Unable to get AR5212/Ar5213 working on LXDE 2012

[frazelle09]

Just d/l and installed the LXDE 2012 ISO - i hope this is the right forum.  Can't seem to setup my wifi.  The compu only has wifi so i'm pretty stuck.

modprobe ath5k gives me: Invalid module format (.../ath5k.ko.gz)

iwconfig gives:  lo  no wireless extensions.

What can be done?  Have a great evening!  

[bicol_willem]

Am I right and we talk about a PC here?
That PC has a wireless adapter card (i.e. PCI) build in?
Its not a ordinary LAN card I hope ...
Maybe a look with lspci can help here learning what is present.
In case a dead cheap usb lan adapter can likely help out here.

[frazelle09]

bicol_willem, this PC is an old P4 AMD w/256 Mb.  Since it doesn't have an Ethernet port - i don't know why - we have a wifi card which is picked up as AR5212/5213.  i ran lspci and don't see any "real" Ethernet ports, just the Atheros.  When it boots up, it asks if i want to configure my internet connection.  i click Yes and it brings up Network Center which has the Atheros Wireless Network Adapter.  The only buttons it has are Advanced Settings and Quit!  If i click Quit it repeats the routine.  If i click on the Adapter, and click the Configure button, it produces, Error, Unable to find network interface for selected device (using ath5k driver).

Have a great evening! 

[bicol_willem]

bicol_willem, this PC is an old P4 AMD w/256 Mb.  Since it doesn't have an Ethernet port - i don't know why - we have a wifi card which is picked up as AR5212/5213.  i ran lspci and don't see any "real" Ethernet ports, just the Atheros.  When it boots up, it asks if i want to configure my internet connection.  i click Yes and it brings up Network Center which has the Atheros Wireless Network Adapter.  The only buttons it has are Advanced Settings and Quit!  If i click Quit it repeats the routine.  If i click on the Adapter, and click the Configure button, it produces, Error, Unable to find network interface for selected device (using ath5k driver).

Have a great evening! 

That wifi card might be defective?  Or maybe not set properly? Have a option to check? 

[parnote]

I have that same wireless chipset in my Lenovo Thinkpad Z61T. For some odd reason, PCLinuxOS wants to use ath5k to run that card when PCLinuxOS is installed. There's an old post running somewhere around here by Hootiegibbon Texstar (I've not had the presence of mind to bookmark it any of the several times I've went looking for it) that details what to blacklist, modprobe and install. In the end, IIRC, the ath9k driver is the one you REALLY want and need. Once I've done the change, the wireless indicator on the laptop works and the wireless has absolutely no trouble connecting to any network I've tried connecting to.

If I can find the post, I'll edit this post here to include the information (plus, it'll make it easier for me to find the next time I go digging it up).

HTH!

parnote

EDIT: Here is the link to the post that has worked for me!

[frazelle09]

parnote!  i've been bitten by the same problem!  400 posts later, a different computer and a different WiFi adapter as well.  However this compu doesn't have access to Synaptic bec. it doesn't have an Ethternet port on the mobo.  The other way would probably entail d/l the

"dkms-madwifi (This will take a minute or two as it is building the kernel drivers on the fly) and madwifi"

to another computer, copying files over to this one, and running some sort of command(s) to install them into the kernel - well even this isn't all that time-consuming, if i knew the commands and where to put the files.

Maybe i'll just go down to my local PC store and see if they've got an extra Ethernet card lying around somewhere.

Thanks again, parnote.  It's good to know that someone has seen this post and that there is a possiblity that we can get this fixed.  i know the card works under PCL because this machine had PCL 2010 on it and i must have been using it with the wifi because that's all it has - lol.

So, have a wonderful morning and thanks again! 

[frazelle09]

modprobe ath5k gives me: Invalid module format (.../ath5k.ko.gz)

i have been searching Google for this rather strange return for modprobe.  It would seem that the OS would/should be using files which end in something other then ".gz".  Do you suppose this is what Invalid module format means - that the file is not in the correct format?

One Google result was: 

It means that the file you are trying to load is not a valid kernel module. Either it never was, or it has been corrupted, or possibly it is for an architecture other than the one you have ( 32 vs 64 bit ).

i'm going to keep looking.  Since this is a different OS than the last one i was using, which was KDE, maybe that's one of the things that's going on...

Have a great morning! 

[tschommer]

As I can see from the name of the file, it's compressed using gzip (thus the ending ".gz").

If you simply uncompress it (command gunzup ath5k.ko.gz), you have a file that has the standard ending ".ko".

Just try it and see if it works.

[frazelle09]

Thanks, tschommer!  i tried the suggestion and gzip returns "not in gzip format"!!!

i'll just try to rename it so that it ends w/o the .gz and see what happens.

Have a great morning! 

[frazelle09]

O.k.  i got to unzip it with gunzip and it return:  not in gzip format.

i delete the ".gz" and run modprobe again for ath5k and this time it returns FATAL ".../ath5k.ko.gz" No such file or directory, so its definitly looking for the file i just renamed, except that that file reports the "invalid module format" when i run modprobe for it.

Ug.  So, it looks like there is a problem with the ath5k file itself.

Have a super morning!