64 bit wireless drivers htc_9721
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I have a wireless card with the chipset AR9721 which uses the htc_9721 and htc_9010 drivers which in a 32 bit system can simply be cp'ed over to /lib/firmware/ and reboot and the wireless will work fine from there. But the problem is, is that my IBM ThinkPad R60 is 64 bit compatible, so this means that I have to compile the drivers from source if I am not mistaken, and the instructions that come with the source code from github require me to be connected to the internet during the compilation of these drivers, which means that I would have to be connected to eth0 which I do not currently have access to an ethernet connection, so I have no means to build this driver. Does anyone else have any help that they could offer? Anyone else having similar problems with wireless drivers?
"All war is, but class struggle"
The firmware that runs on AR9271 has a different architecture than any
Trisquel system (it's Xtensa). Both 32-bit and 64-bit Trisquel systems
use the same firmware files.
Yes, that's right. The firmware does not run on the host CPU, it runs on the chip itself. So it doesn't matter if you run 32 or 64-bit Trisquel.
Since you don't have internet, get the apt-offline deb package from a computer with internet and install it on your offline computer with:
sudo dpkg -i apt-offline_1.1.1build1_all.deb
Then use apt-offline to install the packages linux-generic-lts-saucy and open-ath9k-htc-firmware. You will first need to update the cache. See this article for more information about apt-offline.
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So I install the apt-offine and it worked just fine, could you provide a link to the linux-generic-lts-saucy .deb package? and the open-ath9k-htc-firmware driver? The driver is on git, but when I follow the documentation, I get an error when I build it and I have tried on multiple 64 bit systems and I get the same error so I am unsure if building them from source is an option.
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Trisquel 6.01 has the firmware included out of the box. Might be easier to go that route.
Where is this completed and readily available 6.01 ISO that you are all telling us to download? I checked https://trisquel.info/en/download and all I see is the original release from a year ago. Same goes for the official mirror at http://mirror.fsf.org/trisquel-images/
I actually feel bad for those who install Trisquel now and have to not only deal with an ISO that is a year behind, but some hardware that doesn't work out of the box since the ISO is so old with the original 3.2 kernel. I know this is an LTS only release system, but please please please give people updated ISOs to coincide with the point releases that Ubuntu does (like 12.04.1, 12.04.2, etc) so they can automatically get access to newer kernels by default.
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Well... the idea was to release updates to the LTS image. I'd argue definitely to add the xserver component (given Canonical did all the work for it) and a newer linux-libre kernel (at least as an option, and preferably during the install process, and ideally the live image would have the newer kernel, even if it wasn't the one installed, to enable people to actually install it, on systems where the hardware won't even boot otherwise).
Ruben did half the work. There is a 3.5 kernel in the official repository and there is an updated ISO with ar9271 firmware and kernel that was patched such that the firmware would load (originally the 6.0 release's kernel was patched such the firmware would not load even if it was free).
The 6.01 has not been publicized from what I can tell although does exist and works great, but it is missing the 3.5 kernel, or anything newer:
http://devel.trisquel.info/makeiso/iso/trisquel_6.0.1_amd64.iso
After install you have to update to get the newer kernel:
1. Use the update manager to apply all updates
2. Search for linux-generic-lts-belenos in Synaptic Package Manager (System Settings > Synaptic) and install the package
Or in a terminal run:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-generic-lts-belenos
To install a more recent linux-libre kernel I'd follow the directions here:
Don't use the old 3.5 kernel. The Saucy kernel (linux-generic-lts-saucy) is there and deblobbed from Ubuntu. This needs to be included with the updated ISO (along with the Saucy xserver) with the 6.01 ISO.
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That's not in the 6 repository. 7 is still unstable. It's based on Ubuntu 14.04 and that isn't even finished. I think the other on this list is linking to the newer 7 stuff. I'd probably stick to Jason's repository until 7 is final.
No, the saucy LTS enablement stack is in the toutatis repository. Take a look, just type "apt-cache search lts-saucy"
Or see http://mirror.fsf.org/trisquel/pool/main/l/linux-lts-saucy/
open-ath9k-htc-firmware is firmware, not a driver. And it builds perfectly on 64-bit, as long as you have everything needed to build gcc and binutils.
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He shouldn't need to build anything though... the firmware runs on the device itself. He just needs to plop it in the /lib/firmware directory and upgrade the kernel to 3.5. Either jason's kernel (jxself) or the one in the official repository (as mentioned above).
Or 3.11.
He was saying he got errors when building on a 64-bit system. Probably just didn't have the build dependencies installed. But yeah, there's no reason to build it since it runs on the xtensa processor in the chip. You can put the files in /lib/firmware, but it's certainly better to install the open-ath9k-htc-firmware package.