FindComputerStuff

I recently upgraded my laptop’s installation of Ubuntu Feisty to Ubuntu Gutsy, and as usual everything worked out of the box. Except my wireless drivers.

The linux restricted drivers package that comes with Ubuntu Gutsy (7.10) contains the 0.9.18.0 version of the proprietary hal. While this works with most wireless cards using Atheros chips, it doesnt really work for mine. My Toshiba Tecra TE2300 contains an Atheros AR5211 chip (as listed by dmesg) on an internal mini-pci card, and although the driver is loaded correctly for the wireless card, it refuses to associate and also just stays on the 5 GHz frequency no matter what I do.

I tried using
iwpriv ath0 mode 2

to force it to go on the 2.4GHz band, since it’s an 802.11ab card but that didn’t work either. After minutes of frustrating attempts to associate with my access point, I went to the madwifi site and started downloading various versions of the driver to see which on would work for me. In each case, note that i had to compile the driver sources, and I had to overwrite the ones installed by Ubuntu - which means i can’t update that package via apt, but i don’t mind.

I tried three different release versions and I got the same results, so I decided to check out the SVN versions instead. I got lucky, because the svn-r2484 release, with a hal version of 0.9.30.13, worked like a charm for me. I don’t know why and I haven’t bothered to find out. I have kept a copy of that release since its the only one that works with this particular chip (all of the other laptops I ever had, have Atheros wireless cards and I don’t have this issue with them).

I just thought I’d post this in case someone was encountering the same problem.