Arch Linux

Tree

Member

Registered: 2010-02-23

Posts: 5

[SOLVED] Madwifi: "please enable wireless extensions"

Hello forum, I've come here with yet another issue. I'm trying to compile the newly-released Linux-2.6.35-rc4 kernel. My issue is that this is my first time doing this, and I've made it all the way to getting my wireless card working. I have an Atheros AR242x wireless card, and I have retrieved the madwifi and madwifi-utils packages using a computer with an internet connection. (my arch linux system is booting off of the 2.6.35-rc4 kernel, not the 2.6.34-ARCH kernel that is mainstream) I installed those packages, but no results. Got a fatal error when I ran

modprobe ath_pci

and

modprobe ath5k

Perhaps I am doing something wrong there, if I am, someone please tell me. But anyways, I then decided to compile the madwifi drivers into the kernel myself, but came across an error saying that

linux/utcrelease.h

cannot be found, as the make process was looking for the kernel version. I tried leading the make process to

include/linux/utc.h

because utc.h appears to have the same function as utcrelease, but I got the same error. I ran

export KERNELRELEASE=2.6.35-rc44

and the problem went away, but if anyone knows what was happening there I would be glad to know. When I ran make again, I got the message

Please enable wireless extensions.

This is where I'm stumbled. I looked far and wide, and unless I missed something, I found very litte. Does anyone know how to fix this? I've checked menuconfig, just as a note. Any help would be appreciated.

Best Regards,
Tree

Last edited by Tree (2010-07-08 00:07:41)

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: [SOLVED] Madwifi: "please enable wireless extensions"

AR2425 is supported by the ath5k driver, and AR2427 by the ath9k driver. Both of these are available in the kernel source, so there is no need to install madwifi.

The above info, and much more, is available here.

However, if you decide you want to do it anyway, your "wireless extensions" error will be solved by CONFIG_WIRELESS_EXT=y in your kernel config. And when you have it built and installed, modprobe EITHER ath_pci OR ath5k - not both.

Tree

Member

Registered: 2010-02-23

Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Madwifi: "please enable wireless extensions"

About modprobe'ing both modules, that was just a test to see if something unusual  happened and I didn't get both modules. I forgot to mention that when I ran "modprobe x" I got

FATAL: Module x not found.

x being ath_pci or ath5k. Also, I heard that it was included in the kernel source, but then why will it not load?

Thank you for your time,
Tree

EDIT: Just looked through the text of the .config file. Found CONFIG_ATH_COMMON or something like that and enabled it. I was asked a few questions while compiling and I think I have it. Thank you very much, this had me stumbled for many hours. Now I can focus on other things if all goes well.

FINAL: All worked, good to go.

Last edited by Tree (2010-07-08 00:07:14)