atheros wifi on thinkpad - no working [SOLVED]

icantux · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 122

Hello all,

I'm in a bit of a quandry here. I'm writing this in windows wifi since it's the only working connection I have now because of a problem I'm having with gentoo wifi. (my phone line is down so no dsl; my neighbor dropped his encryption and let me mooch his wifi till the phone line gets fixed). So I'm going to keep this short not to use up his bandwidth

sigh.... :cry:

These are the steps I've taken so far to get the wifi working - first time I do this for gentoo:

- I have a Thinkpad T42 with an IBM a/b/g which lspci identifies this as being an Atheros AR5212 chipset wifi card.
- So I emerged madwifi-drivers, madwifi-tools and wireless-tools (I just want to get this to work right now!).
- I created a symbolic link to make ath0 (# ln -s /etc/conf.d/net.lo /etc/conf.d/net.ath0).
- put ath0 in default runlevel (rc-update)
- rebooted
- entered " # ifconfig ath0 up " turn on wifi (not really sure it's on, cuz the LED doesn't go on)
- entered " # iwlist scan " to list ap's - I get an error (scanning not possible ???)
- entered " # iwlist ap " and got a mac address (not sure who's it is - there are 5 wifi around me), so at least I know the wifi card seems to be on.

That last part has me really confused (although the whole process is rather confusing... hee hee). Oddly enough, I had ubuntu on this same laptop (no physical changes at all!!) and wifi not only worked like a charm but the atheros card was scanning very well and gave me a list of ap's by ssid names when I invoked "iwlist scan".

I'm obviously not configuring something right here but it's not possible that my card all of a sudden can't scan after the switch to gentoo.

Can anyone offer me help on this?

(keep in mind that I only have windows to access the net so if I need to download (emerge) something it'll have to be an e-build).

EDIT:
more info on my system (from what I remember):
gentoo kernel: 2.6.15-r1
just managed to emerge madwifi and wireless tools and drivers before my phone line went out (today), so version is - I'm not sure...

baselayout is 1.11-r9 or r12 (can't remember)

if more info is needed I'll have to boot into gentoo and copy any info on a usb stick and then back to windows and here again...

r.stiltskin · Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 4:30 am Post subject:

If you just enter
# ifconfig
does it list ath0?

If you enter
# iwlist ath0 scan
does it list any ap's?

If the answer to both of those is yes, have you tried all 3 of these commands:
# iwconfig ath0 essid any
# ifconfig ath0 up
# dhcpcd ath0
in that order?

icantux · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 122

hmm...

1) # ifconfig
yes it lists ath0 (as well as eth0 and lo ... sry about that - should have mentioned that in my original post)

2) # iwlist ath0 scan
I get a message saying scanning is not possible (strange! I'll double check to make sure and get full output)

3)
# ifconfig ath0 up - seems to work

# dhpcd ath0 - haven't tried this
# iwconfig ath0 essid any - (I hope you mean replacing "essid" with an ssid). Haven't tried this either.

I'll write down these commands, boot into gentoo and try them out in the order you suggest. This may take a little while, but I'll get the full output of each and paste here. (have to boot back into gentoo and then back into windows to use networking and to post anything here!).

Could all this be a bug (?) of sorts I've been reading about - people experiencing strange results with madwifi recently.

wrc1944 · Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 5:19 am Post subject:

After emerging dhcpcd, madwifi-driver, madwifi-tools, and wireless-tools, doing the following works for me.

iwconfig ath0
dhcpcd ath0

I usually place these two lines in /etc/conf.d/local.start, just to be sure, and have my connection start at boot.
_________________
Main box- AsRock x370 Gaming K4
Ryzen 7 3700x, 3.6GHz, 16GB GSkill Flare DDR4 3200mhz
Samsung SATA 1000GB, Radeon HD R7 350 2GB DDR5
OpenRC Gentoo ~amd64 plasma, glibc-2.40-r5, gcc-14
kernel-6.12.8 USE=experimental python3_12.7-final-0

r.stiltskin · Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 6:19 am Post subject:

icantux · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 122

Great, well, one good piece of news. My phone line's fixed so at least I have internet access once again using gentoo. Now to the wifi.

Stiltskin, here are output msgst:

icantux · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 122

Ah wait a sec..

I just ran ifconfig and here's the output:

icantux · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 122

Finally something's goin right.. running " # iwlist ath0 scan " gave me a list of ssid's and various other info! What's changed? I emerged "wpa_supplicant" and edited /etc/conf.d/net and /etc/conf.d/wireless . I had some content in /etc/conf.d/wireless before while trying to connect on a first attempt yesterday, so I just commented out the entries.

