use madWifi. I'd appreciate any suggestions.

FWIW this is a Compaq CQ-60 215 with the AR242x chipset.

lspci:
07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

dmesg:
Linux version 2.6.26-2-amd64 (Debian 2.6.26-17lenny1) (dannf@debian.org) (gcc version 4.1.3 20080704 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.2-25)) #1 SMP Sun Jul 26 20:35:48 UTC 2009

Giff

to gahammar

Did you install madwifi from the madwifi site? The debian driver would not work for me. I can post mt lspci -v if you want it.

When I rebooted this morning, my WiFi was working. I believe it was the final change I made to /etc/network/interfaces. Anyway, here's what I did:

1. Followed the instructions at http://www.drewwithers.com/content/d...ite-a215-s4747. I also verified that the modules were installed as required.

2. Used the config as shown in my last post. The only major change was using a hex key that I generated from http://www.xs4all.nl/~rjoris/wpapsk.html instead of a quoted plain text PSK.

Thanks for your help!

WTF?

There's the solution to my probleM: http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...te=1&p=3677618



wELLL I guess Ime gonna get me a Fedora 9 Live cd if they make em' for 64 bit pC 'S CAUSE ubuntu 9.04 is sh!t! for wireless