Wifi...pleeeeease help

Hrrm, this is rather peculiar, I've never had this not work in Hardy.

You said you followed my instructions. They don't seem to be working properly however.
I think I would try doing the following, which should add less than 15 minutes to the 15 hours you've spent already.

I would start from the beginning. That is, I would unblacklist the modules I suggested, then do
sudo lsmod -r ath_pci

Then go into the directory created when you did the tar zxvf Madwifi-<version_number>
and do
make uninstall
make clean

Then, I would go back to the the last link I posted, the Ubuntu link, and try their instructions from scratch. (Short of downloading the tarball.)

See if you have better luck.
I realize it's frustrating, but for what it's worth, this card should definitely work with the MadWifi drivers. (I've just retested the latest snapshot, (the one with 0903) on Fedora 9, which is about the only thing I have left that doesn't use the later kernel) and it's working. )

 

One last thought on this. If your router is not broadcasting the ESSID, (to not broadcast is the default in, for example, the popular Linksys routers) then the network won't show up as available. You can manually add it.
On other systems, do several wireless networks show up?

 

Ok, I just tested this. I installed Hardy.
I did no updates (same reason as you, I don't have the patience.)

I went back to my own page. I downloaded the latest snapshot, installed build-essential and the kernel headers.

I untarred the snapshot, did sudo make and sudo make install. (Using sudo for make is probably unnecessary. )

I went to System=>Hardware and disabled the Atheros stuff. I also added the two blacklist lines for ath5k and ath_hal to my /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.
I rebooted to be sure that the modules were disabled.
Upon reboot, I did
modprobe ath_pci

It didn't take the first time for some reason, when I did lsmod |grep ath it showed nothing.
I ran the command a second time. This time it showed that the ath modules were loaded and doing ifconfig with no arguments--that is, just typing ifconfig and nothing else afterwards, showed a wifi0. (It is, however, sometimes necessary to do ifconfig ath0 up, but wasn't in this case.)

At that point, NetworkManager showed me wireless networks. Lazy sort that I am, I've left my Linksys' router at non-broadcast--it is, from all I understand, not too effective in hiding the network, but it's not a big deal either way, so it didn't show up in NetworkManager. I clicked add a network or whatever it's called (I'm writing this from a different machine) put in my SSID and WPA2 personal password, and it was fine.

So, I'd be grateful if you give it another try. (I don't want the $20 by the way, since it seems my page has wasted your time so far, and there's no guarantee I'm not still doing so).

Start, as I said before, by doing cd into the madwifi directory and typing

make uninstall
make clean
make
make install

(I'm assuming this is the snapshot from 03 September, version r3861)
Add the blacklist lines, reboot, do the modprobe ath_pci and then do
lsmod |grep ath

See if something shows up. If it doesn't, run modprobe ath_pci again.

Thanks.

 

you gotta be kiddin me...my whole post replay was just erased....i should always ctrl c after typing ANYTHING long on the web...anyway, ill try to make it short

I installed again, just like you said, heres the output of lsmod |grep ath
ath_pci 249016 0
wlan 236272 1 ath_pci
ath_hal 305376 1 ath_pci

One thing i have noticed is that i had 2 drivers or things before under admin -> hardware drivers, i believe the one that was there before was something like HAL atheros, if im not mistaking. Now the only one that's there is "Support for Atheros 802.11 wireless lan cards." Also, i uncheck the box, and restart, and open up the hardware drivers, and the box is still unchecked, but to the right of the box is a green checkmark, and it says "Status" and under that "In use". Is this a problem?

Another thing to point out, last night, in my shame, right before going to sleep, i installed ndiswrapper and a windows wifi driver, of course it didn't work, but i need to make sure i remove all this stuff properly. When i do ndiswrapper -l and rmmod ndiswrapper on the command line, it doesn't give me any errors, but just goes to the next line in the terminal (like when i run sudo modprobe ath_pci), does that mean its removed? Because it still shows up under admin settings as "windows wireless drivers". I'm sure this needs to be removed. I did uninstall the driver inside that menu, but i suppose it could still have an adverse effect. And just to be clear, i installed ndiswrapper at the very end of last night after me and you were finished talking, and it is the first time it has been installed on the machine. (i dont want to get slapped in the back of the head or anything)

So, to wrap up :
did a sudo make clean
did a sudo uninstall

did make
did sudo make install
unchecked the 1 driver in the admind->hardware drivers section
blacklisted the 2, ath_hal and ath5k
reboot
did sudo modprobe ath_pci no errors
did lsmod |grep -l posted above

Somthins fucked up now....When i do a "sudo iwlist ath0 scan" it now gives me the error :
ath0 interface doesn't support scanning

whereas before it would show me all of my wifi networks..hmmmmz...

Also, under network tools, now i can't see (ath0) of (wifi0) whereas before they were atleast THERE....damn whats going on? Is it ndiswrapper?

EDIT : After a reboot, "ath0" and "wifi0" are showing up again under network tools.
Also, now i can do a sudo iwlist ath0 scan and it shows "No scan results" as opposed to not being supported at all. (remember, no networks here)

Also, lsmod |grep -l now returns this:
Usage: grep [option]...Pattern [File]...
Try 'grep --help' for more information

AND...I typed ndiswrapper in synaptic and found 3 things installed, uninstalled them all, windows wireless drivers no longer showing up

Whatcha think?
If i had to guess at this point, i would say even if there was wireless networks up at my work, they wouldn't be poppin up yet. lol.

