problems enabling wifi with MacBook Pro

Wifi on the MPB works with an older version of madwifi (svn revision 3344).

The madwifi-ng-r3344-20080207.tar.gz snapshot which I use is not available for download any more, so you will have to checkout via svn:

svn checkout http://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/trunk madwifi -r 3344

Make sure you have "build-essential" installed.

Change into the directory and do:

make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe ath_pci
sudo modprobe wlan_scan_sta

Reportedly the madwifi module prevents the system from going into suspend. To fix this add "ath_pci" to the MODULES variable in /etc/default/acpi-support.

When using wifi for a while it may stop working and your syslog will get spammed with the message "wifi0: ath_rxorn_tasklet: Receive FIFO overrun; resetting." In this case you will have to shut down your MBP (warm boot not sufficient) und start it up to get wifi working again. I fixed this (works fine for some months now) using the following script "/etc/network/if-up.d/no_bgscan":

---8<--*snip*---
#!/bin/sh

[ "$IFACE" = "ath0" ] || exit 0

/sbin/iwpriv $IFACE bgscan 0

---8<--*snip*---

This will do a "iwpriv ath0 bgscan 0" every time the interface comes up. Note that you will have to reinstall the driver after any ubuntu modules update!

What I did up to the moment is typing the following commands:

svn checkout http://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/trunk madwifi -r 3344
cd [madwifi directory]
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe ath_pci
sudo modprobe wlan_scan_sta
sudo gedit /etc/default/acpi-support
[adding "ath_pci" to the MODULES varaible and saving] (leaved MODULES_WHITELIST variable in blank...)

Then I rebooted the system, and the wireless connection is still not present in System-Administration-Network... :S Should I do anything else to enable it?

I did not understand the last part of your answer... I'm sorry... I never got the message "wifi0: ath_rxorn_tasklet: Receive FIFO overrun; resetting."

Thanks for your answer...

Are the modules loaded after reboot? You can check that using the "lsmod" command.

If the modules are loaded, you may want to have a look the output of "dmesg" to check the proper initialization of your wifi hardware.

On my system the "wifi0: ath_rxorn_tasklet: Receive FIFO overrun; resetting." error appeared after some time (maybe hours? I don't remember) of successfull wifi usage. So it might be sufficient to set up the workaround once you got wifi running.