How to configure Attansic Ethernet Controller?

English Network/Internet
1

I have trouble getting the Attansic Ethernet Controller in my ACER Aspire 8930 to work.

The card was completely dead until I upgraded the kernel to 2.6.28.1 and installed ath9k drivers from wireless.kernel.org.

Now ifconfig recognized the card as a ‘pan0’ device. Unfortunately, the network setup in Yast still refuses to let me configure the card. The reason given is ‘no kernel-device available (eth0, wlan0)’ and probable lack of firmware. This is the same as before, when the card was not recognized at all. I can’t even edit the card configuration, as the ‘edit’ button is inactive.

I disabled network manager to use ifup, but ‘ifup pan0’ just tells me that there is no configuration for this interface.

So what do I do now? There appears to be no firmware for this card, at least the windows drivers did not come with a ‘*.bin’ file. I copied all driver files to ‘/lib/firmware’ anyway, but that didn’t help.

2

Hi NRuf
Attansic was aquired by atheros a little while back. I have a gigabit ethernet controller on my Motherboard and it was a pain in the neck to find drivers that worked…

check out the link below. Its Madwifi, an open source project for the atheros drivers. You may want to see if your card is supported and try out these drivers…

MadWifi.net

3

Thanks. But as far as I can tell, the ath9k driver I’m using makes madwifi obsolete. It does work with the card in a fashion - ifconfig does suddenly recognize ‘pan0’. It’s just that I’m not permitted to configure the card in Yast and don’t know how to do that’by hand’, or whether I need firmware in a format not included with the windows driver.

4

can you post the output of the following command as root?

lsmod

ifconfig -a

dmesg

5

Here is ifconfig. The pan0 interface is only available since I installed the compat-wireless-2.6 package with the ath9k driver.

# ifconfig -a
lo        Link encap:Lokale Schleife
          inet Adresse:127.0.0.1  Maske:255.0.0.0
          inet6 Adresse: ::1/128 Gültigkeitsbereich:Maschine
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:32 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 Sendewarteschlangenlänge:0
          RX bytes:2056 (2.0 Kb)  TX bytes:2056 (2.0 Kb)

pan0      Link encap:Ethernet  Hardware Adresse 76:3A:EC:CE:EE:93
          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 Sendewarteschlangenlänge:0
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)

Now lsmod.I noticed that ath9k driver was not running, so I activated it with modprobe. That had no effect on Yast, though.

 # lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
iptable_filter         11648  0
ip_tables              25808  1 iptable_filter
x_tables               29960  1 ip_tables
ath9k                 245280  0
mac80211              228920  1 ath9k
cfg80211               49200  1 mac80211
nls_iso8859_1          13696  1
nls_cp437              15424  1
vfat                   19264  1
fat                    58872  1 vfat
usb_storage           105248  1
ipv6                  276352  20
bridge                 57568  0
stp                    11332  1 bridge
bnep                   22208  2
cpufreq_conservative    15688  0
cpufreq_userspace      12100  0
cpufreq_powersave      10240  0
acpi_cpufreq           16848  1
snd_pcm_oss            51520  0
snd_mixer_oss          23552  1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_seq                63696  0
microcode              22164  0
snd_seq_device         16404  1 snd_seq
binfmt_misc            17868  1
fuse                   61184  1
loop                   24012  0
dm_mod                 65312  0
rfcomm                 45600  4
l2cap                  29888  12 bnep,rfcomm
hci_usb                22936  2
bluetooth              64740  8 bnep,rfcomm,l2cap,hci_usb
hid_dell               11200  0
hid_pl                 12288  0
hid_cypress            11584  0
hid_zpff               11968  0
hid_gyration           11520  0
hid_bright             11072  0
hid_sony               11904  0
hid_samsung            11328  0
hid_microsoft          12932  0
hid_tmff               12800  0
hid_monterey           11264  0
hid_ezkey              10944  0
acer_wmi               24360  0
rfkill                 20608  4 ath9k,acer_wmi
hid_apple              15808  0
hid_a4tech             11776  0
hid_logitech           17536  0
ff_memless             13768  4 hid_pl,hid_zpff,hid_tmff,hid_logitech
hid_cherry             11200  0
rtc_cmos               19992  0
rtc_core               27316  1 rtc_cmos
hid_sunplus            11136  0
hid_petalynx           11776  0
usbhid                 42160  6 hid_dell,hid_pl,hid_zpff,hid_bright,hid_tmff,hid_logitech
rtc_lib                11776  1 rtc_core
i2c_i801               18204  0
led_class              13128  2 ath9k,acer_wmi
joydev                 19648  0
sr_mod                 22900  0
cdrom                  41960  1 sr_mod
hid_belkin             11456  0
serio_raw              14340  0
snd_hda_intel         529764  1
sg                     38224  0
i2c_core               33760  1 i2c_i801
hid_chicony            11456  0
hid                    50192  21 hid_dell,hid_pl,hid_cypress,hid_zpff,hid_gyration,hid_bright,hid_sony,hid_samsung,hid_microsoft,hid_tmff,hid_monterey,hid_ezkey,hid_apple,hid_a4tech,hid_logitech,hid_cherry,hid_sunplus,hid_petalynx,usbhid,hid_belkin,hid_chicony
iTCO_wdt               21200  0
iTCO_vendor_support    12484  1 iTCO_wdt
snd_pcm                93192  2 snd_pcm_oss,snd_hda_intel
video                  30036  0
snd_timer              32080  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
output                 11840  1 video
snd_page_alloc         18256  2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
snd_hwdep              16648  1 snd_hda_intel
wmi                    16192  1 acer_wmi
snd                    75832  10 snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_seq,snd_seq_device,snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_hwdep
intel_agp              36912  0
soundcore              16464  1 snd
battery                21448  0
ac                     13832  0
button                 16224  0
sd_mod                 35176  6
uhci_hcd               31136  0
ehci_hcd               43212  0
usbcore               160944  7 usb_storage,hci_usb,hid_sony,usbhid,uhci_hcd,ehci_hcd
edd                    17680  0
ext3                  134480  2
mbcache                17732  1 ext3
jbd                    69440  1 ext3
fan                    13832  0
ahci                   41100  3
libata                182720  1 ahci
scsi_mod              173416  5 usb_storage,sr_mod,sg,sd_mod,libata
thermal                29728  0
processor              61560  4 acpi_cpufreq,thermal

Output from dmesg is too long to post! Which part is important?

6

did you see anything in dmesg relating to your card? anything about a driver not loading, or missing firmware?

Are you sure you have the right chipset? In my experience with Attansic, they arent always too clear with their version numbers…

I was poking around the linuxwireless.org website and the instructions for the drivers…

have you tried executing the following?

sudo athload ath9k

7

I get the following related to the card:

pan0: no IPv6 routers present

IPv6 is activated in YasT under global options, but of course there is no configuration for the card.

Are you sure you have the right chipset? In my experience with Attansic, they arent always too clear with their version numbers…

The windows driver is “AR81<something>”, so I suppose I need the ath9k and not the ath5k driver.

have you tried executing the following?

sudo athload ath9k

athload only takes ath5k or madwifi as options. I can run ath9k fine via modprobe, though.

8

I figured out that ‘pan0’ is some sort of bluetooth interface. YasT still doesn’t recognize it, even if I add a bluetooth device (which YasT insists must be called ‘bneppan0’).