Hi all,

Totally new to Linux, have always been curious and have wanted to really get into it - finally made the jump to Debian Wheezy.

It's been tricky so far, but I've manged to install, add non-free and backports repositories in my sources.list, and got most codecs, flash, etc. installed on my Acer laptop. However, Wifi is still having problems.

By typing "lspci", I see that I have an Atheros AR9565 wireless card.

I have tried "aptitude install firmware-atheros" for atheros cards in the non-free repository, but that doesn't seem to work.

I've noted someone making it work in this thread below, but I'm not versed in Linux well enough to undestand what steps I need to take to replice this user's success.
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=107377

I see notes about installing initramfs-tools and linux-image-3.10-0.bpo.2-amd64, but this is where my understanding about what steps they're taking isn't clear on me... Help anyone?

Someone new to linux should use one of pre-configured Linux distros like linux Mint, that comes with drivers pre-installed. The guy in your link also says that it works on Ubuntu. Ubuntu is not much different from Debian.

4 ways to get wifi working on linuxhttp://www.blores.com/2010/07/how-to...rivers-on.html

Atheros drivers should be in the kernel. You probably have to install the firmware in debian. But you did that... So.

Which kernel do you have? ("uname -a")
Perhaps check in /boot/config if atheros ath9k is included, and the others. I dont know which atheroes driver your card uses.

Perhaps this could be helpful:
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/Atheros

In debian it might be as simple as "ifconfig wlan0 up". What does ifconfig say exactly? Do down first and then up if it is already there. Perhaps you even have to use iwconfig, wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd.

If that is the case, do:
ifconfig wlan0 down
ifconfig wlan0 up
dhcpcd wlan0

in terminal window, as root.

1 members found this post helpful.

Why do you say that? What you suggest about him switching to another distro is not helpful. Good if he is a newbie and starting with debian, then atleast he can perhaps learn something along the way.

If you have the firmware installed, try following the instructions on the wiki. (The wiki is a great resource for configuring the system.)
https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse
When I used Debian, I edited my /etc/network/interfaces file as per the wiki's instructions:

I did not add the wireless-mode entry. I only had to add an ESSID entry. If I remember correctly, it was simply my host name. For example; wspark.debian.org. Of course, you will need to enter whatever host name you gave your system.

Thanks for the advice. I have:

Linux E3-111 3.2.0-4-amd64 #1 SMP Debian 3.2.63-2+deb7u1 x86_64 GNU/Linux

I opened config-3.2.0-4-amd64 in a text editor and searched for anything with ath9k and found this:

CONFIG_ATH9K_HW=m
CONFIG_ATH9K_COMMON=m
CONFIG_ATH9K=m
CONFIG_ATH9K_PCI=y
# CONFIG_ATH9K_AHB is not set
# CONFIG_ATH9K_DEBUGFS is not set
# CONFIG_ATH9K_LEGACY_RATE_CONTROL is not set
CONFIG_ATH9K_HTC=m
# CONFIG_ATH9K_HTC_DEBUGFS is not set

Is states under the link that:

Get the latest ath9k driver

Any distribution shipping a kernel >= 2.6.27 will have ath9k present but the ath9k driver on 2.6.32 is the oldest one recommended, anything older than that is completely unsupported.

Supported chipsets

SB = single-band 2.4GHz DB = dual-band 2.4GHz or 5GHz
...
...
AR9004:

AR9485 1x1 SB 11n PCIe
AR9462 2x2 DB 11n PCIe
AR9565 1x1 SB 11n PCIe
AR9580 3x3 DB 11n PCIe
AR9550 3x3 DB 11n

wlan0 doesn't exist so using the ...down or ...up command shows "No such device" error. And dhcpcd command produces "bash: dhcpcd: command not found" error.

Typing ifconfig shows as per below:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr c4:54:44:6a:d6:d3
inet addr:192.168.1.102 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::c654:44ff:fe6a:d6d3/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1147632 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:713804 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:1540722232 (1.4 GiB) TX bytes:60900293 (58.0 MiB)
Interrupt:103 Base address:0xc000

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:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:8 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:480 (480.0 B) TX bytes:480 (480.0 B)

Thanks, if I type "hostname" I simply get "E3-111" - as you say, what I named by system.

So far, I've simply added the section in /etc/network/interfaces

That hasn't done anything I noticed... (No wifi signals in icons, etc).

Try wlan1.

Same - there's no wlan* devices if I type ifconfig. I just see eth0 and lo.

Have you tried

Just tried, and it hasn't made any noticeable difference...

What about orAnother question is E3-111 the model of laptop?
If it is try the Fn+F3 key to see if wireless is activated
Have you checked in dmesg?

Correct, E3-111 is the model.

Fn-F3 doesn't do anything noticeable. And above commands show as below (I'm assuming the last 2 commands show as below because there is no wlan* device):

Not installed
also

^^ This?