ath9k

[cyberdork33]

I have been using the MadWifi wireless driver for my Macbook Pro, is ath9k a replacement for this? I don't quite understand, is it just for specific atheros hardware, or their whole range?
I think my MBP model is second generation, its one with NVIDIA graphics.

Development of madwifi was dropped to work on a set of fully open source drivers for atheros wifi cards (madwifi uses a closed-source hal layer to access the hardware). In fact, the last 'stable' release of madwifi does not support your atheros card, you have to get a development snapshot. ath5k was the first release of the open drivers, but it did not support the newer cards. ath9k was recently announced and I think it should support any of the MacBook / MacBook Pro models that have an atheros wifi card.

If you wireless works just fine, I wouldn't worry about changing drivers as this is still a relatively earlier set of code. If you would like to test it out, or if you want to try to get 802.11n speed working, or if you just want to get that closed hal layer off your system, then you can use this.

PS you have a 3rd generation MacBook Pro (MacBookPro3,1)

[TroyDowling]

Wow. You may just be my new best friend! I have a spankin' new model (the day I bought it I believe it was the only 802.11n card available) of the Wireless-N NICs from D-Link that has been sitting on my shelf since I bought it a couple years ago because I could never find a suitable driver. MadWifi never really did good job in my mind so I ended up resorting to NDISWrapper to get the job done. I'm not a big fan of wrapping drivers though, so I'm elated that you've gone through all this trouble to take all the hassle out of the kernel work. The minute I'm home I'm going to try out this driver and see how it all works. Thanks a million!

[mikazo]

I just bought a D-Link DWA-643 ExpressCard with the Atheros AR5418 chipset, supported by ath9k as far as I know. I'm running Linux Mint 5, kernel version 2.6.24-16-generic

Is it possible to use ath9k drivers with this setup? If so, how would I go about doing that? Your earlier instructions are aimed at Ubuntu, and this page has instructions, but I do not know if they are current or will work with my setup.

Any help would be appreciated.

EDIT: Never mind, I got the madwifi-trunk drivers working (sort of). If they end up failing to work completely, I think I will look into ath9k

[cyberdork33]

Your earlier instructions are aimed at Ubuntu, and this page has instructions, but I do not know if they are current or will work with my setup.

Just for reference, yes those look like they would work. It would be much easier to just get the latest Ubuntu kernel and install it in Mint then apply the attached deb

Also, the ath9k driver was barely announced, so any how to is pretty much going to be "current".

[mabovo]

Nice, worked like a charm in kernel 2.6.24-19.

Caveat A - It doesn't work in 2.6.24-20. Why not ?

Caveat B - Signal strenght is very good, better than late madwifi. I didn't use Ndiswrapper.

ath9k is ok with wicd. Now is time to network manager get ready.

[volanin]

Wow, I was really making the suggestion kinda tongue-in-cheek since I figure that you would have to backport a large portion of the kernel code... This is really awesome though!

Thank you!

P.S. Volanin, you might want to add a note to your post to reiterate that the PPA is only for Mac users.

Done!

Nice, worked like a charm in kernel 2.6.24-19.
Caveat A - It doesn't work in 2.6.24-20. Why not?

It does not work in kernel 2.6.24-20 because the modules must be compiled for a specific version of the kernel... and the kernel 2.6.24-20 is still not available in the PPA archives. But, I compiled it anyways in my local machine (for i386 only), so you might try to use it! (Read the updates part at the end of my original post!)

[cyberdork33]

It does not work in kernel 2.6.24-20 because the modules must be compiled for a specific version of the kernel... and the kernel 2.6.24-20 is still not available in the PPA archives. But, I compiled it anyways in my local machine (for i386 only), so you might try to use it! (Read the updates part at the end of my original post!)

Just wanted to mention this guide a bit more. If you are on some other kernel, or custom compile your own, these directions will help you get the wireless-testing source and compile it so that you can get ath9k to work.
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to...rsion_of_atk9k

[tomrshl]

Cool, I installed using the deb for 2.6.24-20, and it works very well on my MBP.
Thanks

[Nxion]

Ok Question here. I installed it and now my WiFi card works. BUT the issue I am haviing is my internet seems ti be very slow now. Also the connection speed reports as 1 MB not 54 MB like it usually says. Any Ideas? Thanks!

[kevmitch]

Volanin: All I can say is wow! How did you manage it? I gave up pretty quickly trying to compile ath9k for even 2.6.26. I just compiled wireless-testing. I haven't had any catastrophic crashes of the type you describe when removing the module with my ar5418. This is actually quite a common thing to do before putting your system to sleep. In fact, I thought this happens automatically via /etc/acpi/suspend.d/70-modules-unload.sh. BTW: I don't understand why the PPA is for mac users only.

mikazo: Indeed, the howto on Thinkwiki is current. I'm keeping it updated as things progress.

Nxion: I'm pretty sure the link speed is currently being reported incorrectly. I also see 1 MB/s with iwconfig, however my router says that my laptop is connecting at 100-300Mb/s. If you're actually finding it slow, that's an other story. However this driver is still very much in development, so it's probably best to stay on top of the latest driver in the wireless-testing kernel.