How to turn on Wireless in Ubuntu

[jli127]

I installed the 64bit version of the Ubuntu 8.04 on my T500.
Everything seemed fine except I cannot turn on the wireless.
When I hit Fn+F5 it just turns the bluetooth on and off.
Not the wireless. 'iwconfig' shows nothing there.

The Wireless controler is AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01). I compiled 'madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3861-20080903' driver.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

[unamed]

I installed the 64bit version of the Ubuntu 8.04 on my T500.
Everything seemed fine except I cannot turn on the wireless.
When I hit Fn+F5 it just turns the bluetooth on and off.
Not the wireless. 'iwconfig' shows nothing there.

The Wireless controler is AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01). I compiled 'madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3861-20080903' driver.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

I'm not completely sure about it, but I think we need kernel 2.6.26 or above to have support for intel 5000 wireless family adapters.

Tomorrow (yes, tomorrow!), version 8.10 will be available, with new kernel (I think 2.6.27 but I'm not sure about it), so it will be supported.

I wanted debian lenny or opensuse 11.1, but debian seems it remains long time to be stable, and for opensuse it remains 49 days for stable release.

So I will have to install ubuntu

Hope it helps!

[wswartzendruber]

Intel Wi-Fi Link 5000 series support started with Linux 2.6.27.

[kingweb]

Just out of curiosity (I am using vista), what drivers are you Linux guys using for all the hardware?
Is it the same set of windows drivers?
If not, where do you get the drivers from?

[tylerwylie]

He has an Atheros card, and in 2.6.27 ath9k is available

[Afty]

Just out of curiosity (I am using vista), what drivers are you Linux guys using for all the hardware?
Is it the same set of windows drivers?
If not, where do you get the drivers from?

Linux drivers usually come with the Linux distribution, though you can sometimes find them from the vendor's website. But generally you want to use the ones from your Linux distribution unless you have no other choice.

I was playing around with Ubuntu 8.10, and it works with my T400's Intel Wifi Link 5100 card out of the box.

[carbon_unit]

I installed the 64bit version of the Ubuntu 8.04 on my T500.
Everything seemed fine except I cannot turn on the wireless.
When I hit Fn+F5 it just turns the bluetooth on and off.
Not the wireless. 'iwconfig' shows nothing there.

The Wireless controler is AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01). I compiled 'madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3861-20080903' driver.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

My suggestion, Try the 32bit version.

[wswartzendruber]

I installed the 64bit version of the Ubuntu 8.04 on my T500.
Everything seemed fine except I cannot turn on the wireless.
When I hit Fn+F5 it just turns the bluetooth on and off.
Not the wireless. 'iwconfig' shows nothing there.

The Wireless controler is AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01). I compiled 'madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3861-20080903' driver.

Any suggestions? Thanks in advance.

My suggestion, Try the 32bit version.

I'm curious as to why that would fix it.

[tylerwylie]

My suggestion, Try the 32bit version.

I'm curious as to why that would fix it.

It won't.

Are you using ath5k driver, or ath9k or ath_pci?

You can find that out by running this:

sudo lsmod | grep ath

[carbon_unit]

I'm curious as to why that would fix it.

It won't.

OK, then don't try it.
My suggestion was based on the fact that in general people have more trouble with the 64bit version than with the 32bit version. Many times going to the 32bit version resolves these little problems.
Please continue to hash this one out.

[jli127]

Thanks for all suggestions.

The wireless is working now. It seems the driver is correct, but the OS has some problems.

Here is what happened. I checked dmesg, there are errors about wireless driver, like:
[ 23.961440] wifi%d: unable to attach hardware: 'Hardware revision not supported' (HAL status 13)
So I installed another driver, then reboot; the Ubuntu suddenly cannot boot, stuck at the last portion of the progress bar. Then I reboot it in recovery mode, and did update again, uninstall all related drivers, and install the 'madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3861-20080903' driver again. Then reboot it in normal mode. Suppressingly, the wireless is working, but the light is off. Fn+F5 still only turn on/off Wireless.

I guess it's OS' problem. I will try the 8.10 version shortly.