11.1 and Atheros AR5007EG Wireless Howto

[snakedriver]

On my HP 9700z laptop, the Atheros AR5007EG Wireless worked out of the box with openSUSE 11.1, but the rate was only 1MHZ and if I did "iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M", the device became sporatic. Let's fix it.

Note: if your's is working out of the box the way you want, there is no need to try this procedure.

1st, go here: snapshots.madwifi.org: madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6 and get madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3879-20081204.tar.gz (which is the latest at this writing). Move it to it's own folder & untar it (all I did was click on the tarball and copy over the extracted folder). then copy the untarred folder to /usr/src/packages/BUILD. Take the time to read all the text files in that folder like install, readme, etc -- lot's of good info about the driver (and on the madwifi site too; it's a very powerful driver for other than just getting online = various modes).

2nd using Yast, make sure you have kernel-source, kernel-syms, gcc and make installed. And, kernel-source & kernel-syms must match your running kernel (uname -a).
If they don't match, do a YOU online update.

Now let's build the kernel module, but 1st we need to prepare the kernel:
In a terminal as root:
Issue the following commands and give the computer time to finish the operation, then issue the next one (it takes a while):

cd /usr/src/linux

make mrproper

make cloneconfig

make modules_prepare

Now we are ready to do some serious compiling; let's build the ath_pci module:
Still in the terminal as root:
Again, issue the following commands and give the computer time to finish the operation, then issue the next one:

rmmod ath5k  <-- unloads the SUSE kernel module

cd /usr/src/packages/BUILD/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3879-20081204

make

make install

modprobe  ath_pci  <-- loads the ath_pci kernel module

Almost there:
Now go to Yast > Network Devices & check the setup for your card; every wireless extension has to be accurate, DNS, gateway, etc has to be entered and they are all on separate tabs, on separate pages.
Also, there is a driver context menu on one of those tabs for the driver; make sure that is set for the ath_pci module or it will simply reload the ath5k module. Also make it effective at boot and don't forget to set the MTU. What I'm trying to say is look at all the tabs and context menus and make sure that the needed config info is present. And, don't forget to turn on the firewall. Check them again.
Save out of all that.

Finally, in a terminal as root, do "iwconfig"; hopefully you get 97/100 and the rate = 54M as I did

Have fun...See compiling is not that tough once you know how

If you have any questions, PM me.

[emn8w8]

Hi, Jim,

Like you I have an Atheros 5007EG in my Acer laptop; the pesky thing has never worked out of the box.
And even now with 11.1 it does install but works with the limitations you mentioned.
So I am all too familiar with the procedure you have described here but I would like to mention some additions to it.
First of all: this procedure has to be repeated after every kernel update (how small it may be).
A reboot is necessary after completing this procedure (this is regretted deeply by the developers of this driver...)
The ath5k driver will be reloaded after a reboot, thus resulting in a conflict with the newly installed ath_pci (HAL) driver;
the solution to this is blacklisting the ath5k driver. I did this by adding the line "blacklist ath5k" in both
/etc/modules.conf.local and /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
Last: the settings for the NIC applied through YaST will be happily ignored when using KNetworkManager;
in fact after I had replaced the ath5k driver with the HAL driver the NIC was up and running with the settings
I had previous assigned to it in KNetworkManager; there was no need to use YaST.

Thanks for the link to this driver; my biggest problem with this NIC has always been to find the latest version...

Best regards, Erik

[Ade22]

To: Snakedriver
Thanks for the madwifi compilation. Instruction was straight forward...few errors,but got there in the end.

Thanks.Happy New Year.

[Dexter1979]

This How-To works for the Netgear Wg311t as well. It has Atheros AR5212 chip. Ath5k works out of the box but I found it sluggish as well. Madwifi's does the business

[snakedriver]

Originally Posted by Ade22

To: Snakedriver
.few errors,but got there in the end.
Happy New Year.

Please list the errors and I will correct the guide ASAP.

Jim

[Dexter1979]

I found no errors. Only thing that was missing is mentioned in emn8w8's post. After you are done compiling and installing Madwifi you need to add Ath5k to the blacklist.

I did this by opening it in kwrite as root. I opened a terminal and typed the following after becoming root:

kwrite /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

Scroll down to the bottom and add

blacklist ath5k

Press save and exit kwrite.

After a reboot I put in my settings under Yast - Network Settings - Network Devices. One thing I noticed is that the 'old' card using ath5k was still listed as a device. I deleted that. Everything seems to work just fine. My internet is a lot quicker!

Thanks for the help, Snakedriver!

[jengelh]

*facepalm* for seeing that people still wrongly suggest to run make cloneconfig.

[blandoon]

Thanks, this worked great for me. It seems to have eliminated my performance problems with the ath5k kernel module on 11.1. I had been putting off messing with madwifi for a long time because I assumed it would be a lot harder than it was... but the whole thing went exactly as advertised.

I ran "make oldconfig" in place of "make cloneconfig" and it did the trick.

[Akoellh]

The easier way, if ath5k from openSUSE-kernel 2.6.27 really gives problems (in most cases it does not) is

a) to try compat-wireless-kmp packages with newer ath5k from OBS:

Webpin - Results for compat-wireless

b) Instead of compiling yourself, use "madwifi-free" packages from driver:wireless Repository.

Webpin - Results for madwifi-free

If you really want/need to build the driver from source, use the src.rpms.

As stated before by jengelh, make prepare/config/cloneconfig/whatever is _not_ needed and will mess up your build system at least for other modules you try to build. It is also advisable to install "kernel-syms" matching your kernel version together with kernel-source.

If you really think you must compile from a tarball and not using RPM-packages or rebuilding from src.rpms (for what ever reason, it does not make any sense at all), don't use madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6 as on some systems there were serious issues, use

snapshots.madwifi.org: madwifi-hal-testing

or

snapshots.madwifi.org: madwifi-free

But again, as there are ready made packages available, it is completely unnecesssary.

[eupeso4]

Thanx for the help Sneake.
Everything working fine now without any errors.
Thnx