[How To]Atheros AR5212 based cards, now w/ Leopard

[chipxsd]

It's true, my ToH installation had the 10.4.8 IO80211Family.kext. So I replaced it with the one from the retail copy of Leopard, and it still doesn't connect to secured connection automatically.

 

Now I too have:

10.5 - IONetworkingFamily.kext

10.4.8 - IO80211Family.kext

... on my Leopard installation, and no difference.

 

I'm going to try to install the 10.5 version of IO80211Family.kext with 10.5 version of IONetworkingFamily..., maybe the freezing will stop. Stay tuned...

 

Edit:

This just in:

Having both of kernel extensions, IONetworkingFamily.kext and IO80211Family.kext from the original retail 10.5 Leopard DVD, works! It connects to my secured wireless connection without a problem. It doesn't freeze my system, and it doesn't show me the: "Connection failed!" message.

 

BoBo, thank you for pointing me into the right direction.

 

@consolation: please confirm this and fix the first post! Just say, you need both of the .kext from the original 10.5 DVD. And of course, you have to modify it by changing the deviceid attributes.

[chipxsd]

Ok, guys, sorry to brake the bad news - but it seems this method doesn't work that well as I thought. My happle started getting chills, and began to freeze.

 

So having both original (I guess it's called Vanilla) kernel extensions: IO80211Family.kext and IONetworkingFamily.kext doesn't solve any problems. It worked for me, for about a day, then it suddenly started freezing my system.

 

But I've got some good news afterall. It seems airport successfully connects to a secured wireless access point using networksetup command in shell. This command can then be executed every time system loads up.

 

Here's an example on how to use it:

sudo networksetup -setairportnetwork "your wifi name" "password"

I don't know yet how to create a startup item, but I'll research this tomorrow. It's bed time for me. See you.

[Cirrus]

Thats good news. I can confirm this.

 

To make it autostart:

 

sudo chmod +s /usr/sbin/networksetup

 

and then:

 

sudo nano /etc/rc.local

 

and enter:

 

networksetup -setairportnetwork "yournetwork" "yourpassword"

[consolation]

Lot's of "real" mac users are having issues w/ wireless in Leo (including system freezes). 5.1 is almost upon us, it's been seeded out to ADC. I think let's wait & see what happens when that gets out. We have a good work around anyhow, if 5.1 doesn't solve anything I can write a little script to ask for password/SSID, then pass it to terminal.

[chipxsd]

I found a shell command which can work with the keychain - I forgot what's it called, but it exists. Maybe we can use it to get the password which is stored in the keychain, so there wouldn't be no need to enter it manually.

 

But as consolation said, a fix is already on it's way. Is there a release date for the 10.5.1 update?

[chipxsd]

I've created a primitive shell script, which connects to the first Access Point found in the Keychain.

#!/bin/sh

get_firstAccessPointInKeychain () {
 security find-generic-password -s "AirPort Network" 1>&1 \
 |grep "\"acct\"" | cut -d '"' -f4
}

get_pw () {
 security 2>&1 >/dev/null find-generic-password -ga $1 \
 |ruby -e 'print $1 if STDIN.gets =~ /^password: "(.*)"$/'
}

echo Looking for the first wireless connection name in keychain ...

#get first available accesspoint from the keychain
connectionName=$(get_firstAccessPointInKeychain)

#get a password for a specific connection from the keychain
connectionPassword=$(get_pw "$connectionName")

echo 'Connecting to: '$connectionName

networksetup -setairportnetwork "$connectionName" "$connectionPassword"

Image show I have one "AirPort Network Password" item in my KeyChain, script connects to the first one on the list.

 

I don't know if this script is useful or not, but I sure as hell learned to code shell scripts

[Emby boss]

Hi people I have a question: I can't make my Atheros 5007 work on Leo. someone can help?

[sziggle]

I've created a primitive shell script, which connects to the first Access Point found in the Keychain

 

...

 

Image show I have one "AirPort Network Password" item in my KeyChain, script connects to the first one on the list.

