**10-23-2008** This how to still uses madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-current.tar.gz And has been tested by me and works for (K)Ubuntu 8.0.4.1(both x86-64 and i686) with kernel 2.6.24-21-generic. And once again every one who has problems please re-try the how to.

**09-17-2008** Thanks to Gideon, who told me the links weren’t working any more. This how to now uses madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-current.tar.gz As always this revision has been tested by me and works for (K)Ubuntu 8.0.4.1(both x86-64 and i686) with kernel 2.6.24-19-generic. And once again every one who has problems please re-try the how to.

**09-03-2008** This How to now uses the newest snapshot madwifi-hal-2008-08-15-r3862-20080903.tar.gz. As always this revision has been tested by me and works for (K)Ubuntu 8.0.4.1(both x86-64 and i686) with kernel 2.6.24-19-generic.

**09-01-2008** This How to now uses the newest snapshot madwifi-hal-2008-08-15-r3851-20080829.tar.gz. If you posted a comment to say it isn’t working then please re-run everything. And report back to verify that the solution is now working for you. As always this revision has been tested by me and works for (K)Ubuntu 8.0.4.1 with kernel 2.6.24-19-generic.

This is a revision of my original post using the solution provided by Madwifi it’s been tested by me and it works.

Windows drivers are here

If you own the same laptop as I do, a Toshiba A205-S5825, then you probably have the same problem, if you are using Hardy or Gutsy with the newest Kernel(2.6.24-19-generic) or older, the wireless doesn’t work out of the box.

It cost me about an hour to solve this mainly because no one knew anything about this particular chipset.

So here is the solution for the AR242x. If you have a chipset in the A5700 series then this could work for you too.

The solution is quite simple and only takes you a couple of minutes to apply and then you can use your wireless.

For this How to you do need wired internet to the computer.

Disclaimer:
The Package we’re about to use is as far as I know in beta. Installing this package might make your installation of Kubuntu(or Ubuntu) unstable. I am not responsible for any problems that arise after installing this package. But do feel free to post a comment for help if something doesn’t work right I will respond back and try to work with you to fix it. I am NOT responsible for damage to hardware as a result of applying anything you find on this website.

First let’s make sure your computer uses the same chipset(or something similar) run in terminal:

lspci | grep Atheros

If the result is as follows or something similar then you are able to use this fix.

05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

If the result of the command ran is nothing the you don’t have an Atheros chipset and your read on this page stops here. Please go to the forums on Ubuntu and Kubuntu there is a big community there to help you solve your problem or try Google.

Before we start we need to make sure that already installed modules are not “in use”. Click on the Kubuntu start button go to system and click on the “Hardware Drivers Manager” this is where you will find all proprietary drivers. But we’re looking for everything that has Atheros in it. Tick the box behind of “Atheros Hardware Access Layer(HAL)” and “Support for Atheros 802.11 wireless LAN cards” and restart the computer.

In Terminal go to your desktop:

cd ~/Desktop

Then download the Madwifi driver needed for this How to:

wget -c http://snapshots.madwifi-project.org/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-current.tar.gz

Untar the Image file(don’t worry it will create a new folder):

tar xvf madwifi*.tar.gz

Go into the just created folder:

cd madwifi*r*

Because we are going to compile from source code we need to make sure the essentials to do so are installed.

sudo apt-get update && sudo aptitude install build-essential

Now run:

make

sudo make install

sudo modprobe ath_pci

sudo modprobe wlan_scan_sta

If you get any errors running the modprobe commands you probably forgot to switch off the modules in the first place go back to this and then try modprobe again.

As noted by “TheGreatGonzo” you might have to restart here. Before you can enable the proprietary drivers again.
As noted by “Choval” in case it doesn’t work after a restart:

blacklist ath_hal
(on /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist)
Reboot, and voila… works like a charm =)

Now the same as we did before:
Click on the Kubuntu start button go to system and click on the “Hardware Drivers Manager” this is where you will find all proprietary drivers. But we’re looking for everything that has Atheros in it. Tick the box in behind of “Atheros Hardware Access Layer(HAL)” and “Support for Atheros 802.11 wireless LAN cards” and restart the computer.

