Wifi not working with Atheros WLAN Controller and driver ath9k

English Network/Internet
1

Hi All,

This is about Dell Inspiron 15 3000 series laptop put to work recently. I have dual booting with windows 7 Pro and loaded openSUSE 13.1 with KDE Desktop. It has Intel chipset and the above mentioned wifi card and driver. The wifi does not work either with Networkmanager or with ifup. Only the wired connection is working presently with Networkmanager and DHCP. I would like to get the wifi card going if possible because for a laptop that is not only convenient but also a necessity if one has to move the laptop about at home or elsewhere.

I have been struggling to find a solution but have not been successful so far. Found a good article at ‘https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:WiFi’ but it directs atheros cards problems to ‘SDB:Ndiswrapper’. I tried that but it is so complicated to go through the entire drill of putting windows driver to work, that I gave it up as a bad job.

Is there a better solution to this problem? Help would be most appreciated.

Regards,

RSP2

2

paste the output of

hwinfo --netcard

and

inxi -Nx

and please use code tags.

3

Those pages are probably out of date.

My older laptop has an atheros card. And, back in the days of suse 10.1, I was compiling “madwifi” from sources to get it working. However, there has been pretty good kernel support for atheros cards for several years.

My current desktop (a Dell Inspiron 660) has an atheros AR9485. I’m not currently using WiFi on that computer, but I did successfully use it for several months running opensuse 12.3 and configuring with NetworkManager.

Does your card work with Windows (assuming that you also have Windows installed)?

Maybe install the “rfkill” package (it’s in the repos). Then, as root, run


# rfkill list all

My output is:


0: phy0: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no

showing that nothing is currently blocked.

4

Hi jetchisel,

Command ‘hwinfo --netcard’ generated the following output:


rsp@dhcppc1:~> sudo /usr/sbin/hwinfo --netcard
21: PCI 600.0: 0282 WLAN controller                             
  [Created at pci.319]
  Unique ID: H9sU.7vPG7Y_TW+1
  Parent ID: hoOk.d1+sxogJeWC
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.2/0000:06:00.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:06:00.0
  Hardware Class: network
  Model: "Atheros WLAN controller"
  Vendor: pci 0x168c "Atheros Communications Inc."
  Device: pci 0x0036 
  SubVendor: pci 0x1028 "Dell"
  SubDevice: pci 0x020c 
  Revision: 0x01
  Driver: "ath9k"
  Driver Modules: "ath9k"
  Device File: wlp6s0
  Features: WLAN
  Memory Range: 0xf7d00000-0xf7d7ffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  Memory Range: 0xf7d80000-0xf7d8ffff (ro,non-prefetchable,disabled)
  IRQ: 18 (431 events)
  HW Address: 64:5a:04:6a:42:3f
  Link detected: no
  WLAN channels: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
  WLAN frequencies: 2.412 2.417 2.422 2.427 2.432 2.437 2.442 2.447 2.452 2.457 2.462 2.467 2.472 2.484
  WLAN encryption modes: WEP40 WEP104 TKIP CCMP
  WLAN authentication modes: open sharedkey wpa-psk wpa-eap
  Module Alias: "pci:v0000168Cd00000036sv00001028sd0000020Cbc02sc80i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: ath9k is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe ath9k"
  Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
  Attached to: #15 (PCI bridge)

22: PCI 700.0: 0200 Ethernet controller
  [Created at pci.319]
  Unique ID: 5699.dzMULScGWh1
  Parent ID: Z7uZ.fstMvxvjhHD
  SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1c.3/0000:07:00.0
  SysFS BusID: 0000:07:00.0
   Hardware Class:  network                                                                                                            
  Model: "Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller"
  Vendor: pci 0x10ec "Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd."
  Device: pci 0x8136 "RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller"
  SubVendor: pci 0x1028 "Dell"
  SubDevice: pci 0x0651 
  Revision: 0x07
  Driver: "r8169"
  Driver Modules: "r8169"
  Device File: p3p1
  I/O Ports: 0xe000-0xefff (rw)
  Memory Range: 0xf7c00000-0xf7c00fff (rw,non-prefetchable)
  Memory Range: 0xf0000000-0xf0003fff (ro,non-prefetchable)
  IRQ: 59 (7434 events)
  HW Address: b8:2a:72:b0:c1:33
  Link detected: yes
  Module Alias: "pci:v000010ECd00008136sv00001028sd00000651bc02sc00i00"
  Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: r8169 is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe r8169"
  Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
  Attached to: #16 (PCI bridge)

The command ‘inxi -Nx’ gave following result:

rsp@dhcppc1:~> inxi -Nx
Resuming in non X mode: glxinfo not found. For package install advice run: inxi --recommends
Network:   Card-1: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller 
           driver: r8169 ver: 2.3LK-NAPI port: e000 bus-ID: 07:00.0
           Card-2: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter driver: ath9k bus-ID: 06:00.0

For your further advice please

Thanks & Regards,

RSP2

Hi nrickert,

Yes the wireless card is working perfectly in Windows 7 Pro which I dual boot with my openSUSE 13.1 installation of KDE Desktop. Both the cards have been configured with Networkmanager. The out put of command ‘inxi -Nx’ is as below:

rsp@dhcppc1:~> inxi -Nx
Resuming in non X mode: glxinfo not found. For package install advice run: inxi --recommends
Network:   Card-1: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller 
           driver: r8169 ver: 2.3LK-NAPI port: e000 bus-ID: 07:00.0
           Card-2: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter driver: ath9k bus-ID: 06:00.0

Thanks & Regards,

RSP@

5

Hi nrickert,

The code is as under:

rsp@dhcppc1:~> sudo /usr/sbin/rfkill list all
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no
1: hci0: Bluetooth
        Soft blocked: no
        Hard blocked: no

Thanks & Regards,

RSP2

6

Well, according to those output drivers are loaded and there is no soft nor hard block…

7

You can check the output of

iwlist wlp6s0 scan  | grep -i essid

You don’t need to post the result here, but it should show you the available connections ;).

8

Hi jetchisel,

This does not seem to be the essid problem because with windows also i am using the same essid and pass-phrase. There the internet is working fine on wifi. I have failed to figure this out. With your experience you may be able to advise some other solution.

Thanks & Regards,

RSP2

9

This is an old post from one of the mods in the forums but it is still useful imo.

http://www.swerdna.net.au/susewireless.html#config

or click the link

http://www.swerdna.net.au/susewireless.html#config

Just ignore the ndiswrapper part since your driver is loaded.