Intalling madwifi drivers for GWL-520 on backtrack.

[nateleduc]

I'm a bit lost on how to get these drivers working. I have these instructions:

ifconfig ath0 down
rmmod wlan_wep ath_rate_sample ath_rate_onoe ath_pci wlan ath_hal 2>/dev/null
find /lib/modules -name 'ath*' -exec rm -v {} \; 2>/dev/null
find /lib/modules -name 'wlan*' -exec rm -v {} \; 2>/dev/null
svn checkout svn.madwifi-projectbranches/madwifi-old/ madwifi-old
wget patches.aircrack-ng//madwifi-old-r1417.patch
cd madwifi-old
patch -Np1 -i ../madwifi-old-r1417.patch
make KERNELPATH=/usr/src/linux-<insert version>
make install KERNELPATH=/usr/src/linux-<insert version>
depmod -ae
modprobe ath_pci


but my card is on wlan0. When I try to modprobe wlan/wlan0 it gives me the error:
WARNING: Not loading blacklisted module rt73
FATAL: Module wlan not found.

ath isn't my card. So am I just supposed to go along with it. Ifconfig shows ,eth0 wlan0 and lo.
I'm very confused and help would be very appreciated. IF you know how to fix this on another distro then then me know because I think Backtrack was built off Ubuntu/Debian

[reed9]

The madwifi drivers usually name the wireless interface ath0. The project is deprecated in favor of the newer ath5k and ath9k drivers.

However, the mention of the rt73 module would indicate you have a ralink card, not an atheros card.

Please post the output of these two commands

lspci -vnn
lsmod

[nateleduc]

I'm positive that my card is atheros. I use the ath5k driver. I am at work atm but when I get home I will give you the output

[reed9]

Perhaps backtrack just has the rt73 driver blacklisted for some reason.

Proceeding on the assumption that it is an atheros card, change ath0 to wlan0.

However, if madwifi is not on your system, then these lines seem unnecessary.

rmmod wlan_wep ath_rate_sample ath_rate_onoe ath_pci wlan ath_hal 2>/dev/null
find /lib/modules -name 'ath*' -exec rm -v {} \; 2>/dev/null
find /lib/modules -name 'wlan*' -exec rm -v {} \; 2>/dev/null

[reed9]

Oh, and in switching to madwifi, you will need to unload and blacklist the ath5k driver.

As root

ifconfig wlan0 down
modprobe -r ath5k
echo "blacklist ath5k" >> /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf