ath0 not present during boot

[linearfish]

I'm using an Atheros wireless card on my Dell Inspiron 2500 with madwifi and it works great. My problem is that during boot I get a message that the card does not seem to be present. Even once Gnome loads and I go to Network Configuration I get the same message. The only solution seems to be to take the card out and reinsert it, then the network comes up automatically. I thought this might be a kernel problem so I just updated madwifi from 2.6.14-1.1653_FC4 to 2.6.14-1.1656_FC4, but I've got the same problem (I haven't seen it for the 2.6.15 kernels yet). Does this sound like a hardward problem or a configuration problem? Thanks for the help.

[linearfish]

Just to add a note to this: My wireless will be working fine (both green lights blinking) and when I reboot, only one stays on. During the boot process, the card never fully comes back (i.e., the second light never starts blinking again).

[linearfish]

Just an update: I've tried this with the 2.15 kernels and, at first, I thought the problem was licked. Sadly, however, it's not. I'm still taking out and reinserting the card multiple times after booting up until the network just comes up on its own. I'd appreciate any insight into this.

[Seve]

What is the output of $ cat /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-ath0

[linearfish]

I disabled ONBOOT because the card isn't recognized when I boot up, so there was no point. It just gave me an error message. Thanks for your help on this.

# Please read /usr/share/doc/initscripts-*/sysconfig.txt
# for the documentation of these parameters.
IPV6INIT=no
ONBOOT=no
USERCTL=yes
PEERDNS=yes
GATEWAY=
TYPE=Wireless
DEVICE=ath0
HWADDR=00:14:6c:1f:05:58
BOOTPROTO=dhcp
NETMASK=
DHCP_HOSTNAME=
IPADDR=
DOMAIN=
ESSID=CUTIE
CHANNEL=1
MODE=Managed
RATE=Auto

[linearfish]

Maybe I'm just talking to myself, but...

Something odd I've noticed is that when I completely unplug my laptop and all the lights on my network card go off, then after booting I can always start my network up again. Perhaps Fedora (or my Dell Laptop) isn't shutting the card down completely on a normal shutdown, so it can't come back up again. Again, this isn't a serious problem but it's a minor annoyance that seems like it should have a simple solution.