Atheros Communications Inc. AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter

[mickey999]

Usually this type of wireless network adapter is in netbooks, right?
Well, something is very wrong with the drivers for this network adapter ((at least on my netbook) in Linux Mint 9 , and all other Ubuntu 10.04 based distributions.
I tried them all in the past days and all have the same behaviour: connection to the router gets interrupted from time to time but mainly when downloading. A ssh connection to another computer in the same network has of course the same result: interruption.
As I said , all Ubuntu 10.04 based distributions will fail the wifi connection to the router after a few seconds mainly if downloading no matter if it is a direct download from internet, or whatever application you'll use to download/upload something via wireless .

Another problem detected is using F-Spot to handle an iPhone/iPod touch.
Rhythmbox is doing it's part just fine with an iPhone/iPod touch.
Infact once connected such device, first a pop up thing will ask you about what application you wanna use to handle music files, the second pop up will ask you ( if you have already installed it ) if you want F-Spot to handle the pictures.
All fine, pictures inside the iPhone/iPod touch will be recognized but....if you want to transfer them from iPhone into computer , here is another strange behaviour: no matter how many pictures you'll select for transfering ONLY certain pictures will be transferred.
I also tried to see if it's something wrong with those particular pictures that were transferred. So I unplugged the iPhone and then plugged it back , then trying again to move same pictures plus a few more. Only that this time ...another pictures were transferred along with SOME of those previously transferred.

Unfortunately because of the wireless connection problem I had to go back to Linux Mint 8.
I hope these problems will be solved with an eventual update so I'll go back again to Linux Mint 9 because it is INDEED faster than everything I have tried up to now ( of course I'm including all Debian/Ubuntu based distributions ) on my netbook!

[mickey999]

As a last resort...I have also tried the suggestion from the Ubuntu forums and I've installed those linux-backports modules but still not good. The Atheros AR5001 refuses to maintain a stable connection with the wireless router in Linux Mint 9 .
Here is the link in case someone wanna try and maybe get lucky http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1469799 ...I wasn't!.

[ther]

I can confirm that I have the same issue with my Atheros AR9285 wireless card on my laptop. it seems that I get a little more stable connection if I ping something (eg. ping www.google.com) from a terminal while downloading or surfing. This is of course not a fix or a problem solver, just an observation I found interesting.

[mickey999]

Looks like the only solution is to wait until Canonical will figure out to take the drivers from Karmic Koala and use them in 10.04 and probably after that Linux Mint 9 will be usable.
However, what was wrong with the old wifi drivers in 9.10 that needed to be modified in 10.04? Personally I can say that the wireless connection in Linux Mint 8 based on 9.10 was great. Not a single problem between wireless card and router!
But ...eh ...nevermind....

[ther]

Is there anything somewhat easy that can be done while waiting? Would you guys recommend another network manager? I had better performance using wicd on kubuntu 9.10 for instance, perhaps the same applies here? Should I poke around with ndiswrapper or madwifi?

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

[vincent]

I faced a similar problem as well when I (clean) installed Mint 9; my Ralink RT2860 wireless card that was working perfectly in Mint 8/Karmic had a difficult time connecting and maintaining a solid connection wirelessly, in particular with networks with WPA. It was supposedly due to a kernel regression, so I updated my kernel to 2.6.33 (Mint 9/Lucid uses 2.6.32 by default) and wireless works perfectly now. The other alternative for me was to download the drivers from Ralink, and compile and install them myself, and I hear that several other Ubuntu users with the same wireless chipset used this method successfully, but downloading Ubuntu's mainline 2.6.33 kernel was much more faster and convenient...what can I say, I'm a lazy guy.

If nothing else works, consider going to Atheros' website and download the appropriate driver for your card, and compile and install manually following instructions normally provided in a readme file in the download. I mean, if drivers gotten directly from the manufacturer don't work, then I don't know what else could possibly work instead.

[mickey999]

Looks like upgrading the linux kernel from 2.6.32 to 2.6.33 did the job for now.
Here is a very simple guidance on how to do this upgrade: http://www.ramoonus.nl/2010/02/25/linux ... ntu-linux/

[vincent]

Good to hear it worked. Remember to add [Solved] to the title of the thread though.