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My Dell Inspiron loaded nadia flawlessly and everything was working great. It dual boots with win7. I had been running it for about a week continuously when, after the 3rd update I decided to reboot. The kernel probe didn't appear to see the Atheros wlan0 anymore. I have downloaded compat-wireless-3.6.8-1 driver and make/make install. Still no cookies. This _was_ a working machine at initial install. Any ideas?

Could you run inxi -N in terminal and post the output?

wjr@wjr-Inspiron-N5050 / $ inxi -N
Network: Card-1: Atheros AR9285 Wireless Network Adapter (PCI-Express)
Card-2: Realtek RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller driver: r8169
wjr@wjr-Inspiron-N5050 / $


Went to roll back the kernel and saw this...

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 32 Feb 2 21:14 initrd.img -> boot/initrd.img-3.5.0-17-generic
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 33 Feb 2 21:05 initrd.img.old -> /boot/initrd.img-3.5.0-17-generic

Could you run these commands in terminal and post the output:

wjr@wjr-Inspiron-N5050 ~ $ sudo dmesg -C
[sudo] password for wjr:
wjr@wjr-Inspiron-N5050 ~ $ sudo modprobe ath8k
FATAL: Module ath8k not found.
wjr@wjr-Inspiron-N5050 ~ $ sudo modprobe ath9k
wjr@wjr-Inspiron-N5050 ~ $ dmesg > dmesg.txt
wjr@wjr-Inspiron-N5050 ~ $
[11361.202560] cfg80211: Calling CRDA to update world regulatory domain
[11361.210962] cfg80211: World regulatory domain updated:
[11361.210965] cfg80211: (start_freq - end_freq @ bandwidth), (max_antenna_gain, max_eirp)
[11361.210968] cfg80211: (2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.210969] cfg80211: (2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.210971] cfg80211: (2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 20000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.210972] cfg80211: (5170000 KHz - 5250000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.210974] cfg80211: (5735000 KHz - 5835000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (300 mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.368786] ath: phy0: ASPM enabled: 0x42
[11361.368794] ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x60
[11361.368797] ath: EEPROM indicates we should expect a direct regpair map
[11361.368802] ath: Country alpha2 being used: 00
[11361.368805] ath: Regpair used: 0x60
[11361.368810] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2412 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule:
[11361.368815] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A mBi, 2000 mBm)

[11361.368819] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2417 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule:
[11361.368824] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.368827] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2422 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule:
[11361.368832] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.368835] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2427 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule:
[11361.368839] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.368842] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2432 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule:
[11361.368847] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.368850] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2437 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule:
[11361.368854] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.368858] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2442 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule:
[11361.368862] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A mBi, 2000
mBm)
[11361.368865] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2447 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule:
[11361.368869] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.368873] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2452 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule:
[11361.368877] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.368880] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2457 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule:
[11361.368884] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.368887] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2462 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule:
[11361.368892] cfg80211: 2402000 KHz - 2472000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.368895] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2467 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule:
[11361.368899] cfg80211: 2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.368903] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2472 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule:
[11361.368907] cfg80211: 2457000 KHz - 2482000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.368910] cfg80211: Updating information on frequency 2484 MHz for a 20 MHz width channel with regulatory rule:
[11361.368914] cfg80211: 2474000 KHz - 2494000 KHz @ 40000 KHz), (N/A mBi, 2000 mBm)
[11361.371477] cfg80211: Ignoring regulatory request Set by core since the driver uses its own custom regulatory domain
[11361.375048] ieee80211 phy0: >Selected rate control algorithm 'ath9k_rate_control'
[11361.375310] Registered led device: ath9k-phy0
[11361.375318] ieee80211 phy0: >Atheros AR9285 Rev:2 mem=0xffffc900056a0000, irq=19
[11361.399504] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
[11361.402643] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
[11363.471297] wlan0: authenticate with 7c:e9:d3:39:a3:3f
[11363.483426] wlan0: send auth to 7c:e9:d3:39:a3:3f (try 1/3)
[11363.485541] wlan0: authenticated
[11363.494094] wlan0: associate with 7c:e9:d3:39:a3:3f (try 1/3)
[11363.497964] wlan0: RX AssocResp from 7c:e9:d3:39:a3:3f (capab=0x411 status=0 aid=2)
[11363.498017] wlan0: associated
[11363.498365] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlan0: link becomes ready

VERY FUNNY

Clearly the dang thing is working this instant. I didn't notice at what point it started. Would you know?

OK, read man modprobe. Thank you very much.

You can add ath9k to /etc/modules to have this automatically done. For some reason the driver doesn't load by itself.

Added ath9k to modules and survived a reboot. Thanks again