Setting up wireless with ar9170 in Linux

By
Tom Wright
-
350

 I have just got a new wn111v2 wireless adapter and I thought I would just quickly run through how to get it running with  Ubuntu/Linux/GNU/whatever whilst jumping on the new Linux.com bandwagon. This tutorial will also add to many more devices:

  • Atheros 9170 0x0cf3 0x9170
  • Atheros TG121N 0x0cf3 0x1001
  • Cace Airpcap NX 0xcace 0x0300
  • D-Link DWA 160A 0x07d1 0x3c10
  • D-Link DWA 160A 0x0846 0x9010
  • Netgear WNDA3100 0x0846 0x9010
  • Netgear WN111 v2 0x0846 0x9001
  • Zydas ZD1221 0x0ace 0x1221
  • Z-Com UB81 BG 0x0cde 0x0023
  • Z-Com UB82 ABG 0x0cde 0x0026
  • Arcadyan WN7512 0x083a 0xf522
  • Planex GWUS300 0x2019 0x5304
  • IO-Data WNGDNUS2 0x04bb 0x093f
  • Zyxel NWD271N 0x0586 0x3417 

Right, on to the nitty gritty stuff.

Firstly the driver has only been included in kernels later that 2.6.30 and as far as I know those have not reached any desktop distros yet so you have two options A. go through some rather hairy step and compile the latest linux kernel: http://www.howtoforge.com/kernel_compilation_ubuntu (Google dependant on distro) or B. use an unstable release of your distro (Ubuntu) which contains a newer kernel. I would personally do the latter as it is much less hassle and I like to use them anyway but it is really up to you. If you care compiling you will need to make sure that the ar9170 module is actually included šŸ™‚ .

When you have finished installing/compiling you now only need to add the correct open firmware files. To do that just use  these commands in terminal (replace wget with curl -o if on fedora):

 sudo su # just su on fedora
cd /tmp
wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/27826554/ar9170-1.fw
wget http://launchpadlibrarian.net/27826554/ar9170-1.fw
mv ar*.fw /lib/firmware

 Now next time you plug it in your card should have 100% more wireless. Enjoy and feel free to comment if it did not work.

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