Using ath9k on RHEL5#
RHEL 5.5 get a wireless facelift.The facelift consists of getting a new mac80211, cfg80211 and somewireless drivers backported from 2.6.32 down to 2.6.18. Along with itcame ath9k. This section documents how to get the kernels to get ath9kon your Centos5/RHEL5 kernels and tries to track any issues present onthem.
Kernel#
Go grab the kernels here:
http://people.redhat.com/linville/kernels/rhel5/
If you do not have RHEL 5.4 you can try Centos 5.4.
Usage notes#
RHEL 5.4 and 5.5 only support wireless extensions as such only the oldfunctionality that you are used to with 802.11 will be available. Thisis enough to get you using IBSS, and Station mode of operation. AP modeof operation is not supported, neither is Mesh.
Regulatory wise since this backport did not include nl80211 support itdoes mean static regulatory domains are used only. For Atheros cards onthis kernel (ath5k, ath9k) this means the static Atheros worldregulatory domain will be used. Since AP and Mesh is not supported onthis release the only known implication this will have on Atherosdrivers should be not being able to initialize beaconing on some 5 GHzchannels for IBSS. For details on what this implies refer to theath initialization page.
Tested cards#
AR5416
AR9280
AR9285
AR9287
Supported modes of operation#
Station
IBSS
Monitor Mesh is not enabled on the build and AP requires nl80211 andsince nl80211 is not supported on this kernel you will not be able touse AP mode of operation.
Known issues#
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=543719 - AR9285 associates but requires tcpdump to get DHCP replies.
http://download.spinellicreations.com/workaround_bugzilla_543719 - workaround allows AR9285 get DHCP replies. Tested on RHEL 5.4 and 5.5 clones (Scientific Linux).
Enabling Network Manager#
Upon logging into the GNOME desktop Network Manager is already staredbut the applet does not come up. To do that, as root do:
service NetworkManager start
To make it automatically enabled do:
chkconfig NetworkManager on
It should be noted that running this will prevent you from usingwpa_supplicant or the root console to configure and manage the wirelessdevice manually.