Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Howto install madwifi drivers for Atheros wireless card in Lucid

Hi guys in this thread you will the instructions to install Madwifi drivers for Atheros wireless cards. Please follow the instructions to the word.

Open the 'terminal' by navigating through Applications-->Accessories--> Terminal

Now type the following commands in terminal. Copy and paste the text in red in the terminal

1.Code:
sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list


From there make sure you uncomment anything that starts with "deb" in there. So change it from "#deb" to "deb" Something along thoes lines. To exit and save hit "CTRL+X" the answer "YES" to save, then finally hit "ENTER"

2.Code:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade


3.Code:

sudo apt-get install build-essential libssl-dev
4..Code:
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`
5. Code:
sudo apt-get install subversion
6.Code:
sudo -i

7.Code:

sudo svn checkout http://svn.madwifi-project.org/madwifi/trunk/ madwifi-ng
8.Code:
cd madwifi-ng

9.Code:

echo "" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
10.Code:
echo "#Remove To Install MadWIFI Drivers" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

11.Code:

echo "blacklist ath9k" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

12.Code:

echo "blacklist ath5k" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

13.Code:

make && make install

14.Code:

echo ath_pci >> /etc/modules
Restart your machine.It should work


Kernal updates of your system will kill your driver. Well no need to worry about that.Just recompile your driver.
For that you open a terminal and type the command
Code:

sudo -i

and just repeat the steps from No 8. Your madwifi will cone back to life again.

Best of Luck
Dr Kurian
__________________

5 comments:

  1. Just though I'd let you know that I have followed this blog to the letter but it did not work for me. was I supposed to have the UBUNTU 10.10 disk in the CD-ROM at the same time. Infact my system failed to reboot and had to do a forced shutdown as on startup it stuck on a blank screen and blinking cursor.

    My system now reports the following
    iwconfig
    lo no wireless extensions.

    eth0 no wireless extensions.

    wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:off/any
    Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=off
    Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
    Power Management:off

    david@david-Compaq-Presario-CQ70-Notebook-PC:~$ sudo lshw -C network
    [sudo] password for david:
    *-network
    description: Ethernet interface
    product: RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller
    vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
    physical id: 0
    bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
    logical name: eth0
    version: 02
    serial: 00:1f:16:59:1f:a7
    size: 100MB/s
    capacity: 100MB/s
    width: 64 bits
    clock: 33MHz
    capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
    configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full ip=192.168.1.234 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=100MB/s
    resources: irq:42 ioport:3000(size=256) memory:d0410000-d0410fff memory:d0400000-d040ffff memory:d0420000-d043ffff
    *-network DISABLED
    description: Wireless interface
    product: AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter
    vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
    physical id: 0
    bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
    logical name: wlan0
    version: 01
    serial: 00:23:4e:16:54:97
    width: 64 bits
    clock: 33MHz
    capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
    configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath5k driverversion=2.6.35-22-generic-pae firmware=N/A latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg
    resources: irq:17 memory:d2600000-d260ffff

    ReplyDelete
  2. I've now tried it with the OS disk inserted and it seemed that the commands were now doing something. However on reboot I have no wireless capabilities now.
    I should point out that he 13. Code:
    'make && make install'

    still gives me the following message (below), is this normal?

    make: *** No targets specified and no makefile found. Stop.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Dr Kurian please help, i´m trying to get wifi in my acer aspire 5040 with an atheros card and ubuntu 11.04, which before following your steps didn´t even recognize the surrounding networks. Now it does recognize them (Hurray!!) but at the moment of trying to connect to any of them and give the appropriate password stays loading for a while until it gives up and says¨Wireless network: disconnected¨

    thanks in advance....

    ReplyDelete
  4. Mate, I would make a golden frame to your post, as after a week my wifi is working again. Tried on xubuntu 12.04 LTS, it was magic how my wifi had connected.

    Your installation guide is excellent, if I had the chance I would shake hands with you and buy you a couple of rounds of beer. :) Thank you very very much! (I hope my wifi is going to keep on working well. :D)

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thank you! It worked on xubuntu... Beside your description I only had to Activate the drivers from Settings > Additional Drivers and reboot. I owe you a beer! :-)

    ReplyDelete