I was at Milwaukee Airport earlier this week, authenticated with their AP but was unable to get an IP address. I killed wpa_supplicant and went to run it again, this time, there was no authentication. Running 'iwlist wlan0 scan' returned with no results. This has been the case everywhere since then. The card was working like a champ up until that fateful day @ MKE.

I upgraded my kernel to 2.6.32.7 today in an attempt to get my roommate's rt3572 USB wifi card running to no avail, but this is a separate issue. The onboard Atheros 9280 card worked under the default Slack64 13 2.6.29.6 kernel. I also tested the card under Ubuntu 9.10 and Backtrack 4 live distros, neither of those worked. I took a peek at the physical wireless card and the antennae are securely fastened. The laptop is a Dell Studio 1440/14z.

• uname -rmp
  
  Code:

  2.6.32.7 x86_64 Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU     T6500  @ 2.10GHz

• lshw -C network
  
  Code:

   *-network DISABLED
         description: Wireless interface
         product: AR928X Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express)
         vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
         physical id: 0
         bus info: pci@0000:11:00.0
         logical name: wlan0
         version: 01
         serial: 00:22:5f:be:ee:ff
         width: 64 bits
         clock: 33MHz
         capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
         configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn
         resources: irq:21 memory:f0300000-f030ffff

• lsmod|grep ath
  
  Code:

  ath9k                 277645  0
  ath                     8336  1 ath9k
  mac80211              159642  1 ath9k
  cfg80211              119362  3 ath9k,ath,mac80211
  led_class               2545  1 ath9k

• dmesg|grep -e ath -e wlan
  
  Code:

  md: multipath personality registered for level -4
  ath9k 0000:11:00.0: PCI INT A -> Link[Z00N] -> GSI 21 (level, low) -> IRQ 21
  ath9k 0000:11:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
  ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x60
  ath: EEPROM indicates we should expect a direct regpair map
  ath: Country alpha2 being used: 00
  ath: Regpair used: 0x60
  phy1: Selected rate control algorithm 'ath9k_rate_control'
  Registered led device: ath9k-phy1::radio
  Registered led device: ath9k-phy1::assoc
  Registered led device: ath9k-phy1::tx
  Registered led device: ath9k-phy1::rx
  ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready

• ifconfig -a
  
  Code:

  eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:24:e8:ff:ff:ff
            inet addr:1.2.3.4  Bcast:1.2.3.4  Mask:255.255.255.0
            inet6 addr: fe80::224:e8ff:feff:ffff/64 Scope:Link
            UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
            RX packets:24571 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
            TX packets:16602 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
            collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
            RX bytes:29732786 (28.3 MiB)  TX bytes:1892432 (1.8 MiB)
            Interrupt:29 Base address:0xe000
  
  lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
            inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
            inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
            UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
            RX packets:34 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
            TX packets:34 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
            collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
            RX bytes:1820 (1.7 KiB)  TX bytes:1820 (1.7 KiB)
  
  wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:22:5f:ff:ff:ff
            BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
            RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
            TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
            collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
            RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

  *** Note the lack of wmaster0. ***
• ifconfig wlan0 up
  
  Code:

  SIOCSIFFLAGS: Unknown error 132