Hi guys, I'm back again.

I have gentoo installed on my Acer Aspire 5050-3785, which has an Atheros AR5007EG in it. In Debian, I was able to successfully install the madwifi driver, patch it, and run wifi off of that. However, I then bricked my install by adding both a "testing" and an "unstable" repository and intelligently running apt-get dist-upgrade. But I deviate.

I ran emerge emerge madwifi-ng madwifi-ng-tools per this guide:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_MadWifi_Install

(I tried both the way it specified and simply running the emerge command.) The result is this:

* madwifi-ng-0.9.3.3 requires Cryptographic API support (CONFIG_CRYPTO).
* madwifi-ng-0.9.3.3 requires CONFIG_WIRELESS_EXT selected by Wireless LAN drivers (non-hamradio) & Wireless Extensions
* requires CONFIG_KMOD to be set to y or m
* The die message:
* Incorrect kernel configuration options


So far I've been unable to figure out where these options need to be set/how to set them (and I don't think it's just a good idea to echo configuration options into random system files).

Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you!

Update, right after making this post I finally found something here:

http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=472828
This post says:

"You need to recompile your kernel.
First, run "make menuconfig"
Then, look under "Cryptographic options" in the root level and enable "Cryptographic API"
Then do the usual make and copy arch/i386/boot/bzImage.
After a reboot, the emerge should work (It's not compiling anything into the kernel, but needs some pre-compiled options)."

I am trying to do all of this, I got to the second step and I see "Cryptographic API." However, I can neither modularize it nor select it to be compiled with the kernel.

Hmmm... it sounds that the selection is blocked by
another option in kernel I'd say. Did you grep your .config for
those keywords? CONFIG_CRYPTO, CONFIG_WIRELESS_EXT, CONFIG_KMOD
I bet they are not set with one switch - so possibly you need to look
for wireless part first activate something and then go to crypto...
Can't say it offhand but I think you need to activate another option before
the crypto can be activated...

See my post here for kernel auto module loading (problem with ath_pci) (I thought it was a problem with the button)

Also, you need to compile the patch set for the AR5007EG given to madwifi at ticket #1679 - download the patched driver and compile it to your kernel.

If your problem really is the driver for the card, and it is the AR5007EG card, then this should get you working!