Ubuntu Linux Question

Ubuntu Linux Question

I've installed Ubuntu Linux 8.04 on an older Compaq NC6000 notebook. Everything is working extremely well except for one problem: the Atheros wireless interface doesn't seem to be working--and I know that I am not the only person having problems with this! This particular chipset, according to lspci, is the AR5212/5213 Multiprotocol MAC/baseband processor (rev 01). From the Network Tools application, I can ping my router just fine. From a terminal window, ifconfig ath0 shows no packets sent or received, no collisions, no errors--almost like nothing is being routed to it.

I suspect that part of the problem is the routing table. It has been some years since I fiddled with this stuff, and I am having a little trouble remembering how this works--and Google any combination of the words in question, and you will see that:

1. I am not alone on this.

2. There is a vast sea of possible pages to read.

The route command lets you add a default route, which controls to which interface to send packets that haven't matched up to any of the entries in the route table. So is the proper sequence to add the wired Ethernet interface, then the wireless interface, then the default interface?

UPDATE: Hmmm. Running dhclient ath0 ought to get an IP address from the DHCP server on the router--but no such luck. It it is broadcasting the DHCPDISCOVER request (which is supposed to be rebroadcast by everyone else in this subnet), but no one is responding. Since other wireless cards are successfully getting DHCP to respond, as is the wired Ethernet interface on this box, it makes me suspect that the wireless card isn't successfully broadcasting.

UPDATE 2: The Network Tools utility claims that I can ping through the wireless interface, but when I run ping -I ath0 192.168.1.1, which pings through the wireless interface--ping never gets a response. It is entirely possible that the Ubuntu 8.04 driver is non-functional on this.

UPDATE 3: Thanks for all the good suggestions. I did a reinstall so that I could use some of the suggestions that I received--and for some odd reason, the wireless interface is now working perfectly! I did make sure to run the Update Manager and make sure everything was up to date (which I thought I did on the first install). In any case, I'm blogging from the family room, so the wireless interface is working.