Wifi on Acer Aspire 3502

[SeanGee]

Hi
I have just installed Debian 4 on an Acer Aspire 3502 laptop which has an Atheros wireless card. I have used the windows driver with ndiswrapper and this appears to be installed ok. The module does load at boot. My router is a netgear DG834G and I have previously connected using this laptop with both XP and Vista. I can also currently connect from another laptop running XP and my Macbook Pro. The System log doesn't reveal anything useful so hopefully the ff screen dump helps. (I have masked my actual WEP key but have confirmed that this is the same as that on the router.

acer:/home/sean# uname -r
2.6.18-4-686

acer:/home/sean# ndiswrapper -l
installed drivers:
net5211 driver installed, hardware (168C:001A) present

acer:/home/sean# ndiswrapper -v
utils Error: no version specified!
driver version: 1.28
vermagic: 2.6.18-4-686 SMP mod_unload 686 REGPARM gcc-4.1

acer:/home/sean# cat /etc/network/interfaces
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

auto wlan0
# specified wireless setting here because I wasn't convinced iwconfig was working
# this doesn't work either
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid "gatesworld"
wireless-key XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX restricted
wireless-channel 7
wireless-mode Managed

acer:/home/sean# ifdown wlan0
There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.wlan0.pid with pid 4079
killed old client process, removed PID file
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.4
Copyright 2004-2006 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit ISC DHCP

Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:0e:9b:cf:f5:67
Sending on LPF/wlan0/00:0e:9b:cf:f5:67
Sending on Socket/fallback

acer:/home/sean# ifup wlan0
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.4
Copyright 2004-2006 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit ISC DHCP

Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:0e:9b:cf:f5:67
Sending on LPF/wlan0/00:0e:9b:cf:f5:67
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 12
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 21
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.
acer:/home/sean# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0 IEEE 802.11b ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s
Encryption key:XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XX Security mode:restri cted
Power Management:off
Link Quality:4/100 Signal level:-93 dBm Noise level:-96 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

[Juan Pablo]

You don't need ndiswrapper for Atheros cards, I have not used Debian in some time, download the kernel headers and install them, then follow the tutorial on the madwifi webpage

[SeanGee]

Ok I have now done the ff:

ndiswrapper -r net5211

Should I have done something else to remove the ndiswrapper module.

Downloaded, compiled and installed madwifi using the instructions at

http://pkg-madwifi.alioth.debian.org/

lspci shows the device as

00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5005G 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)

Here is the relevant output of dmesg

ath_hal: 0.9.18.0 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
wlan: 0.8.4.2 (0.9.3)
ath_rate_sample: 1.2 (0.9.3)
ath_pci: 0.9.4.5 (0.9.3)
PCI: Enabling device 0000:00:0b.0 (0010 -> 0012)
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:00:0b.0[A] -> GSI 17 (level, low) -> IRQ 225
wifi%d: unable to attach hardware: 'Hardware revision not supported' (HAL status 13)
ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:00:0b.0 disabled

So if I understand this correctly its back to ndiswrapper. And my original question remains

[SeanGee]

Uninstalled madwifi, re-installed ndiswrapper. I only seem to be able to set the encryption key using iwconfig, /etc/network/interfaces or the Gnome network utility.

dmesg reports:

ndiswrapper (iw_setup_ap_address:651) setting AP mac address failed (00010003)
ndiswrapper (iw_setup_ap_address:651) setting AP mac address failed (00010003)
ndiswrapper (set_scan:1180): scanning failed (C0010011)
wlan0: no IPv6 routers present
ndiswrapper (set_scan:1180): scanning failed (C0010011)
wlan0: no IPv6 routers present
wlan0: no IPv6 routers present

I really need to get this laptop up and running by the weekend and don't want to take the easy option (install XP).

Any help will be much appreciated.

[SeanGee]

When I say 'I only seem to be able to set the encryption key' I mean I can't set any other params (essid, channel, freq, ap etc)

[SeanGee]

Well I got everything working in time but can't really explain it.

Before giving up and installing Windows I tried the LinuxPC live disk. It identified the card correctly but could not initialize it (same behaviour as Debian). So I installed XP, installed the driver and it set up and worked without any problem. I didn't actually do ANYTHING.

Next I rebooted off the Live CD. I went through the motions on the wireless config and was stunned to discover it worked perfectly. So the fix seemed to be just start windows!!!. At that point I installed LinuxPC and it's been working ever since. For the record I am dead impressed with this distro so far.

Guess I'll be creating an emergency XP boot partition on a USB drive in case it happens again

[Juan Pablo]

Sorry, I was on vacation, your madwifi driver was working already, you got the "revision not supported" error because you didn't turn on the wireless switch on the front of your laptop

[SeanGee]

You're absolutely right Juan. Never realised the light was also a switch

I had the problem again on a later reboot. Booting WIndows fixed it again so I tried to reproduce. Presumably there is something in the Windows driver that switches it on at boot so I had never needed to know about the switch. Happy to say all is working perfectly now.

[Juan Pablo]

I got a very similar laptop, the switch is controlled by the ePower (or somethin like that) tool from Acer (only for Windows).

In my opinion the only useful tool from the eCrap suite of programs installed by Acer

[SeanGee]

yeah but I never installed the Acer tools. I had to re-install Windoze to boot it. Just did a basic XP Pro install and the wireless driver.

Anyways now I have found the switch it doesn't matter. Do you know if the switch is something physical or is mapped to a keycode (and if so what). life would be simpler if I could just turn it on at boot ...