Setting up Atheros Wireless cards

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Type: Howto

Written by Dan

Tested on: SUSE 10.1

Further Modifications By: Kamatsu

The Madwifi drivers support Wireless cards based on the Atheros 5210, 5211, 5212 chipsets. Unfortunately, beginning with SUSE 10.1 they were dropped from the distribution because of the presence of closed source code.

However, I was able to download, install, and configure MadWifi for my IBM T40 laptop with the IBM 11a/b/g Wireless Adapter (which has the Atheros AR5212 802.11abg chipset). MadWifi specifically supports Wirless adapters based on the Atheros chipset. You should be able to do the same for other laptops with wireless cards that contain the Atheros chipset.

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Installation

Firstly, ensure that the card is installed correctly in your computer. Then, Install the package wireless-tools from your SUSE CD, DVD, or other SUSE package source. This package is still part of SUSE Linux, as it is not device specific. This has the iwconfig and other commands.

Then, we need to add the madwifi install source:

Start yast2 and select Software-->Installation Source (See Add YaST Sources)

Ensure you add this source: http://madwifi.org/suse/

Then, in Software Mangement, Install packages madwifi and madwifi-kmp-default (the latter has the kernel module, replace default with smp or other non-default kernel package if you're not running the default Suse kernel package as determined by uname -r). These packages are 'not' included with SUSE 10.1, but are downloaded from madwifi.

Then Reboot so the kernel modules can be loaded.

Load the kernel modules by hand and see if the kernel recognizes your hardware, by typing the following: 

$ su
<enter root password>
# modprobe aes
# modprobe wlan_ccmp
# modprobe ath_pci
# lsmod |egrep 'Module|aes|wlan|ath
# ifup ath0

Here's my lsmod output: 

Module                  Size  Used by
wlan_tkip              11520  0
wlan_scan_sta          11776  1
ath_pci                81316  0
ath_rate_sample        11008  1 ath_pci
ath_hal               191312  3 ath_pci,ath_rate_sample
wlan_ccmp               7808  0 
wlan                  164956  6 wlan_tkip,wlan_scan_sta,ath_pci,
                                ath_rate_sample,wlan_ccmp


Modules wlan_ccmp and ath_pci are provided by madwifi-kmp-*. Module aes provides AES encryption algorithms for WPA encryption

If recognized, add these lines in your /etc/init.d/boot.local file (the file may not exist), by typing: 

$ su
<enter root password>
# depmod
# modprobe aes
# modprobe wlan_ccmp
# modprobe ath_pci
# depmod
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Configuration

Start yast2 and go to Network Devices-->Network Card and add and configure your wireless card. I recommmend checking the "Network Manager" box, as that allows dynamic GUI control over the wireless and Ethernet NICs. At the time of writing, WEP encryption was broken, so if you wish to use encryption, use WPA-PSK


If you have WPA-PSK enabled, here's the fields to fill out. For no encryption, simply have open/shared auth mode, and no passphrase:

    • "User Controlled" device activation
    • DHCP Automatic Address Setup
    • "Managed" operating mode
    • "any" ESSID
    • "WPA-PSK" auth mode
    • key input type "passphrase" and I typed in my passphrase.
    • leave expert settings alone


Your ifconfig -a output should look like this (or something similar) 

ath0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:14:A4:34:CA:71
          inet addr:10.0.0.101  Bcast:10.0.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::214:a4ff:fe34:ca71/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:183 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:291 errors:10 dropped:10 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:23265 (22.7 Kb)  TX bytes:27367 (26.7 Kb)
lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:858 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:858 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:71025 (69.3 Kb)  TX bytes:71025 (69.3 Kb)
wifi0     Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-14-A4-34-CA-71-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:14664 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:1089
          TX packets:1152 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:199
          RX bytes:1608213 (1.5 Mb)  TX bytes:80529 (78.6 Kb)
          Interrupt:11 Memory:f8c80000-f8c90000


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See also

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