Installing Drivers for Atheros based Wireless Devices (Primarily on Debian via apt-get)

There are currently Two driver solutions for Atheros based wireless devices. they are both provided at the MadWifi.org website

MadWifi: is one of the most advanced WLAN drivers available for Linux today. It is stable and has established a user base. The driver itself is open source but depends on the proprietary Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) that is available in Binary form only.

ath5k: Is a relatively new and emerging driver and does not depend on the HAL. It is intended to replace MadWifi in the long run and exceed it feature wise.

MadWifi is easiest installed on Debian via apt-get. I found that I did have to update the Sources.list (/etc/apt/sources.list) before I could apt-get the madwifi-source

My original Sources.list as it came installed read this:

            deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian main
            deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian etch main

            deb http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib
            deb-src http://security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib

I found that adding the contrib and non-free  triggers to the end of these commands made the madwifi-source package availble.

            deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian main contrib non-free
            deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian etch main contrib non-free

            deb http://security.debian.org etch/updates main contrib non-free
            deb http://security.debian.org etch.updates main contrib non-free

I doubt that it is necessary to include these triggers in all four strings. I would think that including it on the first would solve the purpose here. but I went ahead and added it to all to prevent future issues installing other packages.

after updating source.list madwifi's website instructs the following commands:

            apt-get update
            apt-get install madwifi-source
            apt-get install madwifi-tools
            m-a prepare
            m-a a-i madwifi

Apt-get update: reconfigures apt-get integrating any changes in the sources.list file, not really necessary unless you actually change it.

m-a  prepare:  brings up a menu system where one can change settings for module-assistant... the help file really didn't specify what one should do with this. I guessed and told it to make a few configurations, it threw an error and I moved on. really don't know the point in this step.

m-a a-i madwifi: this is where the magic happens. a-i is shorthand for Auto-Install. it does the whole process (get, build & install.)


Post Installation Configuration:
By now the modules should be installed in the correct locations, and module dependencies updated. and so it should be a matter of loading the correct module.

            #modprobe ath_pci

In Syslog or the output of dmesg you should see something similar to the following message for successful installation of the madwifi modules

  ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:03:00.0[A] -> Link [LNKC] -> GSI 10 (level, low) -> IRQ 10
  wifi1: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps
  wifi1: 11g rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps
  wifi1: turboG rates: 6Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps
  wifi1: H/W encryption support: WEP AES AES_CCM TKIP
  wifi1: mac 7.9 phy 4.5 radio 5.6
  wifi1: Use hw queue 1 for WME_AC_BE traffic
  wifi1: Use hw queue 0 for WME_AC_BK traffic
  wifi1: Use hw queue 2 for WME_AC_VI traffic
  wifi1: Use hw queue 3 for WME_AC_VO traffic
  wifi1: Use hw queue 8 for CAB traffic
  wifi1: Use hw queue 9 for beacons
  wifi1: Atheros 5212: mem=0xd2000000, irq=10

Most up-to-date systems will load this module automatically at boot time via the hotplug mechanism, if not you can make sure it is loaded by adding it to the /etc/modules list.

            # echo ath_pci >>  /etc/modules


I attempted to install madwifi from source because of my initial issues getting apt-get to see the madwifi-source package. I kept hitting a wall where it would say

            Cannot detect kernel version - please check compiler and KERNELPATH. Stop

I never seemed to find a solution to this issue. Every time I found someone having issues with this people told them to install via a package manager such as apt-get. I feel this is a bad answer due to the fact that if you are trying to install on an older machine using an older version of a distro you may not have the option of installing via package manager. also say the given computer hasn't an internet connection. if the Wifi connection is the computers only access to the net these people are just up the creek. I feel the Linux community as a whole should learn not to use apt-get as their solution to every problem... some situations call for installation via source even when packages exist.

This information is here to serve primarily as notes for Kinetic Bands internal uses, they are web accessible only in hopes that the information contained may be useful to others, this data was copied in part from the following source, you will find additional information and troubleshooting info there.

http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/Distro/Debian/MadWifi