madwifi

hi,

ok..so i just switched over from suse yesterday and im trying to get my wireless internet running

i installed the mandrake 10.1 community iso

this is my driver:

Identification Vendor: ‎Atheros Communications Inc. Description: ‎AR5213 802.11a/b/g Wireless Adapter Media class: ‎NETWORK_ETHERNET Connection Bus: ‎PCI Bus PCI #: ‎0 PCI device #: ‎16 PCI function #: ‎0 Vendor ID: ‎5772 Device ID: ‎19 Sub vendor ID: ‎5199 Sub device ID: ‎28760

i know that for atheros i need madwifi, i read thru all the faqs and they are really confusing
does anyone know of any "easy' way to do this?
im not a member of mandrake and so i can't download the rpms for madwifi which i know are there, if i had the money id buy a boxed linux set (which also has the madwifi rpms)

if no "easy" way..ill try to do it the "hard" way
by easy i mean something like installing an rpm and having the driver automatically installed
by hard i mean building it, then getting the kernel source code and doing whatever from there

ive been using linux for a couple months but i havent experimented with it at all, basically ive used it as a windows box, simply for typing, email, internet, and programming(not any linux stuff..more like java and html) so in terms of knowing how to do things in linux im still a newbie

thanks!

I installed my WG311t card using the madwifi drivers. The madwidi drivers were the easiest way for me to get the wireless working.

Here's what I did. I am typing this from memory so it may be off a little.
Installed the kernel source.
From terminal in root
urpmi kernel-source

Load the madwifi drivers
cd madwifi
make
Make install

Manually loaded the madwifi drivers from terminal as su or root
modprobe wlan
modprobe ath_ha1
modprobe ath_pci

typed in
iwconfig ath0
to see if the wireless was recognised

I had to type in
dhclient ath0
to get my router to issue and ip address.

There is a file you need to edit to make these changes take effect on startup. I don't remember what the file name is.
But this is about all I did to get it going.
This was by far the easiest method of installing a wireless card.
Hope this helps some.

how much luck did you have with this, In other words, did it work?

it worked, followed ur instructions!!

took me a while to try it cause urpmin wasn't working so i had to fix that first to get the source code of the kernel

THANK YOU SOO MUCH :-D finally internet!

u just made my week!

I'm waiting for my wireless NIC to come in. DSL rocks.

I found this info while googling around...
there is a file and shizzle that you can load so you don't have to manually load the drivers and device anytime you need them
"it just works" kinda deal.
(although i don't LIVE at a wifi network, so I have the onboot option set to no, it still just takes an "ifup ath0" to get the beast working)

I am assuming you have the madwifi installed (by running the make and make install commends)
then type this into the console :
echo "
STARTMODE=hotplug
DEVICE=ath0
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
ONBOOT=yes
WIRELESS=yes
WIRELESS_MODE=Managed
WIRELESS_ESSID=(your ssid here)
#WIRELESS_ENC_KEY=(your wep key here)
WIRELESS_IWPRIV=mode 0
MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=yes
" > /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ath0

for ssid, I use "any" as I use my wifi connection on multiple networks, you might just wanna throw in your ssid there, and if you use encription key, throw that beast in there too.

If you read the readme that came with madwifi, you can find that the IWPRIV basically means if you want it to run off the A, B, or G band, i think mode 0 is auto select, and 1=a, 2=b and 3=g.... It's in the readme...

Also, type this into the console as well (I don't know exactly which file it needs to go in, and I was told ot go ahead and put it in all 2...)

echo "alias ath0 ath_pci" >> /etc/modules.conf
echo "alias ath0 ath_pci" >> /etc/modules
echo "alias ath0 ath_pci" >> /etc/modprobe.conf

then, run depmod to see if you have any errors, and blammo, it should be up and running on each boot..

Hopefully I didn't scare you away and helped ya out!!!

I have NO problems at all with my Madwifi drivers. I have heard some people have problems with signal strength, and I have found very little (only when I was like 300 feet from the router and it was going through multiple thick stone and rebar wallls... so for the most part, I have NO issues and it runs faster than my wifi does in windows... yay)

Happy surfing.

The Madwifi drivers rock!!
They make it so much easier.
It makes all the difference in the chipset you have to work with.
The Atheros work really good.
I had another one with a different chipset and I never got it to work.

I tried everything that is posted here, and yet i get errors galore.
When i try make it prints rather jumbled text w/ "no end of file line", i cant see teh file name or where its located b/c it tranucates teh lines for some odd reasion.
I am using mandrake 10.1 Official. please help!

Try downloading the madwifi again. It's here: http://madwifi.otaku42.de/madwifi-cvs-current.tar.bz2


This is what I did, basically just rephrasing what charles said in his post, maybe u forgot to get the kernel-source?
If you don't have urpmi running go to: http://easyurpmi.zarb.org/ and it will help you set it up.

urpmi kernel-source
cd madwifi
make
make install
modprobe wlan
modprobe ath_ha1
modprobe ath_pci
iwconfig ath0
dhclient ath0

I then went to Mandrake Control Center / Configure My Computer
Clicked on network, new connection, wireless connection
I get 2 options:
ath0
manually load a driver

select ath0
and i just clicked next on everything, but I typed in my encryption key.

Hope it helps, but if it doesn't post up your terminal screen so we can see what u did and the errors you got.

Thanks i'll try it like u said.
I have a hard time getting help b/c my only option is wireless so i have to use windows to get online, switch into linux see if it works, then go back into windows..
If i get teh same error i'll save it to a file and post it next.
Thx

I got it to work, my wireless card was up and running for 1 day.
I shut down the computer and when i went to start it up, it said there was an error w/ ifup on line 10, i couldn't get my wireless to work after that, i might be switching over to suse (a friend recommended it) would there be any other configuration options for it or should i stay w/ mandrake?
Sorry for all the newbie questions

hmm...

try running these commands again
modprobe wlan
modprobe ath_ha1
modprobe ath_pci
iwconfig ath0
dhclient ath0


i found this that talks about an error when you do ifup ath0 so try doing it and if you get an error the article suggests to try adding this line:
MII_NOT_SUPPORTED=yes
to /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ath0

other than that i don't know what else you can do, hopefully someone knows how to fix the problem.

Suse is good too I just switched over to mandrake from suse (had a major problem with suse, but thats another story)
anyway so suse recognized my atheros wireless card automatically and I didn't have to bother with installing the madwifi module... it should also recognize your card automatically

I used the file i posted earlier, and it always gives me an error in line 10, or whatever it is, b ut my wifi always works...

you sure you need the atheros drivers?

OK, I got the drivers to load, Everything is fine and dandy. But when I type "dhclient ath0" it doesnt obtain a lease on an IP for me... What coul dbe the problem... BTW.. in Gnome my WiFi signal meter says 65%... Am I connected?

Also anotherthing about my madwifi problem... iwconfig knows of my access point.. but in the last two digits of the mac address it calls it 28 when it is acually 27... could this be my problem? How do I change it?