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    Acer Atheros 5100 Wireless Card Problems

    I am indeed a newbie so bear with my stupidity. I am setting up my third computer with Ubuntu/Kubuntu and have come across a problem with this Acer that I haven't been able to resolve. I think that I know what it wrong, I just can't figure out how to fix it.

    The problem is that the wireless just stopped working on this laptop after a couple of hours of use. It may be that the wireless disable switch was hit by accident and then turned back on. Regardless of the cause, my wireless does not work any longer. I have the option via the network manager to setup a wireless connection but it is not seeing my wireless network when I scan. I updated the network driver to the madwifi drivers as suggested and had some success. When I run iwconfig It appears that my wireless card (ath0) is working, but the network settings when I run lshw -c network show my wireless network using wifi0. I am positive that this is probably my issue but I can't seem to figure out how to change the lshw result. I tried to change the /etc/udev/70-persistent-net.rules line for ath0 to wifi0 but it simply added the ath0 line back in once I rebooted. I didn't expect that to work but I am getting deperate. Below is the text of both an iwconfig and lshw -c network run in my terminal.

    tylerd@tylerd-laptop:~$ iwconfig
    lo no wireless extensions.

    eth0 no wireless extensions.

    wifi0 no wireless extensions.

    ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:""
    Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
    Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power:18 dBm Sensitivity=1/1
    Retryff RTS thrff Fragment thrff
    Power Managementff
    Link Quality=0/70 Signal level=-96 dBm Noise level=-96 dBm
    Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
    Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

    tylerd@tylerd-laptop:~$ lshw -c network
    WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
    *-network
    description: Wireless interface
    product: AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter
    vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
    physical id: 0
    bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
    logical name: wifi0
    version: 01
    serial: 00:19:7e:4b:bd:67
    width: 64 bits
    clock: 33MHz
    capabilities: bus_master cap_list logical ethernet physical wireless
    configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath_pci latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g
    resources: irq:16 memory:44000000-4400ffff
    *-network
    description: Ethernet interface
    product: RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+
    vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
    physical id: 1
    bus info: pci@0000:06:01.0
    logical name: eth0
    version: 10
    serial: 00:16:d4:d6:6b:39
    width: 32 bits
    clock: 33MHz
    capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical
    configuration: broadcast=yes driver=8139too driverversion=0.9.28 ip=192.168.2.13 latency=64 maxlatency=64 mingnt=32 multicast=yes
    resources: irq:21 ioport:a000(size=256) memory:b0300000-b03000ff
    tylerd@tylerd-laptop:~$

    Thank you in advance for any assistance in this problem. Just as a side note, I found that all three of my computers have no network information in the /etc/network/interfaces documentation. Itonly have the loopback lines. I have added ath0 to this configuration with no positive result.

    Thanks again.

    #2
    Re: Acer Atheros 5100 Wireless Card Problems

    I have an "Atheros AR5001X+" chipset card, and the default drivers that come with (K)Ubuntu cause big headaches (ath5k and ath9k). Using the "ath5k" driver/module with my card creates a very intermittent connection.... I will be connected for a couple minutes, then everything stalls for a few minutes, rinse, repeat.

    The "ath_pci" driver, which is the only one that seems to work with my card, is black-listed by default. To download and enable it, there are a few things that you need to do:

    1) sudo apt-get install build-essentials
    2) edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklists-ath_pci.conf
    --- add a "#" (without the quotes) at the beginning of the line that reads "blacklist ath_pci" (this will comment that line out)
    --- add a line reading "blacklist ath5k" (without the quotes)
    3) Download http://snapshots.madwifi-project.org...current.tar.gz
    4) Extract the archive (use Ark, or in console type: tar -zvxf madwifi-trunk-current.tar.gz)
    5) In the console, enter the new directory (should be madwifi-xxxxx-xxxxx)
    6) type:
    make && sudo make install && sudo modprobe ath_pci

    With any luck you should be back in business (possibly with a reboot depending on how you have your network settings set up).

    Do note, however, that with any kernel change you will likely have to do step 6 again (generally not minor versions, just majors: ex- 2.6.32.17 to 2.6.32.18... likely not. But 2.6.32 to 2.6.33... likely you will).

    Hope that fixes your problem.

    Cheers
    Man by his very nature is dependent on other men.

    Comment


      #3
      Re: Acer Atheros 5100 Wireless Card Problems

      Thanks for the prompt reply. I have already done the madwifi installation and blacklist of both the ath5k and ath9k drivers. The ath_pci driver is running my card right now. The problem is that my wireless network is connecting to a different logical name. I need to change to logical name of my wireless card to ath0 but can't find the configuration file with that information.

      Comment


        #4
        Re: Acer Atheros 5100 Wireless Card Problems

        To be honest, I've never looked at my 'lshw -c network' output before, but mine too references wifi0. I do not have the problem you are having however. In other words, don't worry about what the interface is called.

        By default there will be little present in your /etc/network/interfaces file. The reason for this is that Network Manager ( what KNetworkManager is the GUI interface for) handles the configuration and connection once you log in to KDE. Off the top of my head there are a couple reasons why you'd use the /etc/network/interfaces file, 1) you want the connection up and running before you login, and 2) you have set up security features on your network that Network Manager does not support and/or doesn't handle very well.

        Personally I'm using WPA-2, and for the life of me I could never get Network Manager to work properly with that. So, I added all of the configuration to my /etc/network/interfaces file and disabled Network Manager.

        So, from here, I guess:
        How is your network security set up (WPA1/2, WEP, etc.) and is your ESSID (network name) set to visible or hidden?
        Have you tried connecting through the command-line instead of using Network Manager (you will have to run 'sudo stop network-manager' before you try this)?

        Cheers
        Man by his very nature is dependent on other men.

        Comment


          #5
          Re: Acer Atheros 5100 Wireless Card Problems

          I tried the reinstall of madwifi using the directions provided. No luck. I end up with the same result, no wireless network found. My network is unsecured and the ESSID is visible (my other laptop with Ubuntu see it just fine). I tried to start manually but I get so many errors that I don't know what is going on. I can see that my card is seeing the network because iwconfig shows that it has Link Quality, Signal Level, etc... I ran ifconfig and see that wifi0 is listed but the Link encap: reads "UNSPEC" I assume that means that it isn't properly identified in configuration. The HWaddr is a bit suspect as well, the first bunch of number looks correct but there are way too many digits. This adapter was working and then suddenly stopped for no apparent reason so I know that the hardware is good to go. I put my ifconfig below. Thanks for bearing with me.

          tylerd@tylerd-laptop:~/Documents/madwifi-trunk-r4099-20090929$ ifconfig
          ath0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:19:7e:4b:bd:67
          inet6 addr: fe80::219:7eff:fe4b:bd67/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

          eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:d4:d6:6b:39
          inet addr:192.168.2.13 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::216:d4ff:fed6:6b39/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:84 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:124 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:20604 (20.6 KB) TX bytes:26544 (26.5 KB)
          Interrupt:21 Base address:0xa000

          lo Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
          RX packets:40 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:40 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:2000 (2.0 KB) TX bytes:2000 (2.0 KB)

          wifi0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-19-7E-4B-BD-67-30-30-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:74 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:280
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:3404 (3.4 KB)
          Interrupt:16

          tylerd@tylerd-laptop:~/Documents/madwifi-trunk-r4099-20090929$

          Comment

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