Atheros wireless and Live CD issue

[gc2712]

I was unable to activate my Atheros ‎AR5213 802.11a/b/g Wireless Adapter using the LinuxMint 4.0 live CD. I did not wish to install to the HDD until I could verify that wireless worked "out of the box".

The problem is simple(!),the kernel module ath_hal is actually MISSING! That is, not to be found in the live cd install files. Both ath_pci and ath_rate_sample are there though, but dmesg shows that when they try to reference ath_hal that errors relating to "symbolic links" are thrown up (because its not there!).

Perhaps LinuxMint developers might like to explore the possibility of a re-spin with the proper kernel modules all present.

No wonder everyone has to go off and re-install madwifi etc when they install.

Grrrrr.....

[gc2712]

I have found some of the answer. Apparently this is an old issue for Ubuntu that keeps cropping up and needs fixing permanently. The first clue was a bug report at: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/152755

The simple answer for me was here:
https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubunt ... 27731.html
with the following command:

sudo depmod -a

and then modprobe ath_hal (and) ath_pci

I didn't confirm whether this last step was necessary. A lot easier than trying to re-install madwifi on a liveCD though!!