Aqeel Zafar

Update 2008-09-26: Fixed the link to madwifi package.

In my previous post about Sony Vaio’s hardware compatibility with Linux, I linked to ubuntuforums for a howto of installing Atheros AR5007EG wireless driver. Apparently it is not available any longer, so, I am posting the steps that worked for me.

Note: This howto is for 32bit systems, for 64bit, check this post on ubuntuforums.

First configure the system for compiling madwifi driver (these steps are ubuntu specific).

1. Make sure restricted drivers are disabled by unchecking atheros drivers from System -> Administration -> Hardware Drivers
2. Install necessary packages for compiling, if you don’t have them already. From terminal:
   

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

Now, to actual installation of the driver. These steps should work on any distro, just open the terminal and enter those commands.

1. Get latest snapshot of madwifi from http://snapshot.madwifi.org
   

   wget -c http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-ng-r3366+ar5007.tar.gz
wget -c http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-current.tar.gz


2. Untar the downloaded file
   

   tar zxvf madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-current.tar.gz

3. cd into directory and compile the driver (directory name might be different for you)
   

   cd madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-current
make && sudo make install

4. Load the modules
   

   modprobe ath_pci

You should now be able to view and connect to wireless connections now. If it works fine add “ath_pci” (without quotes) in /etc/modules, so that you don’t have to manually load these files on every boot.

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