Okay recently while workin on an aspire I had posted for help getting the broadcom working, and I've managed that, Now I'm working on another laptop this time using Atheros wireless, I'm not sure of the exact card, I've already run the iwconfig and ifconfig, which I will post at the bottom of the post.

The machine is running slack 12.2 the wireless interface shows up, however wilist scanning returns no results, and wicd can't find anything (that's a given since it can't see anything that iwlist can't

computer make and model are Acer Extensa 5630-4250

but heres what I get, let's see if we can work this out.

# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

wmaster0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:""
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Tx-Power=27 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2352 B
Encryption key:off
Power Management: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

eth0 no wireless extensions.


# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1d:72:d3:28:22
inet addr:192.168.1.114 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::21d:72ff:fed3:2822/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:2090 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1770 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:2208797 (2.1 MiB) TX bytes:258544 (252.4 KiB)
Interrupt:16

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:23:4d:11:5e:25
UP 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)

wmaster0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-23-4D-11-5E-25-65-74-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP BROADCAST RUNNING 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)


and iwlisg scan results

# iwlist scan
lo Interface doesn't support scanning.

wmaster0 Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlan0 No scan results

eth0 Interface doesn't support scanning.


I've tried configuring rc.inet1 with little success then I tried wicd which didn't help me any so any help would be appreciated. thank you very much in advance for any help you might be able to give me on this.

Well since you didn't post the pci-id of your card i can't give an straight answer. (/sbin/lspci -nn)
But you use the kernel driver and it doesn't work with all atheros cards.
So try and blacklist the kernel driver (ath5k, ath5k_pci) in the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and try the madwifi driver instead.
And if you use wicd then remember to change the device name in the settings to ath0 instead of wlan0 for the madwifi driver.

Thanks man, that fixed it, didn't actually need madwifi...I blacklisted the ath5k built in pieces and rebooted, wireless works, wicd found the net immediatly. so I consider this case closed...thanks again, you have no idea the frustration you just saved me from.