How do I get to work my Atheros AR9485 Wireless card in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS?

Question

I've recently installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS in my ASUS D550CA, and so far things have gone great.

The only problem I've got is the Wi-Fi. It doesn't work.

I've got an Qualcomm Atheros AR9485. I've tried installing the drivers, but the sytem says it doesn't find any.

So I started looking around this forum for solutions.

I've read every single post from this forum about my Wi-Fi network adapter, and I've found nothing that solves my problem.

Let me give you some info about my configuration.

Disclaimer: my configuration is in spanish, so if you don't understand something you can either use Google translate, or use your imagination. :D

When I run $ sudo lshw -C network this is what I get:

*-network DEACTIVATED   
   descripción: Interfaz inalámbrica
   producto: AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter
   fabricante: Qualcomm Atheros
   id físico: 0
   información del bus: pci@0000:02:00.0
   nombre lógico: wlan0
   versión: 01
   serie: 28:e3:47:5c:5d:3f
   anchura: 64 bits
   reloj: 33MHz
   capacidades: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list rom ethernet physical wireless
   configuración: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k driverversion=3.13.0-34-generic firmware=N/A latency=0 link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn
   recursos: irq:17 memoria:f7d00000-f7d7ffff memoria:f7d80000-f7d8ffff
  *-network
       descripción: Ethernet interface
       producto: RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller
       fabricante: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
       id físico: 0.2
       información del bus: pci@0000:03:00.2
       nombre lógico: eth0
       versión: 06
       serie: e0:3f:49:ce:57:49
       tamaño: 100Mbit/s
       capacidad: 100Mbit/s
       anchura: 64 bits
       reloj: 33MHz
       capacidades: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
       configuración: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=2.3LK-NAPI duplex=full firmware=rtl8402-1_0.0.1 10/26/11 ip=181.165.245.39 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=MII speed=100Mbit/s
       recursos: irq:41 ioport:e000(size=256) memoria:f0004000-f0004fff memoria:f0000000-f0003fff

At the beginning, you'll see that it says "*-network DEACTIVATED" (or at least that's what I translated), is that something bad?

Then, when I run ipconfig this is what I get:

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  direcciónHW e0:3f:49:ce:57:49  
          Direc. inet:181.165.245.39  Difus.:181.165.245.255  Másc:255.255.255.0
          Dirección inet6: fe80::e23f:49ff:fece:5749/64 Alcance:Enlace
          ACTIVO DIFUSIÓN FUNCIONANDO MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Métrica:1
          Paquetes RX:221199 errores:0 perdidos:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          Paquetes TX:62025 errores:0 perdidos:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          colisiones:0 long.colaTX:1000 
          Bytes RX:124409589 (124.4 MB)  TX bytes:7471899 (7.4 MB)

lo        Link encap:Bucle local  
          Direc. inet:127.0.0.1  Másc:255.0.0.0
          Dirección inet6: ::1/128 Alcance:Anfitrión
          ACTIVO BUCLE FUNCIONANDO  MTU:65536  Métrica:1
          Paquetes RX:2977 errores:0 perdidos:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          Paquetes TX:2977 errores:0 perdidos:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          colisiones:0 long.colaTX:0 
          Bytes RX:397158 (397.1 KB)  TX bytes:397158 (397.1 KB)

When I put iwconfig:

eth0      no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=off   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off

Finally, when I put sudo rfkill list all, I got:

0: phy0: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: yes
1: asus-wlan: Wireless LAN
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no
2: asus-bluetooth: Bluetooth
    Soft blocked: no
    Hard blocked: no

I hope anyone can help me solve this, I've searched a lot and found no solution.

Thanks a lot.

Answer 1

Your wireless is blocked by the wireless switch or key combination; please see:

Hard blocked: yes

Please try the key combination, Fn+F2 or similar and run again:

rfkill list all 

Any change? If not, is the module asus_nb_wmi loaded? Check:

lsmod | grep asus

If so, please try:

echo "options asus_nb_wmi wapf=1" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/asus.conf

Reboot and see if your wireless key combination is working as expected.

Answer 2

Encountered the same problem today on a headless Ubuntu 12.04 server with PCI Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 wlan. I believe that unblocking with rfkill should solve it.

rfkill unblock all

However, I could not even get Internet access to install rfkill. So, while installing Ubuntu 14 server on the same machine, I chose the Qualcomm Atheros AR9485 as the primary NIC and it connected to a wireless router during configuration. If its still disabled after you complete installation, you may have to include it in network interfaces

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

then append

auto wlan0
.....

Remember to include the essid(case sensitive), IP,and wep/wap security (google that)