# [solved] Wireless Internet with ath5k driver

## Duncan_L

Howdy folks. I've been trying to get wireless internet on my Acer Aspire One. I've been trying for a good time now and trying to follow the gentoo networking guide as well as the gentoo wiki page on the Acer Aspire One but I'm still coming up short.

The root of my troubles seems to be that when I run 

ifconfig wlan0 up

I get the marvelous output

SIOCSIFFLAGS: Unknown error 132

For what I can tell from google.. it seems like this happens when ifconfig is just unable to make wlan0 do anything. I'm guessing this is because I'm missing a driver or something...

lspci tells me:

03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)

Soo I've been trying to figure out how to install the Ath5k driver which seems to be the one that goes with my wireless card.

Unfortunately I'm sort of n00b at this installing drivers and modules and whatnot.... and, after surveying google, it seems like too elementary of an issue to have a posted solution anywhere.

So if anyone can help me out at least by telling me how to go about installing the ath5k wireless driver that would be helpful. I'm guessing it has something to do with rrmod or modprobe or something like that but I don't really know.

And any other advice on getting Wireless for my Acer Aspire One working would be much appreciated as well.

Thanks!Last edited by Duncan_L on Tue Aug 03, 2010 10:26 am; edited 1 time in total

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## DawgG

of course, for wireless to work you have to enable all the relevant kernel options and boot that kernel first. you can check that by cd-ing into you kernel-directory  (usually /usr/src/linux) and looking for the relevant stuff in the file .config eg 

```
grep -E 'wireless|ath5k' .config
```

if you decide to use the wireless stuff as modules, those have to be loaded first (check with 

```
lsmod
```

)

then you configure the wireless layer with 

```
iwconfig
```

 (running it w/out parameter will show you all available wireless devices, if you don't get any, you have probably missed an option or module.

when the wireless stuff is configured correctly, you use ifconfig (or whatever) to put the tcp/ip-layer on top of it.

(in some rare cases it can be necessary to issue an 

```
ifconfig <WLANIF> up
```

 before the iwconfig-stuff because the iterface will not "wake up" w/out that, but i think that's mainly with realtek-usb-ifs.)

GOOD LUCK!

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## Duncan_L

Well I have done most of that I've got the kernel squared away I think.. I had to recompile it and enable a few more things and then restart to boot it and all that but it seems to have done something..

Here's an excerpt from my /usr/src/linux/.config

CONFIG_ATH_COMMON=m

CONFIG_ATH_DEBUG=y

CONFIG_ATH5K=m

CONFIG_ATH5K_DEBUG=y

So yeah I hope that's good. I have actually loaded the ath5k module it seems because it appears in lsmod:

ath5k                 105884  0 

ath                     6994  1 ath5k

Unfortunately that didn't really seem to change much. But something changed!..

Here's my iwconfig output:

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

sit0      no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bg  ESSID:"MySSID"  

          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.447 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated   

          Tx-Power=20 dBm   

          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off

          Encryption key:off

          Power Management:off

ifconfig wlan0 gives this:

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:23:4d:05:e8:20  

          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 

          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

So that looks not too bad because at least it's kind of recognizing stuff... but I'm still not getting connected. When I do /etc/init.d/net.wlan0 start I get all this nonsense:

 * Starting wlan0

SIOCSIFFLAGS: Unknown error 132

SIOCSIFFLAGS: Unknown error 132

 *   Starting wpa_supplicant on wlan0 ...

ioctl[PRISM2_IOCTL_PRISM2_PARAM]: Operation not supported

ioctl[PRISM2_IOCTL_PRISM2_PARAM]: Operation not supported

ioctl[PRISM2_IOCTL_HOSTAPD]: Operation not supported

Failed to set encryption.

ioctl[PRISM2_IOCTL_HOSTAPD]: Operation not supported

Failed to set encryption.

ioctl[PRISM2_IOCTL_HOSTAPD]: Operation not supported

Failed to set encryption.

ioctl[PRISM2_IOCTL_HOSTAPD]: Operation not supported

Failed to set encryption.

ioctl[PRISM2_IOCTL_PRISM2_PARAM]: Operation not supported

ioctl[PRISM2_IOCTL_PRISM2_PARAM]: Operation not supported                              [ ok ]

 *   Starting wpa_cli on wlan0 ...                                                     [ ok ]

 *     Backgrounding ...

...HOWEVER One thing that does seem to have changed is when I go ifconfig wlan0 up it doesn't give me that error. So that's a little peculiar... but I still am not getting connected.

Any advice?

thanks!

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## idella4

I have a wireless card that uses ath5k too.  I tinkered with centos for a while.

From the centos forum, I got this link which runs through using wpa_supplicant which you've got.

I also had that odd SCIOSFF... error come up too, I forget just what made it disappear.

Anyway, gentoo wiki has a wpa_supplicant guide if  you look here, and  here for a centos/fedora guide which worked just right.

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## Duncan_L

I don't know what to say... but it kind of magically started working.

All I actually did was go 

iwlist wlan0 scanning

and that  command somehow made my wireless work.

Thanks for providing that little guide which gave me the iwlist command, that was helpful. 

For any future readers I guess all I can suggest is getting everything in your kernel worked out and loaded (it worked best for me to use Modules instead of Built In but i don't really know)... cuz that seemed to solve some problems..

Well thanks guys idk if I would really say this was solved but at least I got wireless working somehow so I'm happy! Haha, thanks again!

PS i'm actually still getting the SIOCSIFFLAGS: Unknown error 132 error but my wireless is working so idk what to say about that.

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## idella4

Duncan_L

the SIOCSIFFLAGS is associated with rfkill, which you find is a setting in the kernel.

If you google it, you'll find fixes that instruct to use rfkill unblock all and rfkill block all to clear it.

I think the overall fix is to unset rfkill option in the kernel to dispell it.

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