Getting AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter To Work On Fedora 9
Submitted by Sudheer on Sun, 07/13/2008 - 07:33.
and restart the computer.
and restart the computer.
Last week I helped a friend configure wireless driver on his brand new HP Compaq Notebook PC. Fedora 9 X86_64 did not detect the wireless device automatically.
The first thing I did was list all PCI devices on the laptop PC.
lspciAt the end of the output I noticed
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)MadWifi provides Linux kernel drivers for wireless LAN devices with Atheros chipsets. Therefore my next task was to install MadWifi on the notebook PC. Before installing the kernel drivers it is recommended to update all the packages on the computer, especially the kernel. I updated all the packages.
rpm.livna.org repository for Fedora contains the MadWifi rpm. I enabled the rpm.livna.org repository on the laptop and installed the MadWifi rpm using
yum install kmod-madwifiand restarted the computer. The wireless device was not detected. I also tried aliasing wifi0 and ath0 to ath_pci. Nothing solved the problem. I uninstalled kmod-madwifi and recompiled madwifi. At this point system-config-network detected the hardware device as "other wireless device". But I could not connect to the Wifi network.
After researching for a while on the Internet, I noticed many people had difficulty obtaining the proper driver for Atheros AR242x wireless chipset on 64 bit Linux. My next best available option was to use Fedora 9 i386 on the laptop PC. I tried the rpm.livna.org MadWifi rpm again. It failed once again. I removed kmod-madwifi and rpm.livna.org and recompied madwifi.
These are the steps that actually worked. I launched the terminal and switched to super user mode using su -. The remaining steps are documented below.
Step 1. Download the latest madwifi snapshot from madwifi.org.
wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-ng-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz
Step 2: Extract the tarball and change directory
tar -zxvf madwifi-ng-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz
Step 3: Change directory
cd madwifi-ng-r3366+ar5007
Step 4: Install the necessary tools to compile madwifi.
yum install gcc kernel-devel kernel-headers make
Step 5: make
Step 6: make install
Step 7: Restart the computer
Step 8: Configure the network using either system-config-network or NetworkManagerI could see the ath5k and ath_pci modules in the Linux Kernel using lsmod.
$lsmod | grep ath
dm_multipath 18056 0
dm_mod 49236 2 dm_mirror,dm_multipath
ath5k 110344 0
mac80211 181992 1 ath5k
cfg80211 25096 2 ath5k,mac80211
ath_rate_sample 15104 1
ath_pci 162092 0
wlan 206008 5 wlan_wep,wlan_scan_sta,ath_rate_sample,ath_pci
ath_hal 281184 3 ath_rate_sample,ath_pci If you follow the same steps and do not see the ath_pci kernel module, try
modprobe ath_pciand restart the computer.
You may also try
modprobe ath5kand restart the computer.
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I wanted to add my similar
I wanted to add my similar experience to this thread [Getting AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter To Work On Fedora 9].
I am using an ACER 7520 - Fedora9 64bit.
For some reasons (HAL!), lspci lists it wrongly as Atheros AR242x while it is in fact AR5007 - I have found this by booting in Vista and noticing the driver details.
I have spent time trying and searching for solutions.
I was successfully with ndiswrapper. The most difficult part was to find an appropriate Windows driver 64bit.
I was lucky following the post of apostledeets in http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=878148 - I have used the link he provided for Windows-Driver-64bit (wget http://blakecmartin.googlepages.com/ar5007eg-64-0.2.tar.gz) so everything went like a charm following the instructions provided by ndiswrapper for installing the Windows driver (for ndiswrapper it was more convenient to have it installed with yum from livna).
I feel confident in this solution.
While the hardware-producers have to be blamed for supporting just a SINGLE OS (Windows) and a SINGLE RELEASE (Vista) - it is my duty to say thanks to everybody doing their best to support Linux.
Regarding your option - MadWifi - they also have my appreciation for their effort. So, two members of MadWifi have been hired by Atheros - good for them, good approach/intention for Atheros to address the Linux-market - we hope in better support for Linux.
Thank you,
dm
Hardware manufactuerers and device drivers
I agree. It is the moral responsibility of the hardware manufacturers to offer support for more than one particular operating system. The FOSS community can write free software drivers if the chipset manufacturers release the hardware specification.
It is good news that Atheros has decided to contribute code to the Linux kernel. I guess, it takes a while to support all its chipsets with all major WiFi protocols in the kernel.
I also feel that PC vendors like Hewlett-Packard have to play a role in this situation. I had to use Broadcom 4310 drivers for a Compaq laptop from Dell website in another example.
With warm regards,
Sudheer
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