Where to find the kernel driver (ath5k?) for atheros AR5416 card
 

Where can I find the kernel driver (ath5k?) for an Atheros AR5416 card? My System is Redhat EL5. New kernels (e.g. 2.6.30.9) have the ath5k sources, but I failed to install it for my machine.

Since you say you have the drivers, but "failed to install it", how about telling us where you got those drivers, and exactly how it failed?? Posting an error message with complete details would get you lots more help.

Also, if you need the latest drivers for RHEL, contact RedHat, or look on their knowledgebase. You've got access to both, since you're paying for it with your RedHat Enterprise support...

There are a number of different RHEL5's (5.0-5.4). The newest kernel(-164.6.1.el5 ) will have the most hardware support.

el5 packages(rpm) available from rpmforge.

# yum install madwifi

That's the driver ... also from 'rpmforge.repo' .
http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/red...ifi-rhel5.html
But may be it's old info ? ?
.....

https://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge
https://rpmrepo.org/RPMforge/Using
.....

Latest madwifi drivers - 0.9.5.x (like support for AR5007 PCI Express radios) is in atrpms-stable repository. RPMForge's latest are 0.9.2.

Be aware that support for AR5416 chipset might not be fully developed. Search madwifi site if you have problems.

http://www.atrpms.net/dist/el5/madwifi-free/



or http://www.atrpms.net/dist/el5/madwifi-old/

Be very careful with Atrpms. The have a long history of not playing well with others (including base repos). I do use them for a few things, but am extremely careful with them.

Both Atrpms AND RPMForge have issues with EPEL repository, so I decided to use ONLY EPEL on a daily basis from third party repositories. And I suggest that to all other RHEL/CentOS users. But, trought be told, I found Atrpms slightly more compatible with EPEL then RPMForge.

That is why, since I do need some packages from both for every new install, and I do not want to manually choose or have a automatic update hell, I spent some time and created my own, manually populated and updated repository (plnet-downloaded)/, so when you use it on the daily basis you can be sure that no conflicts will exist.

Sorry for the confusion. In fact, I failed to boot the new kernels. It is compiled and installed, but boot fails.

The ath5k in the newest kernel (-164xxx) seems broken. In its Kconfig it depends on MAC80211, PCI, etc. But I cannot find any config named MAC80211. I renamed it as IEEE80211, and I then can select in 'make menuconfig'. But compilation failed again with lots of errors.

I installed madwifi-0.9.4-0.1.r2598.el5 of Rpmforge. But the AR5416 card does not work properly. 'iwlist ath0 scanning' gives no result. In fact we have at least 3-4 APs nearby. My rt73 card can find them well.

Is this caused by the bad support to AR5416 from madwifi-0.9.4-0.1r2598.el5 package? Or is it caused by my commands? I am not familiar with those wifi-related commands.

The commands are as below, and the 'nis' AP is running 802.11g in my room.

# wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode sta
# iwconfig ath0 essid nis
# iwconfig ath0
ath0 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:"nis"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Invalid
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power:17 dBm Sensitivity=1/1
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=0/70 Signal level=-98 dBm Noise level=-98 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:6434 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

# iwlist ath0 scanning
ath0 No scan results

I find the problem. The iwlist scanning needs wlan_scan_sta module, and 'modprobe wlan_scan_sta' does not insert the module for me. When I insmod wlan_scan_sta, iwlist scanning runs well.

Thank you all.