[clue-tech] wireless on Ubuntu

[Collins Richey]

Back to the topic at hand.

I spent a few hours this afternoon and evening working on my wireless
(Atheros chip).

1. Found a report on Ubuntu forums that wicd (used to be Connection
Manager) would do the trick, so I removed Network Manager and
installed wicd. No results.

2. Lots more googling and foruming, but nothing turned up, so I did a
little sleuthing and dmesging. No sign of a wireless card anywhere.

3. Finally the light bulb went on. The Ubuntu kernel upgrades don't
always upgrade everything related (piss poor design, IMO). I was
bitten by that a few months ago with the nvidia modules on my desktop
system. So, I installed linux-restricted-modules-generic again, and lo
and behold it installed the correct version.

4. Reboot, and at least I got dmesg output for the Atheros card. I
also got a popup with the standard Debian bullshit: you've loaded a
module that we don't like the looks of. Yes, I know it's proprietary,
so shut up and go away. Still no results from wicd. wicd presumes that
the wireless is device wlan0, but the dmesg output indicated wifi0, so
I updated the preferences and tried again. No cigar. Enter iwconfig.
Aha, iwconfig thinks it's device ath0! Updated the preferences, and
success.

5. Now I need to figure out how to put the wicd gui monitor in the
xubuntu panel. The wise ones in Ubuntu land have screwed with xfce
sufficiently, that nothing makes sense. I can get it there manually,
ie '/opt/wicd/edgy-panel.py &', so all is not lost. The xubuntu 'add
new item' to panel function is brain dead - only certain
pre-determined functions can be added.

6. Now I need to take the laptop somewhere that has WEP to see if that
wil work. My (part time) wirelss at home is totally unsecured.

Enjoy,
-- 
Collins Richey
     If you fill your heart with regrets of yesterday and the worries
     of tomorrow, you have no today to be thankful for.