Join Date: Apr 2006
Location: Ohio, USA
Posts: 4,065
Yes - I just went through this and have the solution for F10, should work for F9 too.

Atheros is one of a handful of DUM*SS companies that have used the same PCI vendor/part ID 
for two different parts AR5242 and AR242[45]/5006. lspci is smart enough to use the subverndor/part ID 
and shows this correctly as an AR242X/AR5006. F10 (and probably F9) automatically loads 
the new/FOSS ath5k driver, but this driver is only for the newer AR52xx parts. 
We need the old madwifi driver. The problem is that the last stable release of the old madwifi 
driver makes kernel calls that are no longer supported (2.6.26 kernel and later).

The solution is:
1/ Blacklist the ath5k. Add this line to /etc/modprobe.conf. Create the file if needed.
blacklist ath5k
2/ Get the latest madwifi from the subversion server and build:

2a/ Get kmod development tools & kernel headers:
yum -y install groupinstall "Development Tools"
yum -y install kernel-headers kernel-devel
yum -y install subversion

2b/ Get the latest sources and build & install the driver. Keep the source around 
since you'll need to rebuild & reinstall with every kernel update.

cd ~
svn co http://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/branches/madwifi-0.9.4 # gets files, prints a lot of lines

2c/ build & install the driver
cd ./madwifi*
make
make install

reboot
--

The driver should automatically load after boot and you should see the interface as wlan0.

You can manually change the installed drivers like this:
modprobe -r ath5k # remove AR5xxx driver
modprobe ath_pci # install AR242x driver

Network Manager works normally with this driver. Hibernate/wakeup seems to work well too.
Last edited by stevea; 2008-11-10 at 02:51 AM CST.
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