Wireless on an Acer AspireOne

jlamothe · 02-14-2009, 08:43 AM

I have an Acer AspireOne that I've installed Slackware 12.2 onto. I've had Ubuntu on it previously, but only because I couldn't originally get Slackware (12.1) installed.

My question is this. I can't seem to get the wireless working. (That's not really a question, is it?)

I remember that under Ubuntu, I needed to install madwifi. I've installed the madwifi-tools, and the madwifi-driver packages from SlackBuilds.org, to no avail. Do I need to configure them somehow? I didn't find any information on that.

Anyhow, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

ajlewis2 · 02-14-2009, 09:44 AM

First try:

iwconfig

See if ath0 or wlan0 show up there.

Try also:

lsmod | grep ath

See if there is either ath_pci or ath5k there. I think this machine uses ath_pci. That is the module for the wireless. If they do not show up, then as root try:

modprobe ath_pci

If you don't get an error, then the module probably loaded and you can again try to get the wireless through whatever Slackware uses for that. Last time I used Slack I was still doing dialup. :-)

If that works, then you should put ath_pci in /etc/modules or the Slackware equivalent of that. Now if a Slackware user comes along, you may get better advice.

jlamothe · 02-14-2009, 10:15 AM

I've done as you suggested. When I typed lsmod | grep ath, I got the following:

Code:

bash-3.1# lsmod | grep ath
ath5k                 101248  0 
mac80211              158108  1 ath5k
cfg80211               27144  2 ath5k,mac80211
led_class               7684  2 ath5k,acer_wmi
ath_pci                95392  0 
wlan                  192496  1 ath_pci
ath_hal               193616  1 ath_pci

I can see both ath5k and ath_pci.

When I ran modprobe ath_pci I got no error messages (or any messages at all for that matter), but I still only see lo and eth0 when I run iwconfig.

ajlewis2 · 02-14-2009, 02:04 PM

I think this is not good to have both ath5k and ath_pci loading. Try blacklisting ath5k and reboot. Look in /etc/modprobe.d. There should be a file named 'blacklist'. In order to keep a module from loading, you make an entry in that file:

blacklist ath5k

Then when you reboot, hopefully only ath_pci will load and work with something showing up in 'iwconfig'.

If you see only ath_pci in lsmod and still nothing in iwconfig, then try blacklisting ath_pci instead of ath5k and reboot to see if ath5k now loads and you see wireless in iwconfig.

jlamothe · 02-14-2009, 03:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ajlewis2

I think this is not good to have both ath5k and ath_pci loading. Try blacklisting ath5k and reboot. Look in /etc/modprobe.d. There should be a file named 'blacklist'. In order to keep a module from loading, you make an entry in that file:

blacklist ath5k

Then when you reboot, hopefully only ath_pci will load and work with something showing up in 'iwconfig'.

If you see only ath_pci in lsmod and still nothing in iwconfig, then try blacklisting ath_pci instead of ath5k and reboot to see if ath5k now loads and you see wireless in iwconfig.

I just tried that, and it looks as though ath5k is no longer running, but it's still not working.

I should have probably mentioned this from the beginning, but ever since I installed madwifi, kwifimanager shows my wireless card as being disabled.

I'll look over the documentation again to see if maybe I missed something.

ajlewis2 · 02-14-2009, 04:06 PM

Did you also try reversing it by blacklisting ath_pci instead of ath5k? Maybe ath5k is the one that it uses.

Another thing that will help is to be sure of the chipset. Do

lspci

and look for the wireless in it and post what it is. Then we can all google to see who has this going. You did say it was working in Ubuntu, right?

jlamothe · 02-14-2009, 04:59 PM

This is what I get from an lspci:

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

For what it's worth, I think that my problem lies somewhere in /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless.conf. I'd post the contents but it's rather large.

EDIT: Yes, it did work under Ubuntu, until a patch caused a kernel panic on boot. At that point, I tried installing Slackware instead (which is what I wanted in the first place).

All I had to do under Ubuntu was download the madwifi source, compile and install it.

ajlewis2 · 02-14-2009, 06:15 PM

http://madwifi-project.org/wiki/Compatibility/Atheros Atheros AR5007EG

There are some notes there about what madwifi version can be compiled to use. There is also something about how to use ndiswrapper. Hopefully this will help.

jlamothe · 02-14-2009, 07:31 PM

Well, I'm done for the night. I'll give that a shot on Monday and let you know how it pans out.

