Install
Madwifi Drivers in Ubuntu
Note: For Feisty the Atheros wireless cards work out of the box as
restricted drivers are installed when Ubuntu detects Atheros cards.
This
procedure is mainly used for newer Atheros cards running under
Edgy.
This procedure will show you how to install the madwifi drivers on your
laptop. A person over at Ubuntu Forums (Griffin3) has a
procedure
to install madwifi drivers in Ubuntu. I was never able to use
my built in wireless card in my Toshiba laptop until I discovered his
procedure. I thank this person from the bottom of my heart.
As we all know madwifi is a set of Drivers for the Atheros
brand of wireless cards. They are extremely popular and come
in
quite a few laptops. Normally Ubuntu supports them out of the
box
but the newer cards will require you to install the latest drivers.
The folks over at MadWifi are
the ones to thank for writing these drivers. Griffin3 over on
Ubuntu forums laid out the procedure. I am putting this
procedure on my
website for all to use.
This page is a compilation of resources gotten from other websites.
This procedure has been tested
by myself with Edgy Eft 6.10, I cannot
guarantee that it will work on other distros.
I
have a script to automate the process of this procedure. If
you wish, you can get the script here.
To
run the script you must be root and have 755 permission. To
run the script type the following in a terminal.
chmod
755 ~/madwifi.sh
sudo ~/madwifi.sh
This
command assumes you downloaded the script to your home folder.
Please
change the path to where you downloaded the script to if it differs
from what is above. Once this is done then execute the
script. It
will install the madwifi drivers, network manager, and reboot the
computer.
I have a madwifi installation script for Feisty, get that script here.
The script differs as it does not install network manager.
Network manager is installed by default under Feisty.
To run the script you must be root and have 755 permission.
To run the script type the following in a terminal.
chmod
755 ~/madwifi_feisty.sh
sudo ~/madwifi_feisty.sh
Installing
the MadWifi Drivers
I guess we should get down to business (remember the text that is in
red
are commands that you
enter at the terminal.
If
you prefer you can do the procedure step by step.
First thing you need to do is make sure the restricted
modules are
installed.
To do this go to the synaptic package manager and type
Atheros or madwifi. This
will show you which kernel modules are compatible with Atheros madwifi
drivers. I use the 2.6.17-10-generic
module.
Second
thing first you
need to go over and get the latest madwifi
drivers. I have put the drivers here on my website in
.tar.gz
format. Click this link
to get the latest madwifi driver. The file will be named
"madwifi-0.9.3.2.tar.gz".
Now
that we have the drivers downloaded will need to do the following:
Get
what is needed to compile the source:
sudo
apt-get -y install build-essential bin86
Once
that is done you will need to do the following:
Copy
the .tar.gz to the /usr/src/ folder. This command assumes
you downloaded the archive to your home folder. replace ~ if
your downloaded to a different location.
sudo
cp ~/madwifi-0.9.3.2.tar.gz /usr/src/
Change
to the /usr/src
folder.
cd
/usr/src
Decompress
the
tarball.
sudo
tar
-xzf madwifi-0.9.3.2.tar.gz
Install
the sharutils from the
package manager.
sudo
apt-get
-y install sharutils
Change
to the folder that the tarball extracted to.
cd /usr/src/madwifi-0.9.3.2
Make the drivers
(during this time the procedure may ask you to remove the older
drivers, let it do so)
sudo make clean
sudo
make
sudo
make
install
You
don't need to but as you are going to reboot you can test your work so
far.
sudo
modprobe
ath_pci
You will need to modify the modules file to make this change permanent.
To do so do the following:
sudo
gedit
/etc/modules
You will need to add a line at the very end of the file:
ath_pci
You can remove the
archive from your home dirtectory by doing the following:
rm -r
~/madwifi-0.9.3.2.tar.gz
Save
the modules file and then
reboot your machine. When you login you can configure your
Atheros wireless card by going to
System--->Administration--->Networking.
To connect to a
network you will need to know the SSID.
Follow procedure below to enhance your wireless connection.
Get
your Wireless Connection WEP, WPA, and WPA2 Ready
Now
that you have your wireless connection up and running
you
can enable wireless encryption. With the procedure above you
had
no wireless encryption at all. The following procedure was
gotten
from
Debian Admin to enable wireless
networks for WPA in Ubuntu Edgy.
Click
the link to go there. Thanks to the folks over there for
creating
this procedure.
To get your
wireless connection encryption capable do the following:
Update
the source list
sudo
apt-get
Install wpa
supplicant
sudo
apt-get install wpasupplicant
Install Network
Manager (this will allow you to see all available
wireless networks)
sudo
apt-get install network-manager-gnome network-manager
You will need to
edit your interfaces file to do so do the following:
sudo
gedit /etc/network/interfaces
Comment out
everything other than “lo” entries by
using a '#' in front of the line and save the file.
Create a file
called /etc/default/wpasupplicant, add entry ENABLED=0
and save the file.
sudo
gedit /etc/default/wpasupplicant (this
will create the file when you hit save)
Reboot your
system. Upon logging back in you will be able to
click on the network manager and see the available wireless networks.
This procedure
worked for me so hopefully it will work for you.