New madwifi now supports AR2425 in madwifi-trunk branch

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For all the people that have an AR2425 based Atheros card (e.g. AR5007EG), it has been a lot of time without knowing with which driver it should work correctly.

I have tested all, after all madwifi 0.94 release does not support this chipset. Until recent days we only had two decent options: 1) Use ath5k from kernel >= 2.6.26, 2) Use madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6

I used to recommend using madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6 because of the weird behavior I noticed using ath5k, as I commented here.

But now WE HAVE AN ULTIMATE OPTION:

Since the madwifi-free branch has been merged to madwifi-trunk in last April 04, (read news from madwifi page), madwifi trunk now has added support for AR5007 or AR2425 based cards.

The best of all of this is that since this has happen madwifi does not depend on the binary only HAL anymore!.

I encourage to all the people try madwifi-trunk since I see it very solid now and more mature than ath5k.

Well, how to do it? just as easy as eating a piece of cake:

1.- download madwifi-trunk from here

2.- Extract the tarball and go to the scripts folder and in a terminal execute this 2 scripts as root (you can use "sudo su" before to avoid writing sudo before each line):

cd scripts

./madwifi-unload

./find-madwifi-modules.sh $(uname -r)

cd ..

you have to answer r to remove old madwifi modules installed on you system.

3.- Let's compile, so you should verify you have kernel-headers and build-essential packages installed. After that just do this in the same terminal:

make

make install

4.- Now to see if your card is working, load madwifi and restart netwoking:

modprobe ath_pci

/etc/init.d/networking restart

Or just reboot your system.

P.D. Be sure you don't have ath5k activated or ath_pci blacklisted following the steps described here. This method applies to any version of Ubuntu (Dapper, Gutsy, Hardy, Intrepid, Jaunty, etc)

Good Bye and enjoy madwifi.

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22 Responses

  1. Bodysoda says:

    I have WIFI Atheros USB adaptor, does this fix work for USB adaptor as well ?

  2. mitchellvc says:

    as you would already know from here:
    http://madwifi-project.org/ticket/33
    Support for usb devices is not in the near futuro of madwifi, but if you are having trouble, in the last comment (ticket 33), someone announces that there is a freebsd driver for some usb Atheros devices, you could try to compile it and post the result for the people owning a usb device from atheros.

  3. G&T says:

    There’s been a release just for the AR242x/5007 for a while now.
    fyi- Ticket 1192. http://madwifi-project.org/ticket/1192
    http://snapshots.madwifi-project.org/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6/

    Works perfectly,btw.

  4. Tim V-B says:

    Woo hoo! My Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Li1718 is now working! I am very very excited to be writing this over wireless. Thank you for posting this.

    For any newbies out there, “kernel-headers” means “linux-headers” if you’re looking through Synaptic.

    And, if you’re using Jaunty, the file you need to tinker with is /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ath_pci.conf
    (enter “sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ath_pci.conf” to open this properly)
    Make sure it says somewhere:
    #blacklist ath_pci

    and has the line
    blacklist ath5k

  5. mitchellvc says:

    G&T:
    The fact is that the hal used in madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6 is the binary only supplied by Atheros, but the new one is free, that is the difference for those who want the open source hal and now it finally is not isolated anymore.

    Tim V-S:
    Thanks, you can also enable madwifi with jockey (for those who don’t like console), and it makes the changes needed in blacklist-ath_pci, and after that you can compile the module.

  6. ksall.com says:

    Thanks, you can also enable madwifi with jockey

  7. Randy says:

    This did not work for me. What should I expect to see when I type `modprobe ath_pci?’ Nothing happened when I did.

    I’ve followed instructions to remove the KDE network manager and replace it with Wicd but that didn’t help either.
    I’m starting to suspect that Ubuntu won’t work on this computer.

  8. Mitchell says:

    Randy:
    Don’t get desperate. I can tell you that if you have an AR2425 it’s fully supported by madwifi right now. About wicd i dont use it, but I had very bad experiences with KDE network manager, as workaround I used to use gnome network manager in KDE. On the other hand, you can test if your wireless is working by typing in a terminal (i’d prefer you reboot after installing first):

    #ifconfig

    if you see an ath0 device, so your atheros has been detected by the driver, now if you type:

    #iwlist ath0 scan

    and you detect some networks (the yours between them) then your wireless card is working well.

    then your problem is with KDE network manager, wicd or whatever. That’s a minimal problem easy to solve. Try that and post your results.

  9. footloose says:

    Wow. this worked for me. Thanks a lot.