Thanks for the help.

globaltree · 02-14-2009, 09:03 PM

I recently got a different wifi card going in slack 12.1, but 12.2 works the same way.

what I had to do for a lynksys card with a broadcom chipset was extract the firmware from the install media that came with the card, and store it in /lib/firmware; it follows that there should be some firmware in /lib/firmware for your wifi card in order for it to work at all...

the wicd package ( http://wicd.net ) did the rest, though I found it in Alien Bob's repository ( http://www.slackware.org/~alien/slackbuilds/ ); wicd actually puts a signal strength indicator in the systray of my xfce desktop, and when I click on it, it lets me select networks, and as far as I can tell, it issues the iwconfig and ifconfig commands for you, and works independently from the /etc/rc.d/rc.wireless and rc.inet1 scripts, so that you don't have to mess with them

ajlewis2 · 02-15-2009, 02:33 PM

In chat with a linux buddy today I found that he has your same chipset for wireless and is using ath5k for the module. So it looks to me like it uses that and not ath_pci. So you definitely want to try blacklisting ath_pci and then modprobe ath5k.

jlamothe · 02-16-2009, 05:35 PM

No luck as of yet. I have found something that looks promising though. If it works, I'll post the solution.

jlamothe · 02-18-2009, 05:51 PM

So that was a total failure.

What I tried doing was copying the original driver scripts (/usr/bin/add_driver.sh and /usr/bin/rm_driver.sh) from the factory-installed operating system (Linpus Linux) to /usr/local/bin on Slackware, as per directions I had received on-line. I'll post a link to this site as soon as I find it again.

NOTE: The filenames the site gave me were actually add_driver.sh and del_driver.sh, but there was no del_driver.sh.

I assume that they're supposed to be called by some other program or script, but even when I try calling them manually they don't work (presumably because the paths are incorrect). I haven't had time to do much with them beyond that.

If anyone wants to have a look at the files and see if they can decipher them, I've uploaded them here (ftp).

ajlewis2 · 02-18-2009, 06:13 PM

Those scripts are showing ath_pci, but the problem is that we do not know what the kernel is for the original OS. I think ath5k is newer. I find ath5k is available with my latest kernel and ath_pci goes back to earlier kernels which I have.

So, even though the original scripts from Linpus indicate ath_pci, that may not work with your version of Slackware.

Did you try blacklisting ath_pci, putting ath5k in /etc/modules and rebooting? The idea there is to have only ath5k loaded to see if it works like it does for my friend who says he has the same chipset.

agentc0re · 02-18-2009, 07:52 PM

I hate to burst your bubble but you're doing it all wrong. I just got an Acer Aspire one today and got wireless working fairly quickly.

Below will be a good basis that you need to start from. The keypoint here is to reconfigure your rc.inet1.conf file. Once that is done you will need to start your wireless iface

Code:

/etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 wlan0_start

Once i did all this i was able to use wpa_gui and could connect and configure, scan etc. to wireless networks.

If you do wpa_supplicant from CLI it will also give you an example of how to run it.

Code:

##########################################################
# example WPA2 config block for /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
# wpa_supplicant.conf can contain multiple different
# configuration blocks to allow automatic roaming/connection
# to different APs you might use.
##########################################################
network={
        disabled=0
        scan_ssid=1
        ssid="SSID_HERE_CASE_SENS"
        proto=WPA2
        auth_alg=OPEN
        key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
        pairwise=CCMP
        group=CCMP
        psk="ASCII_KEY_HERE_CASE_SENS"
        priority=0
}

##########################################################
# Example /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf config block number [4]
##########################################################
IFNAME[4]="wlan0"
IPADDR[4]=""
NETMASK[4]=""
USE_DHCP[4]="yes"
DHCP_HOSTNAME[4]="hostnamehere"
DHCP_TIMEOUT[4]="8"
WLAN_WPA[4]="wpa_supplicant"
WLAN_WPADRIVER[4]="wext"
WLAN_WPAWAIT[4]=15