ath9k

daves2357 · #1 26th July 2008, 08:06 PM

Hi,

I have an Atheros card that is working with Madwifi. As soon as possible though, I would like to abandon Madwifi and its evil propriety HAL.

I recently heard about the freshly-opened ath9k. My card's chipset is (supposedly) supported by it.

Has anyone been able to successfully build this for Fedora and verify that it works? I'll try to build it myself in a few days when I can get some more memory for this workstation, and see if I can get back to all FOSS.

daves2357 · #2 28th July 2008, 10:47 PM

I had access to a Fedora box today with an actual hard disk, so I could do some compiling. I'm posting via the ath9k driver right now.

The compile for Fedora is relatively straightforward. If anyone else wants to build the driver now, the following is what I did. (Just copy and paste the code sections into a terminal.)

First, follow along these steps until you get through "Get the Source". We don't need to rebuild everything; there are just a few kernel headers needed that aren't in the kernel-devel RPM.

Next, make sure you have the basics:

Code:

yum -y install gcc git kernel-devel make

Get the ath9k source:

Code:

cd /usr/src
git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/mcgrof/ath9k.git
cd ath9k

Red Hat apparently hates list.h; they remove a lot of functions from kernel.org's version. Luckily, the only missing function required by ath9k is a simple one. It can be replaced with a macro for our purposes:

Code:

echo '#define list_is_singular(head) !list_empty(head) && ((head)->next == (head)->prev)' >> /usr/src/kernels/`uname -r`/include/linux/list.h

If you followed the steps to create the Red Hat's kernel source directory, we need to borrow a few headers:

Code:

cp ~/rpmbuild/BUILD/kernel-2.6.25/linux-2.6.25.x86_64/net/mac80211/{ieee80211_i,key,rate,sta_info}.h /usr/src/kernels/`uname -r`/net/mac80211

Now, (while still in the ath9k directory) make the module:

Code:

make

You shouldn't get any errors at this point. Add it to /lib/modules:

Code:

make install

Now everything should be good to go. You should be able to load the module, restart NetworkManager, and connect wirelessly:

Code:

modprobe ath9k
service NetworkManager restart

I haven't done much in the realm of building Fedora packages. Please let me know if I am doing something stupid like missing an RPM that would fix some of those steps.

Nokia · #3 28th July 2008, 11:49 PM

Thanks for this useful post/thread. I don't know much about compiling in Fedora, but afaik it's recommended to do the install in RedHat/Fedora's way, and that implies building a rpm file. My guess is that after the make command, instead of make install there should be a rpm -ba --target of some sort, or better yet, a dkms mkrpm command to address the loss of connectivity when changing kernels.

Please don't be offended. I'm just guessing here about how it should be done. Right now I have not time to learn this things - otherwise I would have done it myself

- but hopefully some of the more knowledgeable people on this forum would step in and make the necessary considerations on the matter.

partha · #4 17th August 2008, 07:45 PM

The only thing missing seems to be the rate.h header. It does not exist in the kernel source that gets downloaded.

Where are you getting that?

Thanks,
Partha

partha · #5 17th August 2008, 08:09 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by partha

The only thing missing seems to be the rate.h header. It does not exist in the kernel source that gets downloaded.

Where are you getting that?

Thanks,
Partha

I could not find the rate.h file in the redhat kernel tree. I copied it from the 2.6.26.2 tree. In any case, I am getting the following errors:

Code:

/usr/src/ath9k/ksrc/hw.c: In function ‘ath9k_hw_reset’:
/usr/src/ath9k/ksrc/hw.c:5949: error: implicit declaration of function ‘get_unaligned_le32’
/usr/src/ath9k/ksrc/hw.c:5950: error: implicit declaration of function ‘get_unaligned_le16’
make[3]: *** [/usr/src/ath9k/ksrc/hw.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** [/usr/src/ath9k/ksrc] Error 2
make[1]: *** [_module_/usr/src/ath9k] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.25.14-108.fc9.i686'
make: *** [modules] Error 2

Can you help?

Thanks,
Partha

daves2357 · #6 18th August 2008, 01:37 PM

Hi,

It seems they have updated ath9k since I first built it. At first glance, it looks like the file that defines what you need in 2.6.26 is "include/linux/unaligned/le_struct.h" in the kernel source. You can try adding that include line in hw.c .

I am currently without an ISP at home, but once I get reconnected, I will spend some more time with this to build the new version for Fedora.

partha · #7 19th August 2008, 12:05 AM

Thanks - but no dice. Since I am not sure what else is missing. I tried simply including that file in the ksrc directory and #include in the hw.c file. Now I get that I am missing packed_struct.h

Thanks,
Partha

partha · #8 14th September 2008, 10:02 PM

Replying to myself ...
It is fairly easy now to build the ath9k driver. As you may know the driver is built into the 2.6.27 kernel tree. If you have a 2.6 version kernel then you can download all the wireless drivers and follow the instructions here.

HTH,

Partha

daves2357 · #9 14th September 2008, 11:42 PM

Sorry, I forgot that I left this thread hanging. A while ago when I did a rawhide install, I noticed the ath9k driver was included with their build of the 2.6.27 kernel.