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Atheros AR 5007 EG on openSUSE 11.0

July 14th, 2008 by

openSUSE 11.0 failed detect this hardware and wrong identifying the device as AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter. I usually uses madwifi driver for Atheros chipset instead of ath5k but the standard madwifi driver could not be applied for the device. After Googling for a while, I could make it works with the special AR 5007 EG madwifi driver, http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar.gz.

How to make it works ?

  1. Disable or blacklist ath5k driver by add the blacklist ath5k to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
  2. Open konsole or terminal
  3. Install the driver
  4. su
    zypper in kernel-source make gcc gcc-c++
    wget -c http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar.gz
    tar -zxvf madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar.gz
    cd madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007
    make
    make install
    modprobe ath_pci
    reboot

After reboot, you should be configure the wifi from YAST | Network Devices | Network Settings

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16 Responses to “Atheros AR 5007 EG on openSUSE 11.0”

  1. dni

    It worked before I rebooted…
    After the reboot, can not get it to work any longer.

  2. Ben Cook2

    there is a build service repo available ( its for the eeepc which has the ar5007eg wireless )

    http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:etrash:eeePC/openSUSE_11.0

    if you don’t feel like a eeepc wifi driver then heres a generic version:

    http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/home:schmolle1980/openSUSE_11.0

    Just ensure you pick the madwifi-r3725+AR5007EG ( works ) package it provides not madwifi-trunk+r3717 ( won’t work )

    i am using the eeepc version and it works fine, just make sure to override the automatically suggested alsa-driver package to not install, who knows what it will do to your sound ( if you use the eeepc repo ).

    a more happier opensuse user

  3. furrito

    I was able to get my AR5007EG running on suse 11.0 64-bit using the exact same steps, but instead using (what appears to be) the latest patched madwifi drivers.

    Just replace step:

    wget -c http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar.gz

    With this:

    wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3772-20080716.tar.gz

    untar, make, make install, etc. It even worked after reboot. Just make sure you have ‘ath_pci’ listed as the module name in Network settings. I’m using an Acer Aspire 5520 laptop if that helps any.

    • gavinto

      Hi there,

      I tried the method that furrito suggests for my 64 bit Asus a7k. When I try to edit the wireless card in yast, I am prevented from editing or deleting the detected AR242x802.11abg entry. I wonder if this is a problem where the machine thinks my card is a 5006EG when it really is a 5007EG. I seem to recall this mentioned by OldCPU in the forums, but don’t recall if it was for 11 or 10.3.

      I did indeed put ath5k in my modprobe.d/blacklist, and I did “modprobe ath_pci” before rebooting

      After startup when I type dmesg |grep ath5k, I still get
      ath5k_pci 0000:07:00.0: registered as ‘phy0’
      ath5k phy0: failed to resume the MAC Chip
      ath5k_pci: probe of 0000:07:00.0 failed with error -5

      and I get nothing when i type dmesg |grep ath_pci

      Thanks in advance for anyones help with this!

      btw feel free to move this discussion to a forum if you wish.

  4. furrito

    Sounds like everything is being done properly. I have seen that ‘phy0’ come up before, even on other distributions. I think that may be coming from a kernel update, but I’m not sure at all.

    Here is a link that helped me out a lot. It focuses more on Fedora and Ubuntu, but it can be applied to Suse as well.

    http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/rhwireless.html#5007

  5. Leander89

    I’m having the exact same problem.

    I also put ath5k in my modprobe.d/blacklist, and I also entered “modprobe ath_pci”

    After startup when I type dmesg |grep ath5k, I still get
    ath5k_pci 0000:07:00.0: registered as ‘phy0′
    ath5k phy0: failed to resume the MAC Chip
    ath5k_pci: probe of 0000:07:00.0 failed with error -5

    dmesg |grep HAL
    MadWifi: unable to attach hardware: ‘Hardware didn’t respond as expected’ (HAL status 3)

    I don’t get why it is loaded when I boot, because I really thought that blacklisting ath5k would
    prevent it from loading, it looks like my computer just ignores the blacklist.

    I’m not running suse, but I’m running Gentoo.
    I’ve opened a thread under “networking & security”, but no one is responding.

    Any other way to completely remove the ath5k driver??

    The site of madwifi says HAL status 3 means that ath5k and madwifi are both running.

  6. furrito

    To remove ath5k I used the command ‘rmmod ath5k’
    The I entered ‘modprobe ath_pci’ to prevent it from being loaded at boot time.
    I ran these commands as root and rebooted.

  7. furrito

    Whoah, correction. modprobe ath_pci installs the driver, it doesn’t blacklist it. My bad.
    (must not post on lack of sleep:)

    • gavinto

      Hiya again,

      after the kernel update I blew away the previously installed version (make uninstall &make clean)

      I then installed madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3835-20080801

      Tried blacklist +modprobe ath_pci reboot then rmmod ath5k modprobe ath_pci

      Alas, still not much luck

      dmesg |grep HAL
      dmesg |grep ath_pci
      dmesg |grep ath5k
      ath5k_pci 0000:07:00.0: registered as ‘phy0’
      ath5k phy0: failed to resume the MAC Chip
      ath5k_pci: probe of 0000:07:00.0 failed with error -5
      ifconfig wlan0 up
      wlan0: unknown interface: No such device

  8. furrito

    It sounds like ath5k won’t go away no matter what you do.

    One sure-fire way to kill it is to reinstall opensuse and enter ‘brokenmodules=ath5k’ (without the quotes) on the boot line parameter; that way ath5k will never install to begin with.

    Otherwise, I would use the rmmod command before attempting anything else. Maybe try rmmod ath5k, rmmod ath5k_pci, rmmod phy0, then blacklist all of them, reboot, make sure no ath5k loads up, then install madwifi. Then…

    modprobe ath_pci
    ifconfig ath0 up
    iwlist ath0 scan

    wlan0 is usually ndiswrapper and that should not be there. remove any trace of ndiswrapper and use ath0 for madwifi.

    • gavinto

      Almost there! I did as you suggested and I now get ath0 up. Now I just need to connect to my WPA passworded wireless router. I can see all the neighbours networks on Knetworkmanager. I’ve configured mine to connect to the home router and it looks like it gets 80-90% there but fails somehow. Any known WPA problems with madwifi?

      Cheers and thanks alot for all your help with this. So much appreciated

      gavinto

  9. I use WPA2 and madwifi with no problems.:)

    • gavinto

      I know its been awhile since I commented on this. I needed a full day so I could play with the router and not affect the rest of the clan in the house. I now appear to have wireless working. Problem was that the router had MAC ID filtering and I didn’t realize that the wireless card had a different MAC ID. learned something today!

      Thanks for all your help. Perhaps the note about MAC ID is worthy of including in a troubleshooting support database faq? Not sure who maintains that particular one, but perhaps someone could pass it on for me?

      Thanks again

  10. Theo

    I have installed Suse 11 and I’m completly new to Linux, I wanted to install the driver but at the command make I get an error that the command is not recognized. I’m doing something wrong but what (I was inside the madwifi directory, unpacked the tar.gz, and I using the terminal)????
    Is there someone who can help

    • Masim "Vavai" Sugianto

      Hi Theo,

      Install build-essential package before compiling the driver by run this command :

      zypper in kernel-source gcc gcc-c++ make

  11. West

    I have tried this and it worked for me with the previous kernel. However, when I updated the kernel yesterday, and recompiled madwifi, I can not configure the connection via Network Manager with error “unable to configure network card because the kernel device is not present”. If anyone has any suggestions it would be greatly appreciated.