Atheros 5001 wi-fi & Puppy

[whisperwalker]

Greetings and Thanks To All for Puppy! I'm new to Linux, recently acquired Sony Vaio VGN-N325E with Mint 10 and it hooks up fine to the wireless that has a restricted MAC setting. But we LOVE OUR PUPPY LINUX! Especially the New 5.2.8. Mint's cool, but not as cool as Puppy on older machines. BUT - tried everything in the connect functions and still no wireless detected. Haven't been able to locate the right info here on the forum, hope someone can help, maybe point me in the right direction. Thanks again,

[cthisbear]

Specs:

http://reviews.cnet.com/laptops/sony-va ... 39687.html

""""""""

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=71023

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=70866

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=71128

tempestuous may also give you advice.

And welcome to puppy.

Chris.

[whisperwalker]

Chris, Thank you for the reminder to include the specs -

Sony VAIO VGN-N325E?W - P T2080 1.73GHz - Mobile Intel 943 GML Express- 1.0 GB DDR2 SDRAM - 533.0MHz - 120.0 GB Serial ATA-150-5400.0rpm - Intel GMA 950 Graphics 224MB
Hope that's enough, more if needed.
Okay, this post is coming from an etho connection, a cat5 wire plugged into the back of the wireless router. Tried every possible combination to get the wireless working - but no, my Puppy won't connect wirelessly. (Which is probably not saying much, I'm greener than green when it comes to command line...). I tried switching the wireless switch on and off, configuring new profiles with the Network Wizard, on/off, "unable to connect to a wireless network", several times, various combinations, on/off-reconfigure, get DHCP, still no wireless detected. Thought it might have something to do with antenna proximity. Tried it all over the house - Nope. No wireless for our new Puppy... ...Yet...
Thank you all for being here, we love our Puppy and really want to figure this out.

[whisperwalker]

Hi, Thanks for viewing. Tried Wary 5.1.4.1 - unable to connect.
Cielo_420_base_ 01 - unable to connect.
Simplicity Obsidian 117 - unable to connect.
Hoping there's a solution. Any other puplets that might work? Thanks again.

[bigpup]

First are you following these steps:
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=65346

[whisperwalker]

Bigpup, thanks for your tutorial. Followed all steps, Puppy still "unable to detect wireless network". Wondering if there's a problem with our home wi-fi router. It's set-up to restrict MAC addresses. The Mint 10 hooks up right away to the home wi-fi and all the public wi-fi's in my area. (The Mint OS was already installed on this machine when I got it. To get it to connect to our home wi-fi, I had to include the MAC address on the wi-fi router's interface). There's an old e-machines laptop with XPsp3 coming over to the house later today. It's already listed on the allowed MAC address list. I'll boot Puppy Live and see if it will connect. Thanks again for your help.

[whisperwalker]

E-Machines laptop connected effortlessly. Easy business with Puppy 528. Still no connection with Atheros 5001 in the Sony VAIO machine. May have to get another machine. Unless anyone knows of a way to replace the Atheros with an alternative. Thanks again. wm

[tempestuous]

whisperwalker, you haven't told us what wifi driver is loaded in the Network Wizard, but I suspect it's ath5k.

I also suspect that the wifi device may be in its rfkill-off state. To know for sure, install the rfkill-upgrade dotpet (compatible with Puppy versions 5.1 to 5.2. - this will upgrade the ath5k driver.
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 093#452093

Then reboot, and try again.
You may find that it's necessary to activate the wireless switch on the laptop.

[whisperwalker]

temptuous, installed rfkill-upgrade, rebooted, made sure wireless switch on, attempted connection and received pop-up unknown error 132. (see attached ). Also, this machine had Vista installed before Mint 10, if that makes any diference. Thanks again for your help , I really want to solve this pesky riddle.

[tempestuous]

Well it certainly looks like an rfkill issue, but now I think about it, I suspect the wifi switch won't work until you install the "acpid" daemon with relevant configuration file for your Sony VAIO ... this might take some investigation ...

but you should still be able to activate the wifi device using manual commands. First try this -

Code: Select all

echo 1 > /sys/class/rfkill/rfkill0/state

then run the Network Wizard (not Simple Network Wizard).

