Debian murdered my Atheros WiFi

suChris · 11-28-2009, 11:08 AM

Hi. I had been using Ubuntu for like a year and I finally decided to move on to Debian. The main problem is that I can't connect to the internet via wireless (I am currently with ethernet cable and It is not very comforting...)
This is (partially) the output of the lspci command:

Code:

01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
02:01.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)

So I got the Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter wireless adapter, which is not so cooperative. Note that it worked perfectly with the Ubuntu 9.04

I searched some more and decided to install madwifi. I quote a forum poster from some ubuntu forums. (I figured that being a debian based distro, it would have similar solutions to the problem)
I did everything stated in the quote, step by step.

Quote:

reasoner wrote:Thanks so much to those above for figuring this out for me. Let me spell out the installation in a little more detail to save those after me some time.

I did this on a fresh Ubuntu 8.04 install on a Compaq Presario C770US Laptop with an ethernet cable plugged into my router.

The device string displayed by lspci -v was as follows:

Code:

01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
       Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company Unknown device 137a
       Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 16
       Memory at 91300000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
       Capabilities: <access denied>

First under System/Administration/HarwareDrivers disable both the Atheros HAL and the Atheros wireless thing and then reboot.

The kernel headers and the compiler are needed to build this driver so I started by installing build-essential. In a terminal window (Applications/Accessories/Terminal) enter:

Code:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

The driver code will be downloaded with the subversion source code manager so I installed subversion:

Code:

sudo apt-get install subversion

I needed a place to put the driver source without mixing it up with other stuff so I changed directory to my home directory:

Code:

  cd ~

Created a directory:

Code:

mkdir madwifi

And changed to the new dirctory:

Code:

 cd madwifi

Use subversion to download (checkout) a copy of the code:

Code:

svn co https://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/branches/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6

After the driver code is downloaded by subversion, change to the directory, which should be madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6

Code:

cd madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6

Run the make script to have the compiler build the driver:

Code:

make

Install the driver

Code:

sudo make install

Add the Atheros kernel module to the list of modules to be automatically loaded at boot by adding "ath_pci" (without the quotes) to the end of the /etc/modules file. I used the vi editor which I won't describe here. Gedit is probably easy to use so try:

Code:

sudo gedit /etc/modules

Now you can reboot and it should work. To get it working without a reboot you need to load the module manually:

Code:

sudo modprobe ath_pci

That should do it. The little wireless button seems to always stay lit orange. When I press it it seems to disable the wireless but it still stays lit orange. WPA works for me. I assume WEP will also. I haven't tried WPA2

Nothing happened. I then found this page: http://wiki.debian.org/ath5k

And followed the instructions there.
I did:

Code:

sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/madwifi

and changed the text file as stated in the URL.
I then did:

Code:

sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces

To change everything from ath0 to wlan0. I did nothing, as there was no "ath0" in the interfaces file. (Was this a problem?)

I did the modprobe thingie and then:

Code:

debian:/home/cb# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wmaster0  no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11  ESSID:""  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Tx-Power=20 dBm   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 B   
          Encryption key: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

and

Code:

ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1e:ec:a4:e8:fb  
          inet addr:192.168.1.67  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::21e:ecff:fea4:e8fb/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:21331 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:15579 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:24482611 (23.3 MiB)  TX bytes:1947088 (1.8 MiB)
          Interrupt:16 Base address:0x1000 

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:24 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:24 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:1616 (1.5 KiB)  TX bytes:1616 (1.5 KiB)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:1f:e2:c1:93:32  
          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 00-1F-E2-C1-93-32-65-74-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00  
          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 finally:

Code:

ifconfig wlan0 up

Nothing happened. I then proceeded to step 5 of the how-to:
http://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse

Only to see that the network-manager-gnome was already installed.
I even installed network-manager-kde, and when I did, the VPN connections option appeared at the drop down menu which appears when you click the network manager icon at the top taskbar of Gnome. But nothing more.

That is all. I am desperate.
There are many options:
1)A friend of mine had the same problem and changed to sid. Everything works fine with her wifi as sid has drivers for it. And it seems that sid has drivers for my wireless adapter as well! Can I download the unstable packages from sid and implement them to my lenny installation?
2)I can always install sid. All of it.
3)Go back to Ubuntu (bah!)
4)Switch to Slackware?

Or finally, wait for help from you guys here...I am so tired as I have been trying to fix the problem for 2 days non-stop. (only sleep break

) I am usually very patient with computers but I have compiled, installed, un-installed, formatted, edited so many times that I am going crazy over here. So help me please... if you can.

Cheers

Davno · 11-30-2009, 03:57 PM

I previously had a very similar problem on my Debian machine and i was stuck at the same point. This might not help you but here is my working /etc/network/interfaces as an example:

Code:

# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
address 127.0.0.1
netmask 255.0.0.0
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
  wireless-mode Managed
  wireless-channel 6
  wireless-key xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  wireless-essid xxxxxxxxxxxx
  address 192.168.1.24
  netmask 255.255.255.0
  gateway 192.168.1.1
  dns-nameservers xx.xxx.xxx.xx yy.yyy.yyy.yy

In my case that file was the problem and editing it that way worked.
Hopefully it will help.

craigevil · 11-30-2009, 08:21 PM

ath5k - Debian Wiki - http://wiki.debian.org/ath5k