Arch Linux

fedex1993

Member

Registered: 2008-01-19

Posts: 21

Wireless Problem

Okay after hours on hours trying to get me wireless working i have had no luck. I have a atheros wifi card in my toshiba a135-s4527. I have followed the guide on the arch wiki getting wifi to work. So far i have had no luck getting iwconfig displaying what i need. Please help.

josomebody

Member

Registered: 2008-06-20

Posts: 190

Re: Wireless Problem

Let's see the output of

lspci -nn | grep Atheros

If you get something mentioning an AR5006EG ending with [168c:001c] or close to that, try building your madwifi package with this PKGBUILD:

_kernver=2.6.25-ARCH;

pkgname=madwifi
pkgver=r3366
pkgrel=1
pkgdesc="Madwifi drivers for Atheros wireless chipsets. For stock arch 2.6 kernel"
arch=(i686 x86_64)
license=('GPL')
url="http://madwifi.org"
depends=('madwifi-utils' 'kernel26>=2.6.25.3-1' 'kernel26<2.6.26')
makedepends=('sharutils')
install=madwifi-ng.install
# subversion source: svn checkout http://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/trunk madwifi
source=(http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-nr-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz
        #ftp.archlinux.org/other/madwifi/madwifi-${pkgver}.tar.bz2
        #http://downloads.sourceforge.net/madwifi/madwifi-${pkgver}.tar.gz
        )
# md5sums=('e490429c026b5faff06696f947d9a39d')

build() {
  [ "${CARCH}" == "i686" ] && export ARCH=i386

  #cd $startdir/src/$pkgname-$pkgver
  cd $startdir/src/$pkgname-ng-$pkgver+ar5007
  sed -i -e 's/-Werror//g' Makefile.inc
  make KERNELPATH=/lib/modules/$_kernver/build KERNELRELEASE=$_kernver modules|| return 1
  make KERNELPATH=/lib/modules/$_kernver/build KERNELRELEASE=$_kernver modules \
       DESTDIR=$startdir/pkg KERNELRELEASE=$_kernver install-modules
  sed -i -e "s/KERNEL_VERSION='.*'/KERNEL_VERSION='${_kernver}'/" $startdir/*.install

  # install to wireless kernel directory
  mkdir -p $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/$_kernver/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/madwifi
  mv $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/$_kernver/net/* $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/$_kernver/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/madwifi
  rm -r $startdir/pkg/lib/modules/$_kernver/net/
}

The important bits are the change in the pkgver from the original in ABS and the modifications I made to the source URLs. That one worked for me without any real problem as far as bringing the device up.

EDIT to add: also makesure ath5k is !ed out in your rc.conf.

Last edited by josomebody (2008-07-16 02:21:11)

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fedex1993

Member

Registered: 2008-01-19

Posts: 21

Re: Wireless Problem

What do you mean by pkgbuild. Never really done compleing before i just came from ubuntu. I am a experienced ubuntu user but never really done compileing

josomebody

Member

Registered: 2008-06-20

Posts: 190

Re: Wireless Problem

Read about ABS. I owe my firstborn child to it. Basically you can build and install stuff from source with about three commands.

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fedex1993

Member

Registered: 2008-01-19

Posts: 21

Re: Wireless Problem

Okay thank you very much i like ABS. Thanks josomebody

fedex1993

Member

Registered: 2008-01-19

Posts: 21

Re: Wireless Problem

can you walk me threw on how to do this i a confused

josomebody

Member

Registered: 2008-06-20

Posts: 190

Re: Wireless Problem

Install abs if you haven't yet.
Run abs with no arguments as root.
Go digging through /var/abs to find the folder for madwifi. I think it's in the core folder.
Copy that folder into your home folder. (Make an abs folder in your home folder if you haven't yet. That's where you want your abs build directories to go.) cp -r madwifi ~/abs
Replace the PKGBUILD file with the one I put up there.
From your ~/abs/madwifi folder, run makepkg as a regular user. (You can run it with the option -c if you don't care about the source code and stuff being around after you're done. I like to keep it in case I wanna do some tweaking later.)
Go do twenty push-ups or take a jog around the block or have a couple a beers, cause the build will take a minute.
Now you should have a file called something like madwifi-r3366-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz. This is the package. Install it with

# pacman -U madwifi-r3366-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz

(note install it as root)
Edit your rc.conf as per the wiki.
Reboot.
You should see the atheros devices now with ifconfig -a. You should have ath0 and wifi0 or something similar. If you want an easy way to connect to a wireless router and don't really know how, I'd recommend wifi-radar as a good gui app to do that for now, but your life will get easier when you figure out how to use netcfg.

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fedex1993

Member

Registered: 2008-01-19

Posts: 21

Re: Wireless Problem

It keeps getting an error

PKGBUILD: line 13: madwifi: command not found

==> ERROR: An unknown error has occured. Exiting...
[seand@Arch-Laptop madwifi]$

fedex1993

Member

Registered: 2008-01-19

Posts: 21

Re: Wireless Problem

Yeah i am still getting that error saying that madwifi is not a command

fedex1993

Member

Registered: 2008-01-19

Posts: 21

Re: Wireless Problem

i don't know what to edit the wiki doesnt really help. I got it installed but if i do a ifconfig or iwconfig nothing shows up.

josomebody

Member

Registered: 2008-06-20

Posts: 190

Re: Wireless Problem

It wants a script called madwifi-ng.install. It should be in your abs/madwifi folder. If not, here's the one I used:

# arg 1:  the new package version
post_install() {
  KERNEL_VERSION='2.6.25-ARCH'
  depmod -ae -v $KERNEL_VERSION  > /dev/null 2>&1                
}

# arg 1:  the new package version
# arg 2:  the old package version
post_upgrade() {
  KERNEL_VERSION='2.6.25-ARCH'
  depmod -ae -v $KERNEL_VERSION  > /dev/null 2>&1        
  
}

# arg 1:  the old package version
post_remove() {
  KERNEL_VERSION='2.6.25-ARCH'
  depmod -ae -v $KERNEL_VERSION  > /dev/null 2>&1        
}

op=$1
shift
$op $*

Looks like that's what it's hiccupping over.
If you need any more help, get ahold of me via instant messenger or pm me. I think we're making too much noise on the forum.

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bladder

Member

Registered: 2008-07-16

Posts: 2

Re: Wireless Problem

This AUR package solved the same problem for me.

http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=17392

I tried the ABS stuff above from josomebody and made a pkg, it didn't work, still got module errors.

Building is very similiar to the process above.
1) Follow link and get the tarball.
2) Extract tar in some dir e.g. ~/abs (tar zxf madwifi-newhal-svn.tar.gz)
3) cd to extracted dir (madwifi-newhal-svn) and makepkg (as non-root user)
        N.B. You will need pkg subversion as part of the src retrieval  (pacman -S subversion)
4) Install the pkg, pacman -U madwifi-newhal-svn-3772-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.gz
5) add !ath5k to MODULES() in rc.conf, reboot
6) modprobe ath_pci, iwconfig should show ath0.  Add ath_pci to MODULES()

Good Luck!

Last edited by bladder (2008-07-16 22:41:39)