Atheros Wireless Works Perfectly in Ubuntu 8.10
November 5, 2008 | Filed under: IT | Author: armandI have installed ubuntu 8.10 several days ago. There was a problem when I was trying to view the list of installed network interfaces on my notebook. When I’m opening System > Administration > Hardware Drivers, Support for Atheros 802.11 wireless LAN cards is installed and is being used. But I can’t find it under System > Administration > Network Tools. I think that this is a common problem and many ubuntu users have the same problem.
After some browsing and trials then I found that I could use the original Atheros wireless drivers that was supplied for Windows. The file name should be 5211.inf and could be found at Atheros Wireless driver’s directory or CD.
In order to have the driver installed, we need to install ndiswrapper first. We can easily doing this by using Synaptic Package Manager (System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager).
After ndiswrapper is installed then we can now install the Atheros wireless driver, by accessing System > Administration > Windows Wireless Drivers. Just pick the “Install New Driver” and locate the 5211.inf file, and that’s it, now we can see Atheros wireless device is on the list (System > Administration > Network Tools).
Wireless Network Drivers
To make sure that the drivers has been successfully installed, we can type this command in Terminal:
armand@ubuntu:~$ ndiswrapper -l
net5211 : driver installed
device (168C:001A) present (alternate driver: ath_pci)
armand@ubuntu:~$
Got it, the driver has been installed and there’s alternate driver (ath_pci), this is default driver that came with ubuntu installation, we should black list this driver so we can set our newly installed driver as default:
armand@ubuntu:~$ sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-common
and add the following line:
blacklist ath_pci
Atheros wireless is now recognized as wlan0 on my notebook and I can use it from now on without any problems. I can always activate it by typing this command:
sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
Ubuntu will always be fun 
November 11th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Wew, last year I try to use Backtrack 2, and very confuse to activate my wireless hardware. After success to acivate it, I change to Windows again, cause my office is not Linux supported.
sapimotos last blog post..Penghasilan Dari Internet Tidak Mudah
November 11th, 2008 at 6:06 pm
I have also used backtrack, it’s so powerful in networking because we can get all the tools
November 12th, 2008 at 10:56 am
Yup, backtrack is very powerfull for networking use.
Maybe later, I will try to use it again.
sapimotos last blog post..Latihan SEO Untuk Pemula