Atheros Communications INC. AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter in need of driver

heyub · #1 8th July 2011, 05:04 AM

After a long search, with my friends help, we have been unable to come up with a driver that allows me to use my airport card (Atheros Communications INC. AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter). We have made sure that the driver IS what is lacking.

I need help finding and installing the driver if it does not have an install script as I am new to fedora and all linux OS' for that matter.

Tomorrow I leave to go on a week long vacation, so unfortunately I will only be able to check tomorrow morning then will be gone for a week. I may be able to look here while on vacation, but there is no guarantee I will have internet at the location I am going.

Thanks in advance for any information you can give,

~Heyub

SOLUTION:
Under administration > Network > Devices I had my airport card assigned to two devices. Both devices were checked, I unchecked one of them and immediately connected. Thanks for the help bbfuller and stevenjd13!

stevenjd13 · #2 8th July 2011, 06:55 AM

According to my research your card should be supported. if you are running a kernel greater than 2.6.25 basically F12 or newer.

1. Sorry to state the obvious does it have a on off switch? Press it and see the result in the network manager applet. You should see it at the top right hand side.

2. If that does not work please provide.
a. The version of Fedora you are running.
b. The output of 'lspci' use a terminal, if fedora 15 you should be able to press start (or may be apple not sure) key type 'ter' you should now see the terminal program. Just run the command it will spit out a lot of info about your mac.

Sorry not to be of more help, but keep at it.

heyub · #3 8th July 2011, 01:10 PM

Yeah the button is one of this first things I checked. It wasnt the problem.
I'm sorry I will have to wait for when I get back to answer the rest, someone packed my laptop

I am 80% sure I have fedora 15, numbers don't stick well with me though.

Thanks for the info, I will run that command and see what I can see.

P.S. I feel sorry for leaving so short after opening a help thread, sorry.

~Heyub

bbfuller · #4 8th July 2011, 08:04 PM

Hello heyub

When you pick this up, there are a couple of other things you might try. The Atheros 5001 chipset series should be covered by the 'ath5k' driver which is included in Fedora installs. That is practically independent of which version of Fedora you are running except for possibly some of the very early ones.

If the 'lspci' command stevenjd13 suggested does indeed show that as being your card you might try running:

Code:

lsmod | grep ath

to see if the chipset is being detected and the module loaded.

You might also try the:

Quote:

rfkill

program which you will have to download from the repositories.

That can give you information about wireless cards that are blocked by electronic switches and a means of unblocking them.

bbfuller · #5 9th July 2011, 09:59 AM

Hello heyub

We also didn't determine which kernel you are running, or if you have managed to update your system by a wired connection.

It seems that there was a problem with ath5k in the early F15 kernel(s) that has been fixed now:

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=263571

heyub · #6 16th July 2011, 03:55 AM

I am running fedora 14, sorry for mixing that up.
I know for sure that is my airport card as I have ran that command before to find out what kind of airport I had.
I do not know exactly what I am looking for in the command; "lsmod | grep ath"
And lastly, I have made sure that the airport card is switched ON.
Also, on the top right of the screen I have enabled wireless connection, and underneath "wireless connection" it reads "Device not ready"

P.S. I'm glad to be home!

bbfuller · #7 16th July 2011, 08:33 AM

Hello heyub

I'd still like to see the output from 'lspci', sometimes the output contains extra clues.

You just need to copy and paste the parts that relate to ethernet and network back into a post.

As for lsmod, if you run it by itself it will list all the kernel modules you have loaded. If you run it as I suggested earlier it will filter out all of those modules that don't have 'ath' in the listing. If it doesn't return 'ath5k' then we need to determine why the module is not loading.

heyub · #8 16th July 2011, 04:22 PM

Here you go;

Quote:

00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation Device 075e (rev a2)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] SMBus (rev a1)
00:01.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] Co-Processor (rev a2)
00:06.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] IDE (rev a1)1)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Bridge (rev a1))
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation MCP77 Ethernet (rev a2)
00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:14.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP78S [GeForce 8200] PCI Bridge (rev a1)
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor Miscellaneous Control
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] Family 11h Processor Link Control
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation C77 [GeForce 8200M G] (rev a2)
07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

I do have ath5k too.

Quote:

ath5k 161578 0
mac80211 228732 1 ath5k
ath 9505 1 ath5k
cfg80211 134709 3 ath5k,mac80211,ath

EDIT: I ran "rfkill list" and this is the result;

Quote:

0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no

While we are here mind explaining the difference between "soft block" and "hard block"?

Thanks,

bbfuller · #9 16th July 2011, 04:37 PM

Hello heyub

Well, the driver for the Atheros 5001 (ath5k) is loading and therefore the machine is finding the card.

