How to checkout and install madwifi experimental driver for ar5008

2009-02-24T23:35:10Z

Grnbrg: Name change of project host causing svn to fail. Updated svn url.

Official support for the AR5008/AR5418 chipset has not yet been included in an official release of the madwifi-hal however, in the meantime, there is pre-release support with which some have found some success. In order to take advantage of the latest version of the code, you can either download the [http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-trunk-current.tar.gz nightly snapshot], or use subversion as described below:

* make (if necessary) and change to a directory where you new directory
user@box:~/$ mkdir madwifi
user@box:~/$ cd madwifi
* Fetch files using svn
user@box:~/madwifi$ svn co http://svn.madwifi-project.org/madwifi/trunk
.
.
.
Checked out revision ####.
* Now enter the directory and start compiling:
user@box:~/madwifi$ cd trunk/
user@box:~/madwifi/trunk$ make
.
.
.
* With a little luck, you now have a properly compiled driver, ready for install. You'll probably be asked to enter the root password.
user@box:~/madwifi/trunk$ sudo make install
* If you're using debian, you will have to add an entry to your <tt>/etc/network/interfaces</tt> file in order to be able to bring up the device. To make use of wpa_supplicant in roaming mode, add an entry like
<pre>
#Wireless
noauto ath0
allow-hotplug ath0

iface ath0 inet manual
wpa-driver madwifi
wpa-roam /etc/network/wpa_supplicant.conf

iface default inet dhcp
</pre>
* Now all that's missing is probing the module. This will create two new network interfaces "wifi#" and "wlan#"
user@box:~/madwifi/trunk$ sudo modprobe ath_pci
user@box:~/madwifi/trunk$ /sbin/ifconfig
ath0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:19:7E:41:09:C1
inet addr:192.168.0.102 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:316176 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:562494 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:54115716 (51.6 MiB) TX bytes:823180275 (785.0 MiB)
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:15:58:86:70:EE
inet addr:192.168.0.119 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
Base address:0x2000 Memory:ee000000-ee020000
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:1420 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1420 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:182621 (178.3 KiB) TX bytes:182621 (178.3 KiB)
wifi0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 00-19-7E-41-09-C1-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:462907 errors:753 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:182
TX packets:563036 errors:6 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:199
RX bytes:91695661 (87.4 MiB) TX bytes:846831037 (807.6 MiB)
Interrupt:21

It's the ath0 interface that you're after for actually configuring whatever network manager you choose to use. The wifi0 is the accursed binary hal interface.
=Troubleshooting=
If you're having trouble getting the ath0 interface to show up on a regular <tt>ifconfig</tt>, but can see it if you do an <tt>ifconfig -a</tt> and nothing seems to be happening with wpa_supplicant, the solution (for some unknown reason) is to rename ath0 to wlan0. This is easily done by modifying the udev rule.

Upon the first probing of the <tt>ath_pci</tt> module, something resembling the following rule line should have been added <tt>/etc/udev/rules.d/z25_persistent-net.rules</tt>:
<pre>
# PCI device 0x168c:0x0024 (ath_pci)
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTR{address}=="<your mac address>", ATTR{type}=="1", NAME="ath0"
</pre>
All you need to do is change the <tt>"ath0"</tt> to <tt>"wlan0"</tt> and you're good to go. Bring down the interface, remove the module with <tt>rmmod ath_pci</tt>, run the command <tt>pkill wpa</tt>, remove <tt>/var/run/wpa_supplicant/ath0</tt> if it's still there and reprobe the module. Hopefully that should get you working.
=See Also=
[[ThinkPad 11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Mini Express Adapter]]

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How to checkout and install madwifi experimental driver for ar5008