Install Madwifi for Atheros Card on Ubuntu 9.10

On Jan 25, 2010 2 comments

By default Ubuntu has its wireless driver installed. But sometimes you got your wireless not working after installed Ubuntu. Then you may need to install another driver like madwifi or using ndiswrapper. On this article I will show you how to install madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6 on Ubuntu 9.10.

First you need to need to get the madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6 on your computer. You can download it. After that, you need to extract madwifi. Sometimes you got an error while installing madwifi like this :

zulian@zulianz:~/App/Linux Native/madwifi/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r4100-20090929$ make
Checking requirements... ok.
Checking kernel configuration... ok.
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.31-17-generic/build SUBDIRS=/home/zulian/App/Linux Native/madwifi/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r4100-20090929 modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31-17-generic'
make[1]: *** No rule to make target `Native/madwifi/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r4100-20090929'.  Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31-17-generic'
make: *** [modules] Error 2


That error happen because you install madwifi not in the right directory. You need to place the madwifi folder under /usr/src directory. And then go to madwifi folder that you just copied.

$ cd /usr/src/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r4100-20090929/

then you can do the normal scenario, "make" and "make install" :

$ sudo make


$ sudo make install

Don't forget to do this to make the driver work :

$ sudo modprobe ath_pci

Then add ath_pci to /etc/modules

Go to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ath_pci.conf
comment the ath_pci,
ath_pci  --become--  # ath_pci

The last step to do is blacklisting ath5k.
Open /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and add this line :
blacklist ath5k

That's it. You may need to reboot your system to make it work.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

FAILTACULAR

root@ubuntu:/usr/src# cd madwifi-0.9.4
root@ubuntu:/usr/src/madwifi-0.9.4# make
Checking requirements... ok.
Checking kernel configuration... ok.
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.31-22-generic-pae/build SUBDIRS=/usr/src/madwifi-0.9.4 modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31-22-generic-pae'
CC [M] /usr/src/madwifi-0.9.4/ath/if_ath.o
In file included from /usr/src/madwifi-0.9.4/ath/../net80211/ieee80211_monitor.h:45,
from /usr/src/madwifi-0.9.4/ath/if_ath.c:71:
/usr/src/madwifi-0.9.4/ath/../ath/if_athvar.h:98: error: conflicting types for 'irqreturn_t'
include/linux/irqreturn.h:16: note: previous declaration of 'irqreturn_t' was here
/usr/src/madwifi-0.9.4/ath/if_ath.c: In function 'ath_attach':
/usr/src/madwifi-0.9.4/ath/if_ath.c:402: error: 'struct net_device' has no member named 'priv'
/usr/src/madwifi-0.9.4/ath/if_ath.c:678: error: 'struct net_device' has no member named 'open'
/usr/src/madwifi-0.9.4/ath/if_ath.c:679: error: 'struct net_device' has no member named 'stop'

make[2]: *** [/usr/src/madwifi-0.9.4/ath] Error 2
make[1]: *** [_module_/usr/src/madwifi-0.9.4] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.31-22-generic-pae'
make: *** [modules] Error 2

Cleanville Tziabatz said...

This is gigantically complicated for someone who wants to be a new LINUX user. I have literally spent days trying to get madwifi going so that I can connect wireless (can't go back to WINDOWS on this machine even if I wanted to -- thanks, GRUB!!!).

Here is my question:

WHY is it so difficult to install madwifi?

Why is it not in the Software center?

Do the developers have any idea how many people are having the problems I am?

Is the writer of madwifi a jerk and they don't want to let her into the software center or synaptic or whatever you are supposed to call it?

Are the people who run Synaptic jerks and they don't want to let madwifi in?

what is the deal here?

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