  10. P L says:

    Works like a charm on a Toshiba Satellite M305D-S4830. 64bit. I had been using the 0.10.5 release, recently upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04 and their new driver worked most of the time. I couldn’t get connected to a previously working AP. Switched to this one, and everything came up like a charm.

  11. bart says:

    I give up 🙁
    Tried all methods..
    Get the wireless card recognized but no networks (even thoug it’s full of networks here!)

    I always get:
    $ iwlist ath0 scan
    ath0 No scan results

    Somewhere in Ubuntu 8.10 it used to work until one of the updates. Now in Jaunty 9.04 still no luck..

    $lspci
    07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

    ifconfig gives me both ath0 and wifi0
    $ iwlist ath0 scan
    ath0 No scan results

    /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ath_pci.conf
    blacklist ath5k
    #blacklist ath_pci
    #blacklist ath_hal

    anybody has a clue?

  12. Mitchell says:

    Bart:
    I assume you wireless is working. Have you tried using it with vista?. if you cant, try booting with the wireless off then when ubuntu has loaded turn on the switch of your wireless and shutdown the machine. After that boot again ubuntu and verify that your wireless is recognised and it is working. I had a similar problem changing between ath5k and madwifi (I guess ath5k was responsible) and the wireless even didn’t work in Vista, but after doing that the wireless worked again and i stayed with madwifi since then.

  13. bart says:

    Auch.. Did not even have to boot in Vista (don’t have vista) just switched Wireless on 🙂 😀

    oops, I have to confess that I mainly used macs in the past, and decided to go open source only. So now I have a ‘pc-laptop’. AND forgot that this one has a ‘wireless switch’..

    Hopefully some people are helped by my smart question 😉

    Thanks!!

  14. Monte says:

    Its working but no wpa support available in gui tool — only wep. Seems like a problem with something other than the driver. Trying to fix using jaunty and Thinkpad T42 with atheros 5212 card.

  15. Monte says:

    Never mind! Its totally fixed now. I just had to add the wpa support which Ubuntu Geek also helped me do.

    Here’s the link to those instructions in case anyone else needs that step:

    http://www.ubuntugeek.com/enable-wpa-wireless-access-point-in-ubuntu.html/comment-page-2

    Thank you!!

  16. w unruh says:

    I have a 2425 card and am getting weird behaviour on all of the methods– the connection will freeze for 2-10 sec about once a minute. Eg, if I ssh into the box from outside, the connection will stop and after a while resume. (this is not a problem on ssh to any other machine). [I tried ndiswrapper, but it does not connect at all to the wireless WPA router, even though I can see the routers in the area with iwlist s
    )
    Do others have this problem? Any possible solutions? Any hints as to how to debug these pauses?

  17. frans says:

    Mitchell,

    Thanks a lot. Also works like a charm on a Compaq Presario CQ60-310ED with Debian Lenny (in top panel of Gnome, do not forget to ‘Enable Wireless’ again).

  18. nick says:

    Thanks for this tip. My ar242x is working (loosely). Wifi connection is extremely slow on my Sony Vaio. I followed your steps; however, I am not sure the ar242 is using the correct driver. When I run lshw I see the following:

    *-network
    description: Wireless interface
    product: AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter
    vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
    physical id: 0
    bus info: pci@0000:06:00.0
    logical name: wmaster0
    version: 01
    serial: 00:1d:d9:7a:19:f2
    width: 64 bits
    clock: 33MHz
    capabilities: bus_master cap_list logical ethernet physical wireless
    configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath5k_pci latency=0 module=ath5k multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg

    Still says ath5k_pci… is that correct? Any ideas for a newbie?

    Thanks,
    Nick

  19. nick says:

    Ok.. I got the ath_pci driver working… I forgot to blacklist ath5k.

    Anyways, wifi connection is still extremely slow. Any ideas?

    Thanks,
    Nick

  20. hi says:

    can someone posted exactly comands and steps ???

  21. manio23 says:

    Melanie
    Great couldn’t get wpa to work with ndiwrapper now I am working again with method 3 thanks

  22. Amilouser says:

    Tip: DO NOT buy Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Li2727 because it is bluckin’ hopeless to get the stupid w-lan to work in Linux. I have spent countless hours in reading forums, trying everything that has been written, changing between Kubuntu, Ubuntu and OpenSuse but it still doesn’t work. I am sooooooo frustrated I am stuck with Vista, because that is anything but stable!!! Crup-computer!!! Hundred thumbs down!!!

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