How To Get Atheros AR242x To Work on 8.10 Intrepid Ibex

Updates

**02-24-2009** Instructions for fix after update to kernel 2.6.27-11-generic below.  This how to uses compat-wireless-2009-02-24.tar.bz2. It was tested on (K)Ubuntu 8.10 KDE 4.1.2. Kernel version 2.6.27-7-generic & 2.6.27-9-generic

For instructions on getting the AR242x to work on 8.04 click here.

Introduction

You could see this as part 3 in the series: How To Get Atheros AR242x Wireless To Work
It’s with disappointment that I have to report the following:

I started with a fresh install of Kubuntu 8.10, the reason for this is simple I wanted to make sure that nobody could say “you should have done a clean install”. On a clean install out of the box the AR242x doesn’t work.

What I Tried First

So I started to search for solutions. There a several solutions out there here is a quick list:

The last option worked the best for me so that is what I’ll go with for this how to. Let me clarify that ath_hal, ath5k and ath9k are all developed by madwifi so props to them for doing such a great job of developing the drivers that make wireless for the AR242x work under Linux.

cpufreq-set great little tool to change the frequency scalling of the CPU

If you have a laptop then you already know about frequency scaling. If you ever watched you CPU frequency while you plugged you laptop in to the wall socket. Guidance will pop-up when the laptop is plugged in telling you that you laptop is now in “performance” mode.

Why do you need CPU scaling?
Scaling in a laptop is used to conserve battery power when on battery power. How ever on a regular desktop you will find CPU scaling is on as well, why you might ask? On a desktop it’s a noise thing lowering the CPU frequency reduces heat and therefore reduces the fan speed needed to cool the CPU.

However I happen to like to have my desktop run in “performance” mode all the time, with the case that I have the increase of noise from the CPU fan is hardly noticeable because of the great noise canceling isolation in the case.

Sound problem fixed.

As said I have a A205-S5825 Toshiba Laptop, and I was surprised when sound worked out of the box but dmix didn’t. Haven’t been able to find why but today I had some extra time and I finally fixed it.

Description of the problem:

Normally ALSA(Advanced Linux Sound Architecture) will install Dmix out of the box and it will work right away in this case for some reason it didn’t. Possibly because of an issue during installation of the OS.

Missing adept_notifier(the update notifier)?

For some reason my adept_notifier disappeared I really don’t know why must have clicked on something and quite the wrong icon or something.

Adept_notifier is the program that makes the update icon appear in your taskbar. Getting the icon back is not as hard as you would think.

All you have to run(yes in Terminal start->system->Terminal) is:

adept_notifier

The when asked if you want to start adept_notifier automatically answer yes.
that’s it.

.deb dpkg unmet dependencies and how to fix this.

“Mini How To” .deb dpkg unmet dependencies and how to fix this.

Sometimes when you download a .deb(Debian Package file) of an package that you would like to install it will give you the “dependencies not met” error. This could happen when you use dpkg, Gdebi Package Manager or apt.

The solution to this is make sure that the version of the package you downloading is the newest version you can find. If this is the case then run this command:

sudo apt-get -f install

This will force apt to fix the broken dependencies.