If that doesn't work, try this command -

Code: Select all

rfkill unblock all

then run the Network Wizard.

... and it would still be good if you could confirm that it's the ath5k wifi driver ??

[cthisbear]

tempestuous:

02:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8036 PCI-E Fast Ethernet Controller [11ab:4351] (rev 16)
Subsystem: Sony Corporation Device [104d:8212]
Kernel driver in use: sky2
Kernel modules: sky2
06:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter [168c:001c] (rev 01)
Subsystem: AMBIT Microsystem Corp. Device [1468:0423]
Kernel driver in use: ath5k
Kernel modules: ath5k

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ubuntu ... issue.html

Chris.

[whisperwalker]

ISSUE RESOLVED - tempestous and cthisbear, thank you for your help with the ath5k issue. I have no more time for Puppy on this sony machine - thanks again for attempting.

[tempestuous]

I really want to solve this pesky riddle.

I have no more time for Puppy on this sony machine

That's a dramatic change of heart, in the space of less than 24 hours.

The two commands I suggested would take no more than 60 seconds to try.

[whisperwalker]

tempestuous, of course you're right on - dramatic change of heart - but the solution for this vexation was to simply wire directly into the router. So I wrote that the issue was resolved. And it was - for me. But your reply has turned me around. I'm new to Linux and forums in general and wasn't thinking about the other Puppy folks who may have a similar problem with the ath5k. Thank you. I'll do as you've suggested immediately following this post. (I was irritably frustrated yesterday after installing Ubuntu 10.04, a grub dual-boot with Mint 10, only to find that Ubuntu was also unable to connect wirelessly with the ath5k. But that's for the Ubuntu forum.) Thanks again,

[whisperwalker]

tempestuous
performed commands according to your instructions. Still unable to connect. Any other suggestions? Thanks again

[tempestuous]

whisperwalker, I'm not trying to push you. I just thought that the rfkill-enable commands I supplied might be an easy fix. Since they have obviously failed, the problem now requires more extensive investigation ...

... if you want to continue, I think an important diagnostic step would be to run this command -

Code: Select all

rfkill list

and report the result.
I should mention that the rfkill command will only work if you have installed the rfkill-upgrade dotpet, as we discussed earlier.

[whisperwalker]

tempestuous, thanks for your persistence. Ran the rfkill list, hope I'm doing this correctly.
[/img]

[tempestuous]

OK, your rfkill results are all clear.

The next step is to see the output of the "dmesg" command, but this will be verbose, so the best way is to run these three commands -

Code: Select all

cd /root
dmesg > dmesg.txt
gzip dmesg.txt

Now you will have a file in /root called dmesg.txt.gz which you can attach to the forum.

[whisperwalker]

tempestuous, hope this is done correctly, I'm on the steep side of the linux learning curve thanks again

[tempestuous]

From your dmesg output -

ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x65
ath: EEPROM indicates we should expect a direct regpair map
ath: Country alpha2 being used: 00
...
wlan0: direct probe to AP 00:0c:e5:4f:a0:94 timed out

This indicates a problem with reading the eeprom/setting country code, and this same problem has just been reported with the ath9k driver in the last week or so! This is eerie, because in the full year that Puppy 5.1.x-series has been available, no one has reported such a problem up until now.

Anyway, until the ath5k driver is completely updated in newer kernel versions, your only solution for now is to use a specially patched version of the ath5k driver which will allow you to manually specify your country-code.

I just posted the ath5k-set-country driver dotpet here -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 940#563940
Read the instructions in the previous post ... but some important tips:
- I think the rfkill-upgrade dotpet will conflict with the modified driver, so delete your pupsave file and start afresh.
- if you happen to be in the USA, your /etc/modprobe.d/ath5k.conf file should be -

Code: Select all

options ath5k override_eeprom_regdomain=33608

then reboot, and run the Network Wizard.
If no success, power-cyle your wifi router and try again.

If still no success, run the "dmesg" command to look for clues.