WiFi doesn't work (Atheros)

7 respostas [Última entrada]
ssdclickofdeath
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Joined: 05/19/2013

I opened up my Mac Mini[0] to see if I could put in a longer range wireless antenna. I closed it back up, as the extended antenna wouldn't fit, but when I turned it on, the wireless didn't work. The wireless card has always worked before, as it is Atheros. I know it is not a hardware problem, as I am typing this running off of the Trisquel 6.0 Live CD, connected to the wireless network.

$ sudo lspci -v
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express) (rev 01)
Subsystem: Apple Inc. AR5BXB6 802.11abg Wireless Mini PCIe Card
Physical Slot: 1
Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
Memory at 90100000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
Capabilities: [50] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable- 64bit-
Capabilities: [60] Express Legacy Endpoint, MSI 00
Capabilities: [90] MSI-X: Enable- Count=1 Masked-
Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
Capabilities: [140] Virtual Channel
Kernel driver in use: ath5k
Kernel modules: ath5k

Before I booted into the Live CD, I noticed that the last two lines indicating which driver is in use were not present.

[0] http://lowendmac.com/2006/mac-mini-early-2006/

quantumgravity
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Joined: 04/22/2013

Just a guess, but try

sudo modprobe ath5k

ssdclickofdeath
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Joined: 05/19/2013

I get this: FATAL: Module ath5k not found.
On the Live CD, nothing shows up after entering that command.

lembas
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Joined: 05/13/2010

Are you running a custom kernel?

uname -r
ssdclickofdeath
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Joined: 05/19/2013

Yes, I was, (a vanilla Linux-libre 3.10) now I am booted into the 3.2.0-48-generic-pae kernel, and wireless works now.

lembas
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Joined: 05/13/2010

I guess that 3.10 is compiled without the ath5k module. I believe it's possible to compile just one module to add to a kernel instead of the whole thing but I don't know how...

I wrote a little howto for the whole thing at https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/compiling-gnu-linux-libre-kernel

ssdclickofdeath
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Joined: 05/19/2013

The strange part was that it stopped working after I opened up my Mac mini, so I first thought that I damaged the hardware inside.

lembas
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Joined: 05/13/2010

That's how the mind works, fortunately it wasn't so.