Try running the command:

Code:

ifconfig

in a terminal. If it identifies a wireless interface - probably wlan0 - then try running:

Code:

iwlist wlan0 scan

Obviously, if you find an interface other than wlan0, substitute it in the second command.

If that finds wireless connections, does NetworkManager in the Gnome interface not find wireless connections?

If you don't find a wireless network download the program "rfkill":

Code:

yum install rfkill

and then run the command:

Code:

rfkill list

and see if it lists any interfaces as blocked or off.

heyub · #10 16th July 2011, 04:51 PM

I don't think it is detecting wireless :/

Quote:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1D:72:64:4E:F4
inet addr:192.168.2.2 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::21d:72ff:fe64:4ef4/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:20674 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:11895 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:28468637 (27.1 MiB) TX bytes:1237815 (1.1 MiB)
Interrupt:42 Base address:0x4000

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:565 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:565 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:45048 (43.9 KiB) TX bytes:45048 (43.9 KiB)

bbfuller · #11 16th July 2011, 05:02 PM

Hello heyub

No, it's that soft blocking that's stopping it.

Quote:

0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no

I'm not sure if you will need to unblock one or both to get this going.

Before we experiment with rfkill though, try working the wireless on/off switch on the laptop and see if the output from:

Code:

rfkill list

changes.

if it doesn't then try:

Code:

rfkill unblock 0

followed by:

Code:

rfkill list

to see if it has changed anything.

Then check if that works. If it doesn't then try:

Code:

rfkill unblock 1

and see what effect that has. If it's successful it will only be for this time of booting. We'll then have to try and find some way of automating it for further boots.

heyub · #12 16th July 2011, 05:12 PM

Ok playing with the on off button for my wireless resulted in;

Quote:

0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: yes
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no

Or;

Quote:

0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no

(phy0 remained the same)

Result from using rfkill unblock 0 resulted in;

Quote:

0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
1: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no

Then I ran

Quote:

rfkill unblock 1

And still, I get the same result from ifconfig;

Quote:

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1D:72:64:4E:F4
inet addr:192.168.2.2 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
' inet6 addr: fe80::21d:72ff:fe64:4ef4/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:22244 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:13076 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:29842600 (28.4 MiB) TX bytes:1689463 (1.6 MiB)
Interrupt:42 Base address:0x4000

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:565 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:565 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:45048 (43.9 KiB) TX bytes:45048 (43.9 KiB)

bbfuller · #13 16th July 2011, 05:40 PM

Hello heyub

Well, what we probably want now is to force the wireless module to reload and notice that the card is unblocked.

We can't just reboot the machine or all of the 'rfkill' work will be undone.

Probably worth trying:

Code:

modprobe -r ath5k

to unload the wireless module and then:

Code:

modprobe ath5k

to reload it again.

If the wireless still doesn't work, try:

Code:

dmesg | grep ath5k

to see if we can trap any error messages as the module loads.

heyub · #14 16th July 2011, 05:53 PM

Forced the wireless module to reload, wireless still didn't work, here is the results from "dmesg | grep athk5"

Code:

[   13.981187] ath5k 0000:07:00.0: PCI INT A -> Link[Z012] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23
[   13.981202] ath5k 0000:07:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[   13.981296] ath5k 0000:07:00.0: registered as 'phy0'
[   15.403209] Registered led device: ath5k-phy0::rx
[   15.403241] Registered led device: ath5k-phy0::tx
[   15.403246] ath5k phy0: Atheros AR2425 chip found (MAC: 0xe2, PHY: 0x70)
[26624.681896] ath5k 0000:07:00.0: PCI INT A disabled
[26637.733849] ath5k 0000:07:00.0: PCI INT A -> Link[Z012] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23
[26637.733864] ath5k 0000:07:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[26637.734050] ath5k 0000:07:00.0: registered as 'phy0'
[26638.240055] Registered led device: ath5k-phy0::rx
[26638.240954] Registered led device: ath5k-phy0::tx
[26638.240962] ath5k phy0: Atheros AR2425 chip found (MAC: 0xe2, PHY: 0x70)

bbfuller · #15 17th July 2011, 11:10 AM

Hello heyub

I don't know then.

After removing and reloading the module does rfkill list show that your wireless interfaces are still enabled?

---------- Post added at 11:10 AM ---------- Previous post was at 12:41 AM ----------

By the way, I've been taking a look at the Gnome NetworkManager, which I assume is what you are using.

On the machine I checked, wireless was turned off by default in the manager itself which is an extra switch to check.

Have you tried it there as well. I assume that would be independent of anything rfkill did.