Now you have wireless.

Keep in mind that every time the Kernel gets updated you have to run these commands again:

sudo apt-get update && sudo aptitude install build-essential

Now run:

make clean

make

sudo make install

sudo modprobe ath_pci

sudo modprobe wlan_scan_sta

Off course in the madwifi folder. You might want to move the folder to your home folder because we’ll need it again after a Kernel update.

To get your wireless back up that is until they fix the problem in the Kernel and wireless works after restarting with the new Kernel.

Don’t be shy let us know in the comments below if the solution worked or not(in that case I can assist you and get it to work) .

If this page helped you out at all then please donate. Donations will go towards the hosting cost for this website.

Related Posts

• August 10, 2008 -- How to get Atheros AR242x wireless to work. (4)
• August 23, 2008 -- Sound problem fixed. (0)
• November 7, 2008 -- How To Get Atheros AR242x To Work on 8.10 Intrepid Ibex (528)
• August 13, 2008 -- What modules device drivers have got installed (2)
• August 30, 2008 -- fstab demystified how to add partitions and more (0)

Aug 18 2008: This is a The old version and this solution isn’t recommended anymore please use: the solution in my new post it’s been tested by me and it works.

If you own the same laptop as I do, a Toshiba A205-S5825, then you probably have the same problem, if you are using Hardy or Gutsy with the newest Kernel(2.6.24-19-generic) or older, the wireless doesn’t work out of the box.

It cost me about an hour to solve this mainly because no one knew anything about this particular chipset.

So here is the solution for the AR242x. If you have a chipset in the A5700 series then this could work for you too.

The solution is quite simple and only takes you a couple of minutes to apply and then you can use your wireless.

For this How to you do need wired internet to the computer.

Disclaimer:
The Package we’re about to use is as far as I know in beta.  Installing this package might make your installation of Kubuntu(or Ubuntu) unstable.  I am not responsible for any problems that arise after installing this package.  But do feel free to post a comment for help if something doesn’t work right I will respond back and try to work with you to fix it.  I am NOT responsible for damage to hardware as a result of applying anything you find on this website.

First let’s make sure your computer uses the same chipset(or something similar) run in terminal:

lspci | grep Atheros

If the result is as follows or something similar then you are able to use this fix.

05:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

If the result of the command ran is nothing the you don’t have an Atheros chipset and your read on this page stops here. Please go to the forums on Ubuntu and Kubuntu there is a big community there to help you solve your problem or try Google.

Thanks to Ubuntugeek for providing the primer for this post.

Here is the difference between the how to’s:

Before we start we need to make sure that already installed modules are not “in use”. Click on the Kubuntu start button go to system and click on the “Hardware Drivers Manager” this is where you will find all proprietary drivers. But we’re looking for everything that has Atheros in it. Tick the box behind of “Atheros Hardware Access Layer(HAL)” and “Support for Atheros 802.11 wireless LAN cards” and restart the computer.

In Terminal go to your desktop:

cd ~/Desktop

Then download the Madwifi driver needed for this How to:

wget -c http://madberry.org/wp-content/madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar.gz

Untar the Image file(don’t worry it will create a new folder):

tar xvf madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar.gz

Go into the just created dir:

cd madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007

Because we are going to compile from source code we need to make sure the essentials to do so are installed.

sudo apt-get update && sudo aptitude install build-essential

Now run:

sudo make install

sudo modprobe ath_pci

sudo modprobe wlan_scan_sta

If you get any errors running the modprobe commands you probably forgot to switch off the modules in the first place go back to this and then try modprobe again.