Thanks,
Chris


(ps - i really appreciate your help, its people like you that make the linux community such a great place to be a part of)

 

Ooooh! something different !
After uninstalling and reinstalling again and removing madwifi stuff i found on the synaptic package manager....
after modprobe ath_pci and a lsmod |grep -l i get :

ath_rate_sample 16128 1
ath_pci 249016 0
wlan 236272 4 wlan_scan_sta, ath_rate_sample,ath_pci
ath_hal 305376 3 ath_rate_sample,ath_pci

that could be good, neh?

 

Heh, are we sure now that ndiswrapper is removed? Go back to my page to doublecheck that one.
I don't even bother unchecking those boxes in the hardware thing anymore, I simply add the two lines to the modprobe.d/blacklist file. Make sure there isn't an ndiswrapper file in /etc/modprobe.d as well.

It's possible that the card just needs to be turned on after all this.

sudo ifconfig ath0 up
iwlist ath0 scan

See if that helps.

 

I've definitely removed ndiswrapper.

So you dont think that 2nd thing missing the hardware drivers has any effect on it?

 

Any luck?! I am stuck at the very same state! And I have now spent 10 hours on this... iwlist ath0 scan shows the networks but unable to connect using network manager.

AAO XP + Ubuntu dual boot

 

Well, its good to see someone else is having this mind bending problem. I haven't gotten home yet so i can't check and see if the new install maybe fixed the problem. Somehow, i doubt it.

I did pick up a netgear usb wifi adapter though, so if all else fails, i'll try that with ndiswrapper.

 

I don't think I've left anything out of that last set of instructions. I'm not sure why folks are having problems, especially as we seem to be using the same versions of everything--you said that you didn't upgrade Hardy this time, correct?

Buggy hardware? A buggy install? As I said, when I tried with Hardy this morning I clicked on NetworkManager, added my SSID and it was simple as soon as I blacklisted ath_hal and modprobed ath_pci, though I did have to do that twice. I can't duplicate the problem.

I'm at a bit of a loss at this point. I've been going over my instructions to see if I left anything out (sometimes, when you've done something several times, you use mental shorthand and leave out an important step that someone new to this might not realize is essential.) However, I don't believe that that's the problem.
Wireless switch should be one because it is seeing networks. It's just not allowing you to connect.

Have you connected with the default Linpus installation? Is it possible that your router is set to only use 802.11n? (The wireless card only uses b and g.)

The only time I ran into something similar was with Fedora's Alpha, which used the kernel's builtin ath5k module--it would see the networks but only connect to an unencrypted one.

Hopefully, onelinux.org will have a working iso soon--I know they're working on it.

I'm sorry this isn't working for you folks, at this point, I'm out of ideas.

 

Yeah...Linpus worked fine. My connection is unencrypted, but i can't connect to an encrypted router either. But i havent lost all hope just yet. Im going to go home and try again. Like i said...I picked up a netgear usb wifi adapter that is supposed to work well with ndiswrapper...so if i can't get the internal to work i guess ill just have to use that until onelinux is back up and running. Thanks for all your help.

 

There are a few linuxes that will run the wifi successfully out of the box: the Mepis 8.0 beta has already built the working madwifi modules for you, and any newer version using the as yet unreleased 2.6.27 kernel uses the new ath5k driver.

By the way, the chipset goes by many names: AR242X, 5007EG, AR5XB63...all the same device.

 

Well guys, i have some good news.
My new wg111v2 netgear adapter works great. hahaha. using ndiswrapper it popped right up. and its pretty damn quick too. i would like to thank you all for helping me so much though.

im just going to use this until the full version of ibex comes out next month. I think i can deal with an adapter for a month

THANKS!

Chris

 

hmm... I am still stuck! I installed Wicd (uninstalling the default network manager)... and selected madwifi... it shows the networks alright but still unable to connect. I am able to connect using XP, so not a h/w problem. I built and rebuilt the madwifi drivers... followed all your instructions... the wifi light is blinking, tried the switch... showdown, waited and rebooted... still no luck... such a shame it is such a breeze with windoze!

 

Seeing all these folks having issues with Hardy (and still being unable to duplicate it, even with WPA2 and an nonbroadcasting ESSID, I'm getting tempted to put it down to some sort of bug during the installation.

I've only seen it, as I said, with Fedora 10 live, where it's using a different driver. I have had no trouble, and judging from the Ubuntu page on the AA1, it seems that it's usually trivial.

As I said before, I'm fresh out of answers. You folks seem to have tried the things that people miss--blacklisting ath_hal and ath5k, modprobe ath_pci, ifconfig ath0 up, and all that. I'm really not sure what the issue is here, unless some little glitch is taking place during the installations, and I've simply been fortunate in not experiencing it.

I've gone over my instructions closely, and I can't see that I'm leaving anything out. So, I'm not sure why it's not working. Maybe it's a bug in NetworkManager, which seems to break from time to time.

Just for fun, why don't you folks try doing sudo apt-get upgrade NetworkManager and seeing if you have any luck. (On the other hand, if it pulls in 100 dependencies, I wouldn't do it, at least on the 8 gig SSD.)

I'm sorry I can't be of more help here. The Ubuntu forums might or might not be of more help--I've seen some incorrect advice there at times, but usually, they're pretty good.

 

Re: Wifi...pleeeeease help UPDATE

Several weeks later...

I got it workin. Woot woot. Ubuntu 8.04.1 without an external usb.....fantastic!