The Wi-Fi card in my new ASUS laptop is an Atheros 5007EG, and unlike Intel’s Wi-Fi cards, it doesn’t seem to work “out of the box” with any Linux distros 😦 You’d think MadWifi tools would fix it, right? That’s what I assumed too, until I tried it. I found tons of success stories online about MadWifi working with Atheros 5006 cards, but the 5007EG is pretty new and doesn’t seem to play nice with MadWifi yet.
After typing sudo iwconfig in the Terminal, here’s what I got…
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
So, I decided to try another route; using the Windows driver with “ndiswrapper.” After a few hours of tinkering ;), I got the Wi-Fi up and running 😀 The first thing that hit me was, “I’ve got to blog this so no one else wastes time figuring out how to get Atheros 5007 working on Linux!” 🙂
Here’s how I got the Atheros 5007EG working on Ubuntu. I’m also planning to write up a post for Slackware once I get some free time to test it out 😀 Alright, here’s what I did.
First, go to System >> Administration >> Restricted Drivers Manager, disable HAL, and then reboot.
Next, install ndiswrapper from Synaptic. You’ll need these three packages:
ndisgtk
ndiswrapper-common
ndiswrapper-utils-1.9
Once ndiswrapper is installed, you’ll need the Windows driver for your Wi-Fi card. I had the Atheros 5007EG driver on a DVD that came with my laptop, but if you don’t have it, you can grab the right one from the Atheros website at http://www.atheros.cz/.
Open the Terminal, navigate to the folder with your Windows driver (the .inf file) for your Atheros card, and type:
ndiswrapper -i xxx.inf (replace “xxx” with the name of your .inf file).
Now, blacklist ath_pci. Type gksu gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist in the Terminal.
Add this line to the end of the file:
blacklist ath_pci
Then type ndiswrapper -l to list the installed drivers. If it’s working, you should see something like this:
net5211 : driver installed
device (168C:001C) present (alternate driver: ath_pci)
Run these commands in the Terminal, one after the other:
sudo depmod -a
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
sudo ndiswrapper -m
Then type gksudo gedit /etc/modules, add ndiswrapper to the end of the file, and save it.
That’s it, folks! 😀 Reboot your machine, and you can check if the Wi-Fi’s working (spoiler: it is!) by typing sudo iwconfig in the Terminal. Here’s what I got after the process:
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
ath0 IEEE 802.11g ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:54 Mb/s
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
Alright, have fun! Feel free to let me know if you run into any issues or if anything in this post isn’t clear.
~SeeJay
SeeJay Online! 
no idea what this post is, but u have been tagged 😛 .oh and sorry for tagging u 😉
Thanks a lot for the post. As a linux novice i would have never been able to install the card without this post.
Thanks for the post.. Im having problems though.. I followed your instructions and the driver was added to the wireless networks driver gui of ndiswrapperand it says there is hardware present.. however im still not getting any wireless..$ iwconfiglo no wireless extensions.eth0 no wireless extensions.Any suggestions?
hi thanks for leaving the info, but i’m not sure what you by ‘add ndiswrapper to the end of the file and save it.’can you explain that part? it’s right at the end so im kind of worried about trying this when i don’t get the last part. 😦 thanksk.
@Drew Whitewhen you type gksudo gedit /etc/modules the file /etc/modules will be opened for editing. all you have to do is insert the word ndiswrapper in a new line at the bottom and save the file.Here’s how my /etc/modules file look like##################################### /etc/modules: kernel modules to load at boot time.## This file contains the names of kernel modules that should be loaded# at boot time, one per line. Lines beginning with “#” are ignored.fuselpndiswrapper
Thanks for posting this dood, I was looking for a solution to this problem. I have slackware so I’ll let you know in a comment if I have the same results that you had with Slowbuntu
In the end I couldn’t get ndiswrapper to work properly with my atheros 5007eg in slackware 12.2.I recommend that anyone with the above setup use the this snapshot of the madwifi driver:http://snapshots.madwifi-project.org…0090116.tar.gzand make sure that you black list your ath5k driver.
@Jeffrey@AnonymousGuys I’m using slackware 12.2 and it recognizes the wireless chipset automatically. No need to use ndiswrapper anymore. I don’t see any good GUI tools to connect to wireless networks so I use the command line to scan and connect to my networks. And I kinda like it than the gui apps so didn’t bother finding anything else 🙂
It works for me too. Thanks a lot.
@seejay:Try wicd. Easy GUI tool.Me Slack 12.2 as well with atheros driver (no madwifi; no ndiswrapper). No issues. (Recommend get Robby Workman’s wicd from Slackbuilds.org).Cheers. N.
hello seejay,do you have such a nice description how to unlock the huawei e160 as you have for the e220?hope to hear from you!Horst
ya this is what i get when i check it with ( sudo iwconfig ) lo no wireless extensions.eth0 no wireless extensions.pan0 no wireless extensions.and i already blcklisted it like this at the end…right??# This file lists those modules which we don’t want to be loaded by# alias expansion, usually so some other driver will be loaded for the# device instead.# evbug is a debug tool that should be loaded explicitlyblacklist evbug# these drivers are very simple, the HID drivers are usually preferredblacklist usbmouseblacklist usbkbd# replaced by e100blacklist eepro100# replaced by tulipblacklist de4x5# causes no end of confusion by creating unexpected network interfacesblacklist eth1394# snd_intel8x0m can interfere with snd_intel8x0, doesn’t seem to support much# hardware on its own (Ubuntu bug #2011, #6810)blacklist snd_intel8x0m# Conflicts with dvb driver (which is better for handling this device)blacklist snd_aw2# causes failure to suspend on HP compaq nc6000 (Ubuntu: #10306)blacklist i2c_i801# replaced by p54pciblacklist prism54# replaced by b43 and ssb.blacklist bcm43xx# most apps now use garmin usb driver directly (Ubuntu: #114565)blacklist garmin_gps# replaced by asus-laptop (Ubuntu: #184721)blacklist asus_acpi# low-quality, just noise when being used for sound playback, causes# hangs at desktop session start (Ubuntu: #246969)blacklist snd_pcspblacklist ath_pci
macho can u unlock huawei e1550?
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