Guide: Atheros ar5007 wifi cards in freebsd7

[Dazhelpwiz]

A friend recently bought a new laptop with an atheros ar5007 card in it; which FreeBSD 7 couldnt see at all. (these drivers probably in -current, I havent checked)

I came across this page (http://nighthack.org/wiki/EeeBSD) (after some time of searching)
This was the closest thing I found and it worked straight away so heres the short and relevent info:
You NEED the src code for FreeBSD.

The Atheros card which would normally be supported by FreeBSD's ath driver, except that the HAL in the stock driver does not support PCIe

download this patched copy of MadWifi, which does have support for the wireless card: http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar.gz

Decompress the tarball and then run the following as root:

#cd madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007/hal
#cp -R * /usr/src/sys/contrib/dev/ath/

Recompile your kernel, and reboot. When the system comes up, you should have wireless networking. The NIC will show up as ath0.

* Important warning: DO NOT USE Fn+F2 ONCE THE WIRELESS CARD DRIVER IS LOADED! Fn+F2 will do what it says (toggle power to the wireless card), but the driver does not know how to handle this state and will get rather angry at you if the wireless card disappears.

[scottro]

That card has been problematic in Linux as well as FreeBSD. Sam Leffler recently came out with something that now enables it work in 64 bit with Linux.

Additionally, the build that you mention, the 2756 stopped working with some later Linux kernels--Sam's newest fixed that too.

If anyone needs to get that one going on Linux, as me. I would actually try the later version of the HAL, from that very latest patched snapshot (around post 220 or so in that ticket 1679.
(Latest snapshot, with 64 bit and later Linux kernel support is at
http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3698-20080604.tar.gz)

If anyone has the ASUS give it a try and see if it works. The 2566 one is from last November.

Lastly, if anyone is trying to get that card working with Linux (not FreeBSD)
http://home.nyc.rr.com/computertaijutsu/rhwireless.html#5007

[Dazhelpwiz]

ahh, nice to know, thanks scott. The machine I delt with was an Asus F7 Series I believe.

The more we can find solutions for atheros cards, the less problems others will have down the track I guess.

[scottro]

Agreed. I suspect that it might have been Asus who originally pushed them to give a Linux 32 bit solution, due to the EEE PC. The 64 bit solution was only put out rather recently.

Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to try it with FreeBSD on my laptop yet. The laptop's wired ethernet card doesn't work, meaning that eventually, I'll have to put it on a CD or USB stick and try it that way. (It's a Broadcom, I've forgotten which, but there are known issues.)

Actually, rather than looking at the outdated ticket 1679, check ticket 1192--all 5007EG issues have been moved there.
http://madwifi.org/ticket/1192