Ubuntu

Atheros WLAN problem with Ubuntu 8.10

Asked by Pyrre

I have the same problem that many are having with Atheros Wlan. I have Acer 5315 laptop. I can use mobile broadband and wired line, but not wireless.

I'm a total newbie in Linux and I can not understand half of the stuff that are talked in other topics. I like Ubuntu and all but I have used Windows all of my life so please bear with me. I have two drivers installed, Support for Atheros 802.11 wireless LAN cards and Support for 5xxx series of Atheros 802.11 wireless LAN cards. And the 5xxx series driver is enabled and the other one disabled. What to try next? It just wont activate the wlan card or something.

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Bernhard
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Best Bernhard (b.a.koenig) said : 		#1

The atheros drivers are not standard in Ubuntu. There are some HOW-TOs on the web though, try this one:

http://madberry.org/2008/11/how-to-get-atheros-ar242x-to-work-on-810-intrepid-ibex/

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#2

Have you tried another distro such as Wolvix?

http://distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=wolvix

Wolvix Cub 1.1.0 tends to be quite good at picking up on wireless devices and might help figure out what settings you need for Ubuntu. You can try Wolvix from the Cd without installing anything to your machine (it's called a LiveCd when you use a distro in this way)

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#3

Bernhard's answer sounds better than mine - as usual :)

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Pyrre (joonas-p-k) said : 		#4

Thanks Bernhard, that solved my question.

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Pyrre (joonas-p-k) said : 		#5

It was smooth as silk until I got the hang of it. Had a few hickups but after that it went ok. Atleast for now. Now I just have to hope that it will load the files ok after reboot and all.

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Pyrre (joonas-p-k) said : 		#6

I mean smooth as silk as soon as I got hang of it. But still, thanks a lot for both of you.

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#7

Nicely done, congrats :)
Welcome to Ubuntu, regards from
Tom :)

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Pyrre (joonas-p-k) said : 		#8

Well I have been using Ubuntu for about 4months now, but I just havent had any reason to fiddle with terminal and all that. Now that I´m movin to bigger appartment and get wlan I thought I have to have it working.

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Flavio A Teixeira (flavioteixeira1) said : 		#9

I have a desktop with one Atheros PCI card running Ubuntu 8.10 (Internet Cable Connection )and I bought one ACER Aspire One (Netbook).
I was trying to make one Ad-hoc connection to share internet and it worked only on Ubuntu 9.04 (jaunty),but with this HOW-TO (by Bernhard on 2009-03-12)

http://madberry.org/2008/11/how-to-get-atheros-ar242x-to-work-on-810-intrepid-ibex/

It worked Just fine. (Thanks !)
I think it should work with all atheros 5xxx cards.

Here are my lspci, and kernel version:

flavio@MSI-preview:~$ lspci| grep Atheros
01:07.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. Atheros AR5001X+ Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
flavio@MSI-preview:~$ uname -a
Linux MSI-preview 2.6.27-14-generic #1 SMP Tue Aug 18 17:21:41 UTC 2009 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Ubuntu 8.10 -Intrepid

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Tom (tom6) said : 		#10

Brilliant, nicely done Flavio :))
It seems a few people in
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+questions?field.search_text=&field.sort=NEWEST_FIRST&field.sort-empty-marker=1&field.actions.search=Search&field.language=en&field.language-empty-marker=1&field.status=OPEN&field.status=NEEDSINFO&field.status=ANSWERED&field.status=SOLVED&field.status-empty-marker=1
would appreciate answers about wireless issues, and networking generally.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)