Then I restarted ath0 by issuing:

r.stiltskin · Posted: Sun Mar 19, 2006 5:41 pm Post subject:

I'm not sure what significance (if any) there is to your having emerged wpa-supplicant. I think you are still using wireless-tools, since you can run iwlist and iwconfig, which are both components of wireless-tools. You can tell by looking at /etc/conf.d/net and see if you have an entry
modules=( "iwconfig" )
or
modules=( "wpa-supplicant" )
If you're actually using wpa-supplicant I can't advise you as I've never used it.
If you're using wireless-tools (iwconfig, etc), I hope that emerging wpa-supplicant hasn't created a conflict.
Hoping for the best, turn off your wireless router's security (for now) & just try entering
iwconfig ath0 essid nameofyourap
ifconfig ath0 up
dhcpcd ath0

If that get's you online, you can turn on your router's WEP option and add the key to the iwconfig command, i.e.,
iwconfig ath0 essid NAMEOFYOURAP key YOURWEPKEY

icantux · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 122

Brilliant! Thanks for all your help and patience stiltskin! A choice of cold beverage for you and wrc1944.

I'm up and running wifi - no encryption, mind you, but up and running! I'll still have to experiment with WEP encryption and WPA encryption and find some sort of front-end for gnome (isn't there supposed to a little "wifi" applet in gnome? can't find it). The reason for this not working right from the start could be user related to begin with - perhaps because of a misunderstanding how to activate and properly use wifi from the command line without realizing the little linux quirks in doing so. I seemed to have all the drivers installed properly, but when I hit the "can't scan" issue I assumed something was messed up. Not sure if it was or if that was a linux quirk.

----------------------------------------

At this point I'll mark this thread [SOLVED] and re-iterate all the steps taken for others seeking direction in how to get wifi working. This isn't a how-to by any means, but perhaps a little clarification of the process to get wifi up and running (at least for Atheros based cards like mine).

------------------------------------------
A quick walkthrough

1) emerge madwifi-drivers, madwifi-tools, wireless-tools
2) created a symbolic link in /etc/init.d like so:

gmtongar · Posted: Tue Apr 04, 2006 6:27 pm Post subject:

Hi, everyone.

I followed through what you guys did (also tried madwifi and wpa_supplicant, with no luck).

Same output as with icantux.

I'm online now, using wireless-tools. In order to make it work, I turned off all security.

But with the security settings back, I'm no longer online.

So, my guess is that /etc/conf.d/net could be the problem.

Could anyone give me feedback on this, please:

icantux · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 122

Hmm.. I didn't mess around with the conf files at all, simply because I don't want any hard-coded conf files - wifi is made to be used on the move .... So! I use this command line instead:

gmtongar · Posted: Wed Apr 05, 2006 11:43 pm Post subject:

Thanks for your reply, icantux (you can :wink:

).

I'll try that out. Been running an unsecured AP all day...

gmtongar

icantux · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 122

The one thing that could be throwing things off is a firewall. If you installed a firewall then blocking port 67 could be the problem. If you didn't install any firewall then you should be fine connecting with regular WEP.

josephdrivein · n00b Joined: 05 Apr 2006 Posts: 39

Did you manage to make a working /etc/conf.d/wireless ? Or ar you using the script above?
I can configure my card (an atheros based too) by hand, but not wit the wireless file.

If you did, please post it

gmtongar · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 7:39 am Post subject:

Hi, guys, thanks for your reply...

icantux · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 122

gmtongar · Posted: Thu Apr 06, 2006 5:13 pm Post subject:

Meu amigo, Icantux. As stated before, you can. Gracias.

We're up and running. Thanks man. I'm happy.

Just look at this smile... It says it all.

Just two more boxes left to install with atheros (should be piece of cake, by now, a bit optimistic, of course) ...

Thanks for your help.

gmtongar

Parano.ID · n00b Joined: 07 Dec 2004 Posts: 15

Hello!!

I am smashing my head in the table here, cause i would like to get my wireless atheros card to work.
I also have ThinkPad T42 (p) laptop and i was going through all possible howtos and forums and nothin helped me.

Is please someone so kind and tell me how the heck do i et my ath0 listed at all.
If i issue a command: ifconfig
it doesn't list ath0, just lo and eth0 ( without wireless extensions ).

ofcourse i have something in my laptop

i am sure of that and lspci shows that too:

02:02.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)

Please tell me what kernel options or modules or whatever i need for this card to get it work.

I am quite new to gentoo and Linux at all, and i was banging my head arround for 5 days now.
I managed to get everything up and running, all possbile and unpossible things

, it is just this last thing - wireless card.

Please Please! Thanx!!!

icantux · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 25 Sep 2005 Posts: 122

Hi there!

Scroll up this page and find the walkthrough I posted above (I think it's the 8th post from the top and contains 7 points) - the steps are listed in order from emerging the necessary drivers to making the ath0 show up (all it is really, is creating a symbolic link!) to making your atheros wifi working.

Hope that helps!