Atheros Chipset / Fedora 8

I'm having trouble activating my Atheros AR5212 Wireless Adapter. When I go into the network configuration it shows the onboard network adapters and they work great. It also shows the Atheros card and that it is wlan0 and I can click on it to show me what it is and that it is there. When I go to activate it this is what I get -

Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.

Determining IP information for wlan0... failed.

I notice that nothing is set like the network key or other things and I'm not even sure if the madwifi driver is installed or even configured as well. Could someone walk me through getting this up and running? Also, I have it hardwired as I'm trying to do this... any help would be great.

...micro

To see if the module is loaded, do:

Code:

/sbin/lsmod

Is ath_pci there? If not, from the command line as su do:

Code:

/sbin/modprobe ath_pci

Interesting that it should want to identify it as wlan0. All my boxes with Atheros get identified as ath0. But I'm only on FC 7 so it could have changed. When you do:

Code:

/sbin/ifconfig

Do you see wlan0 there? Is ath0 there also or instead of wlan0? If ath_pci is indeed loaded, try:

Code:

/sbin/iwlist ath0 scan

To see if it picks up any access points. Also do:

Code:

/sbin/iwlist wlan0 scan

to see.

EDIT: I can't remember if FC comes with madwifi already or if it has to be built. Which is it now? If it didn't come with it, did you build it already? Pretty easy to do. See here. You'll need to get packages with yum before building if you haven't already...

Code:

yum install kernel-devel

Open a terminal/konsole window and login as root

Code:

su -

(root password)
Issue these command and let's see what's going on here.

Code:

/sbin/ifconfig

Code:

lsmod |grep ath

The first command will spit out some details about your network interfaces and the second command will tell us if you have the Madwifi modules loaded or not. Post the output here for more help.
Are you using Gnome or KDE, and do you know if Networkmanager is running?
EDIT: Ole Trigger finger Dan beat me to it.

ok, I have all the out put but it says to many smilies so how do I put it into the message so it lets me post it?

Code:

1) no 2) I got this - FATAL: Module ath_pci not found. 4)I got this - eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:17:31:1C:36:82 inet addr:172.16.0.104 Bcast:172.16.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0 inet6 addr: fe80::217:31ff:fe1c:3682/64 Scope:Link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:27836 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:10433 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:16329033 (15.5 MiB) TX bytes:1593418 (1.5 MiB) Interrupt:18 lo Link encap:Local Loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:6748 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:6748 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 RX bytes:4697144 (4.4 MiB) TX bytes:4697144 (4.4 MiB) wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1B:11:BC:BC:AE UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b) wmaster0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-1B-11-BC-BC-AE-E8-84-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00 UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b) 5) This is what it see's in the area - wlan0 Scan completed : Cell 01 - Address: 00:17:9A:2A:B6:08 ESSID:"MicroNet" Mode:Master Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6) Channel:6 Quality=54/100 Signal level=-63 dBm Noise level=-98 dBm Encryption key:on IE: WPA Version 1 Group Cipher : TKIP Pairwise Ciphers (1) : TKIP Authentication Suites (1) : PSK Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s 12 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s Extra:tsf=000001f670f1ae65 Cell 02 - Address: 00:18:39:C1:B9:B3 ESSID:"pardeep" Mode:Master Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6) Channel:6 Quality=14/100 Signal level=-89 dBm Noise level=-98 dBm Encryption key:on IE: WPA Version 1 Group Cipher : CCMP Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP Authentication Suites (1) : PSK Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s 12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s Extra:tsf=0000006299a7a63a Cell 03 - Address: 00:12:88:DD:6D:91 ESSID:"2WIRE155" Mode:Master Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6) Channel:6 Quality=14/100 Signal level=-88 dBm Noise level=-97 dBm Encryption key:on Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s Extra:tsf=0000005af3b8af3c Cell 04 - Address: 00:0B:85:5C:E9:3F ESSID:"" Mode:Master Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6) Channel:6 Quality=21/100 Signal level=-83 dBm Noise level=-97 dBm Encryption key:on IE: WPA Version 1 Group Cipher : TKIP Pairwise Ciphers (2) : TKIP CCMP Authentication Suites (1) : 802.1x IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1 Group Cipher : TKIP Pairwise Ciphers (2) : TKIP CCMP Authentication Suites (1) : 802.1x Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s 9 Mb/s; 12 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s; 24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s 48 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s Extra:tsf=00000006d754a314 I think it's working but not sure... it sees my network at the top. When I do the stuff suggested from MiketBob it failes - lsmod |grep ath bash: lsmod: command not found Haven't tried to build anything yet... I could do it with a walk through if you have time?

how do I unpack the driver I'm in the director where I have downloaded it to and this is the file - madwifi-0.9.4.tar.gz

I wouldn't install anything just yet, it appears that you have a valid driver installed already or you wouldn't be able to see the Networks available, I think Fedora included something that works, but it isn't madwifi.
You should be able to go into the network tool (system-config-network) and create a new Wireless connection, you'll have to shutdown the Wired connection before it will work.
ifconfig eth1 down

ok, that's what I thought. I did notice that the ath5k was listed so I think it already included it. I'm going to unplug from the internet and try to get it configured.

Just to see what the heck is going on, post the output of these two commands.

Code:

/sbin/lspci -nn /sbin/lsmod

This is assuming that your wireless is not a USB wireless.

ok, I tried to activate it and it gives me this code -
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.

...gonna search the web brb...