12.04 LTS - WiFi Atheros ar242 / 5006 EG problems

**IceMan1988p** · April 28th, 2012

Hi,
This is my second thread and problems with my Atheros again. I solved problem for Ubuntu 11.10 here. After upgrading Ubuntu to 12.04 solution worked too. Unfortunately, WiFi stopped to work today and I have no clue what's happening. Redoing whole process like in 11.10 didn't work. I'll post the same outputs as previous and maybe someone will help.

rfkill list

Code:

# nothing

iwconfig

Code:

wifi0     no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:">\x05\xF1\xEC\xD9g3\xB7\x99P\xA3\xE3\x14\xD3\xD94\xF7^\xA0\xF2\x10\xA8\xF6\x05\x94\x01\xBE\xB4\xBCDx\xFA"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power:16 dBm   Sensitivity=1/1  
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/70  Signal level=0 dBm  Noise level=0 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

lspci | grep Network

Code:

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)

lsmod | grep ath

Code:

ath_pci                93564  0 
ath_rate_sample        17253  1 
wlan                  197367  4 ath_pci,wlan_scan_sta,ath_rate_sample
ath_hal               195796  3 ath_pci,ath_rate_sample

dmesg | grep ath

Code:

# nothing

cat /etc/modprobe.d/* | grep ath

Code:

blacklist ath5k

BUT...

service network-manager restart
# ...and immediately after
dmesg | grep ath

Code:

[ 3545.102682] ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): ath0: link is not ready

What's going on? Some old config files are messing everything up?

**ahallubuntu** · April 28th, 2012

I don't know what kind of laptop this is, but if it's not an HP and not a Lenovo, you might consider upgrading the internal wireless card to a different on. I have had great luck with out-of-the-box Linux kernel support for Intel wireless cards. Find out if your model laptop was ever sold with Intel wireless cards - sometimes, the same laptop will be sold in different configurations and possibly different wireless cards. If you can find out what other wireless card might work in there, look on eBay to see how much a used one might cost to install. You might be looking at something as cheap as $10. (Avoid buying a card via eBay from Asia - I've had bad luck with mismatched model numbers and samples that didn't work; stick to a US vendor and/or a used card.)

If you have a Lenovo or HP laptop, don't bother: their laptops restrict the specific wireless cards you are allowed to use and won't even power on if you install an unapproved wireless card. But I've upgraded Dell, Toshiba, and Acer laptops without issue.

Sometimes the internal wireless card on a laptop is very easy to get to: often a panel on the bottom of the laptop with a couple of screws. There will be two or three antenna wires clipped on to the card which will be held in by a screw or two or just a clip. Sometimes the wireless card is buried underneath the keyboard and is a pain to access. All depends on the make and model of the laptop. They all seem to be a little different.

**IceMan1988p** · April 28th, 2012

Thanks for reply. My laptop is Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo Pa1538 (almost 5 years old). Do you suggest that I have some hardware issue (does something break up)? Or it is just compatibility issue?

I think that buying some replacement WiFi module doesn't work for me. Why?
1. I use this laptop as second-one after my stationary PC.
2. I don't use Ubuntu everyday. I'll need it for 2-3 weeks only to eventually present what I've done on university or launch Nutch through night. I'm not sure if I'll achieve some proper hardware in time.
3. I will replace this laptop with something new as soon as I'll have some money. So I don't want to invest my money on it with not even being sure if hardware (not Ubuntu) causes the problem.
4. On Windows 7 this hardware works like a charm, so why replacing it is any solution?

So... some temporary solution would be much much better.

**ahallubuntu** · April 28th, 2012

I was not suggesting there is any hardware problem with your wireless card. I was suggesting that you might have fewer headaches with a different wireless card that has better Linux support from its manufacturer. I'm sure you can find a solution to make it work again - until it breaks again with a new update or something. But if you won't have the laptop that much longer, maybe that's not a worry for you.

It's a shame some manufacturers have such poor Linux support that their hardware often breaks in new versions of Linux. I don't ever have problems like this with my Intel wireless cards FYI.

**IceMan1988p** · April 28th, 2012

So I'd remember it as a precious advice while choosing new laptop to have Intel card. With present laptop I'll wait for any suggestions, when there won't be any, I'll just run Ubuntu on VM and there won't be any headaches too

But it would be the second best solution after just making WiFi work on already configured system.

**ahallubuntu** · April 28th, 2012

Did you look for Additional Drivers? I have barely used 12.04 . My Intel card worked fine automatically as I said.

I don't have any Atheros cards installed anywhere right now. Maybe the solution you used for 11.10 isn't required anymore and it's actually simpler for 12.04? Good luck figuring it out! I'm sure you will.

**IceMan1988p** · April 28th, 2012

Yes, I've looked there in both versions and in both versions situation is totally the same. Primarily there are only nVidia graphic card drivers. After installing Madwifi according to what I wrote in previous topic Madwifi appears there as launched. Stopping and relaunching it from Additional Drivers menu doesn't make any difference.

I think that maybe there are some configuration files that can be deleted and will be automatically created on system restart. Maybe some old before-update config causes those problems?

As I don't have much time to do this, I'll give a shot to every suggestion. No problem if something is risky and will eventually blow away this Ubuntu installation and reduce it to powder, just please help me TRY to make it work as soon as possible.

**nevpark** · April 29th, 2012

Dunno if this'll help, but I was having this same problem today—my eeePC just flat out didn't recognize the AR2427 wireless card after I upgraded to 12.04, even though I'd installed the Atheros driver with ndiswrapper.

For some reason installing the ath9k driver worked. (It's part of this package of open source drivers.) You have to compile it from source but the step-by-step instructions are pretty clear.

It's a bit of a long shot, but you never know!

**Arixo** · April 29th, 2012

Hi,
I've been looking around for exactly the same problem on a Dell with Intel card and found your messages.

The solution that worked for me is to remove a package:

Code:

sudo apt-get remove bcmwl-kernel-source

as explained here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=11878831

There are also other solutions here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1966012

Hope this helps,
Bye

**IceMan1988p** · April 29th, 2012

Hi,
Thanks for all replies. I just turned on my notebook now, WiFi works and I have no clue why it didn't yesterday (with many reboots). Only difference from yesterday is that laptop was hot as hell as usual and today I started it totally cold. I'll see what will happen today. If anything will happen, I'll try your advices.