Atheros Wifi works on one desktop computer but not another

Question

My Wifi card worked on my old desktop fine but is not working whe I moved it to my new one.

Here is the output of sudo lshw -C network

-network UNCLAIMED     
       description: Ethernet controller
       product: Atheros Communications Inc.
       vendor: Atheros Communications Inc.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:04:00.0
       version: 01
       width: 32 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list
       configuration: latency=32
       resources: memory:fb200000-fb20ffff

and sudo lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Sandy Bridge DRAM Controller (rev 09)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Sandy Bridge PCI Express Root Port (rev 09)
00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point HECI Controller #1 (rev 04)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #2 (rev 05)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation Cougar Point High Definition Audio Controller (rev 05)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev b5)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev b5)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev b5)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point PCI Express Root Port 5 (rev b5)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation Cougar Point USB Enhanced Host Controller #1 (rev 05)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Cougar Point LPC Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation Cougar Point 4 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation Cougar Point SMBus Controller (rev 05)
00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation Cougar Point 2 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 05)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Device 0de1 (rev a1)
01:00.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation Device 0bea (rev a1)
03:00.0 PCI bridge: Device 1b21:1080 (rev 01)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. Device ff1a (rev 01)
05:00.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation uPD720200 USB 3.0 Host Controller (rev 03)
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 06)

and sudo iwconfig

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

and sudo ifconfig

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 6c:62:6d:e6:8f:6f  
          inet addr:192.168.0.143  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::6e62:6dff:fee6:8f6f/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:5772951 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:5587811 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:996414964 (996.4 MB)  TX bytes:1604420754 (1.6 GB)
          Interrupt:44 Base address:0x2000 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:60498 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:60498 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:9892064 (9.8 MB)  TX bytes:9892064 (9.8 MB)

I totally have no idea what to do, or even what most of this means, any help at all to get my wifi working again would be appreciated.

Thanks!

Ash

Answer 1

Look into your logfiles:

 dmesg | grep ath
 grep ath /var/log/*.log* | egrep -iv path

Maybe issues with an interrupt. I could heal such a thing in the bios, but with intel-IPW2100. Maybe some other idea can be found.

update after comment:

On my older laptop, ubuntu 9.04, I get:

locate ath_pci
/etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ath_pci.conf
/lib/linux-restricted-modules/2.6.27-14-generic/ath_pci
/lib/linux-restricted-modules/2.6.27-14-generic/ath_pci/ath_pci.mod.o
/lib/linux-restricted-modules/2.6.27-14-generic/ath_pci/if_ath.o
/lib/linux-restricted-modules/2.6.27-14-generic/ath_pci/if_ath_pci.o
/lib/linux-restricted-modules/2.6.28-16-generic/ath_pci
/lib/linux-restricted-modules/2.6.28-16-generic/ath_pci/ath_pci.mod.o
/lib/linux-restricted-modules/2.6.28-16-generic/ath_pci/if_ath.o
/lib/linux-restricted-modules/2.6.28-16-generic/ath_pci/if_ath_pci.o
/lib/modules/2.6.24-24-generic/madwifi/ath_pci.ko
/usr/share/linux-restricted-modules/2.6.27-14-generic/modules.alias.override/ath_pci
/usr/share/linux-restricted-modules/2.6.28-16-generic/modules.alias.override/ath_pci

On the newer one (10.04) only line 1, modprobe-blacklist.

But on both a lot of ath5k-files, mainly .ko-related (Kernel object, alias: driver).

Answer 2

I believe these cards should work out the box on the newest kernels but unless you want to upgrade your version of Ubuntu, this particular chipset is known to misbehave and forcing it onto the ath5k driver should work.

In older versions of Ubuntu, especially where the madwidi driver is involved, the ath5k driver ends up blacklisted by other drivers. To fix this, you need to find out where it's blocked. Fire this off into a terminal:

grep -R 'ath5k' /etc/modprobe.d/

If that comes back with any lines that start with blacklist, you need to edit that file and comment the line out. grep will output the name of the file so just run sudo nano the_filename, stick a # in front of the applicable line (control+w in nano to search) and then control+x to save. Reboot and hopefully you'll have a wireless card.