Atheros ar928x working...

[a3qp]

Hi,

After 10 days of hard work and headaches, I got my Atheros ar928x wireless card working. I hope this thread can help others:

Summary:
- I have an Atheros ar928x wireless card (see below for "lspci" output), and I got it working by doing what Volanin says in post #5 in the thread
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=874097. It worked for me in 32bit and now in amd64.

Long story:
(some people may identify with me or have similar problems).

My new laptop PC is a Sony Vaio SR129E/B, bought 3 weeks ago, in Newegg.
In the specifications of the seller's webpage, and on Sony's webpage, it didn't specify the exact model of the Atheros wireless card.
(official Sony page of the laptop ). The only way to find it was by looking in the "device manager" of
windows vista, right-clicking the card and selecting properties.

When I typed in the terminal:

lspci -nn

the output for my wireless card was:

05:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Atheros Communications Inc. Unknown device [168c:002a] (rev 01)

and this command:

lshw -C Network

gave:

*-network UNCLAIMED
description: Network controller
product: Atheros Communications Inc.
vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:05:00.0
version: 01
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list
configuration: latency=0

I had installed Ubuntu 8.04, amd64.

I tried using ndiswrapper many times. I used the Windows drivers installed on the Vista partition of my PC; they didn't work. I then tried downloading Windows drivers from:

http://www.laptopvideo2go.com/forum/...howtopic=14858
then from: http://birseyindir.org/driver/Athero...r___27005.html
and finally from: http://www.atheros.cz/download.php?atheros=AR928X

None worked, and ndiswrapper spammed dmesg with errors trying to load the Windows driver, athrx.inf.

I downgraded my Ubuntu to 32-bit, hoping that ndiswrapper would work better there, but got the same errors as I had on 64-bit. I also compiled ndiswrapper from source, to no avail.

Finally, with the link that I mentioned in the summary above, I got the card working using the ath9k drivers, which were just released in July 2008 (and should support all Atheros ar9xxx chipests). And as it worked perfectly, I decided to return to my 64-bit version (which I had compromised in the hope of getting the wireless card working), and it also ran smoothly.

Great!

Special thanks to pytheas22 for his patience, generosity, since he led me in this process, and never lost hope!

[AggieJAG]

I can't get my AR928x wireless card working...

System
Sony Vaio FW139E
Atheros AR928x wireless
Intel Core Duo P8400 @ 2.26GHz
3Gb of RAM
ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3400 series graphics

Here's the problem... I don't have access to an hardline ethernet connection, only wireless. I'm in Rhode Island for training until mid-October and I've searched around and there isn't anywhere to plug in directly in order to d/l dependent packages for madwifi or ndiswrapper, etc. I've tried to install them, but there's always an error re: a dependent package.

Can anyone suggest a solution where I can figure out which packages i need, download them in Vista and then migrate them over to Ubuntu?

Thanks in advance!
~AggieJAG

[pytheas22]

Can anyone suggest a solution where I can figure out which packages i need, download them in Vista and then migrate them over to Ubuntu?

You can download individual packages from http://packages.ubuntu.com. So find the packages for whichever dependencies it says you need and install them manually that way.

I didn't think that the packages for the ath9k driver should have dependencies, though. How did you try to install the driver? Did you download one of the Debian packages from the links in this thread? Are you sure you're using the kernel that those packages were built for (2.6.24-19-generic)? You may be trying to do something that's more difficult than it needs to be...

[Mgiacchetti]

you know guys i'm still having trouble with my ar9280...

Signal is horrible, jumps around constantly, cant surf the web without waiting like dialup..

  *-network               
       description: Wireless interface
       product: Atheros Communications Inc.
       vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
       logical name: wmaster0
       version: 01
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix bus_master cap_list logical ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k latency=0 module=ath9k multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn

03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Atheros Communications Inc. Device [168c:002a] (rev 01)

ping 192.168.1.1 -c 25

PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 192.168.1.109 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.168.1.109 icmp_seq=2 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.168.1.109 icmp_seq=3 Destination Host Unreachable
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=64 time=8.21 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=64 time=0.871 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=11 ttl=64 time=0.865 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=14 ttl=64 time=0.872 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=16 ttl=64 time=0.833 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=18 ttl=64 time=0.868 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=21 ttl=64 time=0.851 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=22 ttl=64 time=0.856 ms
64 bytes from 192.168.1.1: icmp_seq=25 ttl=64 time=2.11 ms

--- 192.168.1.1 ping statistics ---
25 packets transmitted, 9 received, +3 errors, 64% packet loss, time 24029ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 0.833/1.816/8.219/2.297 ms, pipe 3

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"TopTobo"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: --its there i just edited it here--
          Bit Rate=1 Mb/s   Tx-Power=27 dBm   
          Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2352 B   
          Encryption key:-----------   Security mode:open
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=90/100  Signal level:-37 dBm  Noise level=-95 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

 uname -a
Linux ubuntu 2.6.27-3-generic #1 SMP Wed Sep 10 16:02:00 UTC 2008 i686 GNU/Linux

[pytheas22]

Mgiacchetti,

I'm not sure what's wrong, but here are a few things to check:

1. your bit rate is set to the lowest possible value. Does it make any difference if you type:

sudo iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M

2. which mode is your router operating in (b, g, n)? There may be issues with n mode, and switching back to g might help.

3. does it make a difference if you turn off encryption on your router?

4. if you post the output here of the command:

dmesg | grep -e ath -e wlan

there may be some useful information that would help to track down the source of the problem.

It seems to think that your signal strength is great (90%), so that's not the issue, but there is a huge amount of packet loss. This card definitely works in other operating systems, right? How did you install the ath9k driver? If you compiled from svn source, it's possible that you just happened to get a buggy build, and that reinstalling would help. Also, if possible, you may want to try connecting to a different wireless network, as the problem could be your wireless router.

[AlexH76]

Many thanks for fixing the driver. I'm on an Asus x71a and (as final step) had to follow instructions in this thread to get wlan activated.

[natts]

Hi!
I have sony vaio sr with the same card and i'm runing opensuse linux 11.1.
The problem is at first, suspend was not working at all. It's kinda normal, using s2ram -f -p -m solved the problem, but after my laptop wakes up, no wireless networks are found.
rcnetwork restart doesn't do the trick, so wifi trigger doesn't.

Didn't try to modprobe -r and modprobe again the driver. I will inform u, if i'll get any success.
The driver is ath9k. So... howto solve? anyone?

[pytheas22]

Didn't try to modprobe -r and modprobe again the driver. I will inform u, if i'll get any success.
The driver is ath9k. So... howto solve? anyone?

Removing and reinserting ath9k with modprobe would probably fix the problem. You could write a script to do that automatically whenever the computer wakes back up, but I don't know how to do that in SUSE. I'm sure you could figure it out without too much work, however.

[rawloz]

Try changing your encryption to AES it just worked for me...300Mbps sweet

[hwfa]

You can download individual packages from http://packages.ubuntu.com. So find the packages for whichever dependencies it says you need and install them manually that way.

<snip>

Errm. The link takes me to a completely blank page ????