Re: where is ath9k?
On Monday 18 August 2008, Wayne Topa wrote:
> Jonathan Kaye wrote:
> > Hi all,
> > I'm trying to set up a wifi driver on an Acer Aspire 3500 running Debian
> > Lenny 2.6.25 with a 802.11b/g wlan. I did some heavy-duty googling and
> > found the madwifi website which then said that Atheros had taken over the
> > drivers and released the code. It seems I need an ath9k driver and that I
> > get it from atheros. This led me to the Linux Wireless website. I found a
> > link to the ath9k driver here:
> > http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k#Getthecode
> > The link on the above page is:
> > http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Download
> > and of course that link is broken. Aaarggghhh.
> > I then followed this link
> > http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Download
> > and found the compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2 tarball. I got the latest
> > version which (I think) was 6 August 2008. I followed the instructions
> > and built the drivers but no ath9k! aaarrggghhhh.
> > I loaded the drivers per the instructions and there is mac80211 and ath5k
> > but no ath9k.
> > At this link
> > http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k
> > I found the following instructions:
> > Enabling ath9k
> > To enable ath9k, you must first enable mac80211:
> > I'm not sure what "enable" means in this context but I modprobed mac80211
> > and it shows up in the lsmod list. Next came the very cryptic
> > instructions: Networking --->
> > Wireless --->
> > <M> Improved wireless configuration API
> > <M> Generic IEEE 802.11 Networking Stack (mac80211)
> > This seems to involve some sort of software but I haven't a clue what it
> > wants me to do. I am in a hopeless muddle now.
> >
> > Can anyone give me some hints here.
>
> ath9K?
>
> I think you may have been misled. In the kernel config for kernel
> 2.6.25-{2-3), there is a module called ath5k for the latest version of
> of madwifi.
>
> From what I've read it does bring the interface us but people have not
> been able to associate with an AP yet.
>
> I have not tried it yet myself due to other more pressing problems.
>
> Wayne
ath9k is for the 802.11n chips, ath5k for the a/b/g chips. ath9k is newer
than ath5k. Both are now lead by people from Atheros (they employed
the people who were leading the ath5k team) and both are incomplete and
are under heavy development. I would suggest that you wait a couple of
kernel iterations before trying either of them for production use, and if you
can (i.e. you do not have an 11n chip) use madwifi for now.
Obviously in the long term as both ath?k drivers are entirely open source
rather than relying on a closed HAL they are preferable to madwifi.
David
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