wlan with ath chipset not working with new puppy

Please post any bugs you have found
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rjbrewer
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#21 Post by rjbrewer »

Go to system>pupscan interface info>pci interfaces.

Should list the atheros chipset the card has.

2.6.30.5 uses ath5k for atheros cards,

earlier kernels use ath_pci.

Both my cards connect using the connection wizard;

no need for compiling.....ndiswrapper etc.

Inspiron 700m, Pent.M 1.6Ghz, 1Gb ram.
Msi Wind U100, N270 1.6>2.0Ghz, 1.5Gb ram.
Eeepc 8g 701, 900Mhz, 1Gb ram.
Full installs

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James186282
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#22 Post by James186282 »

I probably should have said more at the start. Ath5k is very tightly controlled re power levels, frequency changes etc. I'm a ham radio operator playing around with antennas (Building them, testing them and trying to see without lots of lab equipment how well they work) and have a license to use "channels" that are not normally used in the US.

madwifi makes it a little bit easier to do the kinds of things I want and so... What I simply want to do is not load ath5k but stick with the version of madwifi that I've compiled. I have to admit that I'm a bit of a noob with Linux (Although I've dabbled for a long time) its only now that I've gone full time with it having had enough of the alternatives.

Can anyone tell me is ath5k is part of the kernel? Is that why its so difficult to unglue it? If so, can anyone tell me what the last version of puppy is that was not ath5k? or back to my first quest how to signal the system to not load ath5k in the first place? I don't understand why black list is being ignored either.

Sorry to be a pest.

- James

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rjbrewer
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#23 Post by rjbrewer »

Every official release of puppy I've used since 3.0 has used
ath_pci; until this latest 4.3 version with 2.6.30.5 kernel.

I believe they were all madwifi based previously.

Puppy 4.12 is still my favorite.

I don't really understand what you are trying to do; but I have
a kaito and a sony receiver with ssb and like playing with
antennas. Been building a few little uhf 4bays for dtv converter
boxes recently.

I'll be watching your efforts with great interest.

Inspiron 700m, Pent.M 1.6Ghz, 1Gb ram.
Msi Wind U100, N270 1.6>2.0Ghz, 1.5Gb ram.
Eeepc 8g 701, 900Mhz, 1Gb ram.
Full installs

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James186282
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Joined: Tue 08 Sep 2009, 19:14
Location: Minnesota

#24 Post by James186282 »

Very good. I've been backing up and I think I'll just re-install using one of the other distros. I started with crypto puppy and maybe I can do my thing with that.

Very good on your experiments. What I'm doing...

Well lets see. I started by hacking on some old routers. Adding external antennas to do a connection across the street to this little trailer that I was going work from. Then I started taking apart wifi cards and adding SMA connectors so I could connect them to external antennas as well. I got the bug to play around more with this type of thing and one of my friends who is also a Ham Radio buff told me about doing wifi from miles away and I got interested in that. He has a house on the high spot in our county and one thing we talked about doing was to set up a link on a non part 15 channel between his house and mine. I'm keen on mode a (5GHz) where we have more room to fool around. I'm also fiddling with programming and have had a lot of fun with Linux since to me its possible to understand it unlike all the rubbish you need to do to write a Windows program. And on that note so much of Windows is such junk. Knowing which calls are worthless versus good is only easy because most are rubbish ;-)
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer.
Art is everything else we do.
[i]Donald Knuth [/i]

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jemimah
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#25 Post by jemimah »

I don't see any reason why you couldn't just move the ath5k module out of /lib/modules, and rerun depmod. You can always put it back if you want it for some reason. Tempestuous also posted a madwifi pet in the Kernel 2.6.30.5 extras thread that may work.

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rjbrewer
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#26 Post by rjbrewer »

That madwifi driver from tempestuous is only for ar5007eg chip,
wag511 has ar5001x+ chip.

Inspiron 700m, Pent.M 1.6Ghz, 1Gb ram.
Msi Wind U100, N270 1.6>2.0Ghz, 1.5Gb ram.
Eeepc 8g 701, 900Mhz, 1Gb ram.
Full installs

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James186282
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Joined: Tue 08 Sep 2009, 19:14
Location: Minnesota

#27 Post by James186282 »

Just a quick update and thanks. I reformatted my laptop (after backing up the vital stuff) and started out with the Crypto Pup distro (Which I've used on all my machines) I looked and this has ath5k but before I plugged in my WiFi Card I ran the boot config program and blacklisted it. Then I used the connect program to select ath_pci as a module I wanted to load. It of course didn't find any card so I shut down, plugged in my card and restarted. Hot DAMN! It worked. NO ath5k.

My little M700 Armada was running ath_pci (Aka Madwifi) alone at last.

to verify this I did

lsmod | grep ath

and the output was 100% ath5k free. AT LAST!!! Wow. I can't tell you how frustrating it was to do the right things and not have them work the way I thought they should.

I tried changing the country code etc and it all worked as it should.
Thanks everyone for posting. BTW I've compiled madwifi from the latest source. Not clear how to make that into a pet or pup file yet (I'm a Noob) But trying not to be.
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer.
Art is everything else we do.
[i]Donald Knuth [/i]

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James186282
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#28 Post by James186282 »

p.s. dmesg also gives a clean report. Not the long list of unknown symbols when ath5k and ath_pci / hal were running at the same time. Very excited and pleased! Thank you all for your letting me cry on your shoulders about this.
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer.
Art is everything else we do.
[i]Donald Knuth [/i]

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rjbrewer
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#29 Post by rjbrewer »

James:

During development of puppy 4.1, the ath5k was found to be
taking preference over ath_pci. This problem was fixed by the
time4.1.1 or 4.1.2 were released.

You are using puppy crypt, a puplet, not an official release.
No telling what may or may not work in puplets.
Puplets include a disclaimer.

Puppy 4.2, which crypt is supposed to be based on, does not
have the ath5k-ath_pci error.

This was not a bug in puppy.

Inspiron 700m, Pent.M 1.6Ghz, 1Gb ram.
Msi Wind U100, N270 1.6>2.0Ghz, 1.5Gb ram.
Eeepc 8g 701, 900Mhz, 1Gb ram.
Full installs

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James186282
Posts: 270
Joined: Tue 08 Sep 2009, 19:14
Location: Minnesota

#30 Post by James186282 »

Thanks. The problem showed up when I downloaded the current official version 4.30 so the problem may well have returned.

Is ath5k part of the linux kernal in 4.30? I don't quite understand how the system powers up and decides to select this or that driver.
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer.
Art is everything else we do.
[i]Donald Knuth [/i]

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