Ubuntu n00b looking for help with wireless connection

[dneril]

Hi all. I think my post title pretty much says it all. I have a 2-year old laptop, Toshiba Satellite A135-s2356 and I recently installed Ubuntu. Everything works just fine, but I can only connect via an ethernet cable, even though I have a wireless card on this laptop.

Can anyone direct me as to where I should start?

I saw elsewhere someone had a similar problem, and they were asked to copy the output of the following 3 commands from the terminal: lspci, ifconfig, and iwconfig. So, here they are, if this information is helpful (hey its a start).

dneril@dneril-laptop:~$ lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc Device 5a31 (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:06.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:12.0 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 Serial ATA Controller (rev 80)
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller (rev 80)
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller (rev 80)
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB2 Host Controller (rev 80)
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 SMBus Controller (rev 82)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 IDE Controller (rev 80)
00:14.2 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB4x0 High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-ISA Bridge (rev 80)
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-PCI Bridge (rev 80)
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RC410 [Radeon Xpress 200M]
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
09:04.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB1410 Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
09:06.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)

dneril@dneril-laptop:~$ ifconfig
ath0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:19:7d:ca:34:a5
UP 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 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:d4:95:2c:3b
inet addr:192.168.1.2 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::216:d4ff:fe95:2c3b/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1686 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1748 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:980876 (980.8 KB) TX bytes:199664 (199.6 KB)
Interrupt:22 Base address:0xa000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 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 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wifi0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-19-7D-CA-34-A5-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:27342 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:13669
TX packets:255 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:199
RX bytes:2675382 (2.6 MB) TX bytes:11717 (11.7 KB)
Interrupt:18

dneril@dneril-laptop:~$ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wifi0 no wireless extensions.

ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:"" Nickname:""
Mode:Managed Channel:0 Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power:17 dBm Sensitivity=1/1
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=0/70 Signal level=-94 dBm Noise level=-94 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:29429 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

pan0 no wireless extensions.

Thank you in advance for any and all help.

[cdtech]

Have you installed any driver yet or is this your first step?
Could you post the output of:
lshw -C Network

[dneril]

I have installed a driver - which was automatically detected and downloaded. Under System/Administration/Hardware Drivers I see "Support for Atheros 802.11 wireless LAN cards" activated.

The output of that command is as follows:

dneril@dneril-laptop:~$ lshw -C Network
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter
vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
logical name: wifi0
version: 01
serial: 00:19:7d:ca:34:a5
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list logical ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath_pci latency=0 module=ath_pci multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+
vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
physical id: 6
bus info: pci@0000:09:06.0
logical name: eth0
version: 10
serial: 00:16:d4:95:2c:3b
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=8139too driverversion=0.9.28 ip=192.168.1.2 latency=64 maxlatency=64 mingnt=32 module=8139too multicast=yes
*-network DISABLED
description: Ethernet interface
physical id: 1
logical name: pan0
serial: 06:14:26:4f:83:c8
capabilities: ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=bridge driverversion=2.3 firmware=N/A multicast=yes

[dneril]

bump