Now the same as we did before:
Click on the Kubuntu start button go to system and click on the “Hardware Drivers Manager” this is where you will find all proprietary drivers. But we’re looking for everything that has Atheros in it. Tick the box in behind of “Atheros Hardware Access Layer(HAL)” and “Support for Atheros 802.11 wireless LAN cards” and restart the computer.

Now you have wireless.

Keep in mind that every time the Kernel gets updated you have to run these commands again:

sudo apt-get update && sudo aptitude install build-essential

Now run:

sudo make install

sudo modprobe ath_pci

sudo modprobe wlan_scan_sta

Off course in the madwifi folder. You might want to move the folder to your home folder because we’ll need it again after a Kernel update.

To get your wireless back up that is until they fix the problem in the Kernel and wireless works after restarting with the new Kernel.

If this page helped you out at all then please donate below. Donations will go towards the hosting cost for this website.

Thanks for donating.

Related Posts

• August 19, 2008 -- How to get Atheros AR242x wireless to work. 2 (125)
• August 23, 2008 -- Sound problem fixed. (0)
• August 7, 2008 -- List Devices in Kubuntu. (0)
• April 6, 2009 -- Took The Plunge Jaunty Jackalope Kubuntu 9.04 On Laptop (0)
• November 7, 2008 -- How To Get Atheros AR242x To Work on 8.10 Intrepid Ibex (528)

Our server named “Perniciose” which translates to “Fatal Error” a Latin name from the saying “Non erravi perniciose!” which means in English “I did not commit a fatal error!” but I digress.

Had to be updated from Kubuntu 7.10(Gutsy Gibbon) to 8.04(Hardy Heron) , we use a Desktop on the server because it doubles as our Entertainment PC and is hooked up to the TV and has several HDD’s in it.

This operating system was upgraded from 6.10 to 7.04 to 7.10 and now to 8.04 normally you would read on forums to just do a “clean install” which is why I like to have my /home partition separated from my root partition.  But I like to test stuff and decided to upgrade all of the other machines in the house got a clean install.

The update halted of froze how ever you wanna call it, on setting up locales

After the update I got several “Bad Super block” errors not quite understanding what was going on I tried to restore from a Super block backup elsewhere on the disk that didn’t work.  So now what.

After carefully studying the terminal output in front of me and checking fstab i discovered that the disks now al where SD’s instead of the HD’s in the fstab.

Let me explain a HD(Hard Drive) is a device and is therefore found in the /dev directory, before my first hard drive partition was /dev/hda1. This some how changed to /dev/sda1 and this was the case for all of the hard drives in the server.

Strange but it happened. it my /home partition was also on the list og partitions that weren’t working, but for some reason it did start up from the first hard drive partition and even got to terminal where al the errors where printed(or some say echoed) to the screen.

The solution was quite simple just rename every hard drive partition in fstab.  How ever one of my 160GB disks with a lot of video content on it didn’t wanna cooperate.  Luckely my wife was nice enough a while ago to order a spare 160GB drive which enabled me to copy the contents over to the new drive because the drive after giving a host of errors still mounted.

Ran fsck and that fixed the problem.

Here are all the commands used to fix the problem:

df -h

To find out what is working as expected.

mount

Gives a list of mounted devices.  To see if the device that gives errors is mounted.

sudo fdisk -l

This gives you the list of hard drives in your machine.  And here is where I noticed the problem.

sudo nano /etc/fstab

To fix the problem edit the fstab file.

sudo mount -a

Mounts the drives.

sudo fsck /dev/sdc1

To fix errors on the disk that still gave an error.

Don’t know how to close a text file in nano click here

Related Posts

• August 27, 2008 -- Maximum number of clients reached. (3)
• August 30, 2008 -- fstab demystified how to add partitions and more (0)
• August 19, 2008 -- How to get Atheros AR242x wireless to work. 2 (125)
• August 12, 2008 -- How to partition new hard drives the easy way (0)
• August 12, 2008 -- How to check for disk errors (0)