Wireless not recognized!

[Sissy]

Since the update, Ubuntu doesn't seem to be recognizing my wireless internet setup. I know it's Atheros, but that's about it.

Traditionally, I've been able to connect to the wireless internet by doing the following: If I want to connect to the network "MyNetwork" (for example), I:

* make sure I have

wireless-essid MyNetwork

in my /etc/network/interfaces file

* type

sudo ifup ath0

at the command line

and then, ideally, magic happens, and Linux happily connects to the network for me.

However, since upgrading to 9.04, after I type ifup ath0 I see this error:

Error for wireless request "Set ESSID" (8B1A) :
  SET failed on device ath0 ; No such device.
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.1.1
Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit [url]http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/[/url]

wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
ath0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
ath0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
Bind socket to interface: No such device
Failed to bring up ath0.

I did some googling, and installed madwifi-tools, but that didn't seem to help. I suspect it may have something to do with one of those configuration files which Ubuntu modified during the upgrade...

Can anyone offer a suggestion?

Thanks!

[flarson]

Re: Wireless not recognized!

Change ath0 to wlan0 and try it.

[Sissy]

Re: Wireless not recognized!

Change ath0 to wlan0 and try it.

Thank you. It's at least recognized now, so I assume it's working. (It wouldn't connect, but that may be because the wireless signal here at home is flaky at best. I'll try it again tomorrow at school where I know I can get a good connection.)

However, I did notice that it seems to be quite a bit slower now, and after it's done making all of its attempts at connecting, I see this message:

if-up.d/mountnfs[wlan0]: waiting for interface wifi0 before doing NFS mounts

Is that important?

[flarson]

Re: Wireless not recognized!

Probably. You should look in /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules and see if there is a line there that refers to your atheros adapter and associates it with wifi0. I have not experience with this adapter and just happened to see something about it on the Debian forums today. You can probably find what you need by searching there for atheros.

[Sissy]

Re: Wireless not recognized!

Interesting. There are two lines that seem to refer to the atheros adapter: one is associated with wlan0, and the other, curiously enough, with ath0.

But I'll look in the Debian forums. Thank you for your assistance!

[flarson]

Re: Wireless not recognized!

Does one of them mention wifi0? The purpose of that file is to associate a particular adapter with a particular interface name.

[Sissy]

Re: Wireless not recognized!

Nope, no wifi0. Though, it is mentioned in my /etc/network/interfaces file, if that makes a difference...

[flarson]

Re: Wireless not recognized!

Yes it does. Your interfaces file should configure wlan0. I don't know if you are using WPA or WEP but either of them can be configured in interfaces.

[Sissy]

Re: Wireless not recognized!

OIC. I have no idea which it's using -- I only know that the interfaces file I now have, has worked for a long time.

I have

iface wlan0 inet dhcp

[flarson]

Re: Wireless not recognized!

You don't have anything like
wireless-essid yourssid
wireless-key your_key

or
wpa-ssid yourssid
wpa-psk your_passphrase
?

[Sissy]

Re: Wireless not recognized!

Yes, I have wireless-essid.

Yesterday it seemed to be working, but today (after reboot) I see the same error with ifup that I mentioned in my first post (but with ath0 replaced by wlan0). I'm not sure what happened...

[flarson]

Re: Wireless not recognized!

You should look at this
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.p...t=ath0#p226506
There is some software involved here that I am not familiar with.
You are probably using
atl2-source - Linux Base Driver for the Atheros(R) L2 Fast Ethernet Adapter
hostapd - user space IEEE 802.11 AP and IEEE 802.1X/WPA/WPA2/EAP Authenticator
madwifi-tools - tools for the Multiband Atheros Driver for WiFi
so it will act a little differently than the standard system. Somewhere in /usr/share/doc/package, or using dpkg -L package, you should find some documantation as to how Kubuntu expects this to work.

[Sissy]

Re: Wireless not recognized!

Thanks! I think I've fixed it -- for now

Hopefully I won't manage to break it again.