[plug] [Fwd: wireless card not recognised at boot]

[Gavin Chester]

Addendum to this post - I should have added that  also did 
modprobe ath_pci
linuxlap:~ # ifconfig

and nothing useful came of it, ie., modprobe showed nothing (not sure
what to expect there) and ifconfig only showed eth0 and lo interfaces.

-------- Forwarded Message --------
> From: Gavin Chester <gavin.chester at gmail.com>
> To: plug <plug at plug.org.au>
> Subject: wireless card not recognised at boot
> Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 22:39:05 +0900
> 
> Hi pluggers,
> 
> I have frustrating wireless problems with acer aspire 3620 with atheros
> wireless 'AR5005G 802.11abg NIC' built-in. Basically, it doesn't start
> at boot time unless the planets are aligned in some particular fashion.
> 
> I had always assumed it was because I wasn't in the presence of a
> wireless hotspot, being completely inexperienced with wireless before
> now. I did all the usual things, ie., googling to understand the problem
> before realising I needed to install madwifi for the atheros chipset
> (dah!). So, for a while now I have madwifi (v. 0.9.3.1) and also the
> madwifi kernel modules (madwifi-kmp-default). This worked straightaway
> next time I was on campus with full wireless coverage. Trouble is it is
> totally unpredictable whether wireless will start. Sometimes numerous
> reboots will get success, but more often not.
> 
> Now I have a combo adsl wireless router at home and am wanting to solve
> the problem more urgently.
> 
> Hardware info report (below) shows that the system knows it's there, so
> why is it so erratic to the point where it is non-functioning? 
> 
> I have no idea where to start. What tests should I perform? All help
> kindly received :-)
> 
> So far I have gone thru' my distro hardware setup (yast on suse) and the
> card is recognised and (hopefully) configured. I have also done this
> basic stuff:    
> 
> # /sbin/ifup ath0
> Interface ath0 is not available
> /sbin/ifup eth1
> Interface eth1 is not available
> 
> (tried the second one because eth0 is the wired nic)
> 
> This is the hardware info for the card:
> 
>   53: udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_168c_1a'
>   pci.product = 'AR5005G 802.11abg NIC'
>   pci.subsys_vendor = 'AMBIT Microsystem Corp.'
>   linux.sysfs_path_device = '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0b.0'
>   info.bus = 'pci'
>   pci.device_protocol = 0 (0x0)
>   info.udi = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/pci_168c_1a'
>   pci.linux.sysfs_path = '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0b.0'
>   pci.subsys_product_id = 1048 (0x418)
>   linux.subsystem = 'pci'
>   info.vendor = 'Atheros Communications, Inc.'
>   pci.product_id = 26 (0x1a)
>   pci.vendor = 'Atheros Communications, Inc.'
>   info.product = 'AR5005G 802.11abg NIC'
>   pci.subsys_product = 'Unknown (0x0418)'
>   linux.hotplug_type = 2 (0x2)
>   linux.sysfs_path = '/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:0b.0'
>   pci.vendor_id = 5772 (0x168c)
>   info.parent = '/org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/computer'
>   pci.subsys_vendor_id = 5224 (0x1468)
>   pci.device_class = 2 (0x2)
>   pci.device_subclass = 0 (0x0)
> 
> Gavin
> 
>