 

I don't know if this script is useful or not, but I sure as hell learned to code shell scripts

 

 

chipxsd, that is bitchen! thank you.

[pluggulp]

Great work chipsxd !

 

could you please clarify briefly which versions of IONetworkingFamily and IO80211Family you're now using in Leopard?

I followed the thread but I got slightly confused. Did you end up using 10.4.8 kexts for both or a mixture of 10.4.8 and 10.5?

 

I've got the netgear WG3111T which works fine under my 10.4.10 system (I'm not sure though whether the relevant kexts are taken from 10.4.5. or 10.4.8 on that system). Copying those to my Leo extension folder (on the Hackintosh) didn't help. So I modified the 10.5. kexts (taken from my Macbook running 10.5) to include the pci ID of my card, but to no avail (permissions fixed). It doesn't get recognized and doesn't show up in system profiler. No error message in the system.log either when loading the kext ...

[consolation]

Great work chipsxd !

 

could you please clarify briefly which versions of IONetworkingFamily and IO80211Family you're now using in Leopard?

I followed the thread but I got slightly confused. Did you end up using 10.4.8 kexts for both or a mixture of 10.4.8 and 10.5?

 

I've got the netgear WG3111T which works fine under my 10.4.10 system (I'm not sure though whether the relevant kexts are taken from 10.4.5. or 10.4.8 on that system). Copying those to my Leo extension folder (on the Hackintosh) didn't help. So I modified the 10.5. kexts (taken from my Macbook running 10.5) to include the pci ID of my card, but to no avail (permissions fixed). It doesn't get recognized and doesn't show up in system profiler. No error message in the system.log either when loading the kext ...

 

did you go to network preferences and enable it?

[chipxsd]

pluggulp: I'm using 10.5 - IONetworkingFamily.kext and 10.4.8 - IO80211Family.kext. If you've correctly modified the IDs (mine is <string>pci168c,13</string>), fixed the .kext permissions, deleted the kernel extension cache (the .mkext file), rebooted ... and airport still isn't recognized? Then try to modify the NetworkInterfaces.plist file.

 

- edit the /Library/Preferences/SystemConfiguration/NetworkInterfaces.plist file

- find the "<string>en0</string>"

- change to "<string>en1</string>" or en2, if you have two working ethernet (LAN) adapters

- in the same node, find the "<key>IOInterfaceUnit</key> [newline] <integer>0</integer>"

- change to "<key>IOInterfaceUnit</key> [newline] <integer>1</integer>"

- reboot the machine

 

hope this works

[pluggulp]

... and airport still isn't recognized? Then try to modify the NetworkInterfaces.plist file.

Thanks. changing the NetworkInterfaces file was the bit I forgot ... will try that tonight.

did you go to network preferences and enable it?

Consolation, it doesn't show up as a device in network preferences. My WG311T seems to have a different PCI device id than yours (that's from memory, I didn't go back to the original post where you mentioned it). Mine shows up as 168C, 5A00 in System Profiler on 10.4.8/10.4.10. Just to make sure, I edited the .plist file to include <string>pci168c,5a00</string> Maybe that's not correct ?Someone mentioned that you have to remove all other pci id entries from the .plist file. But that didn't make an awful lot of sense and I didn't see anyone confirm it either.

[consolation]

Thanks. changing the NetworkInterfaces file was the bit I forgot ... will try that tonight.Consolation, it doesn't show up as a device in network preferences. My WG311T seems to have a different PCI device id than yours (that's from memory, I didn't go back to the original post where you mentioned it). Mine shows up as 168C, 5A00 in System Profiler on 10.4.8/10.4.10. Just to make sure, I edited the .plist file to include <string>pci168c,5a00</string> Maybe that's not correct ?Someone mentioned that you have to remove all other pci id entries from the .plist file. But that didn't make an awful lot of sense and I didn't see anyone confirm it either.

 

 

OK.... That doesn't sound right. System Profiler is unlikely to get you a correct id -check your device id in windows. Your WG device id should be 0013, so try adding 168c,13

[kseelbo]

I was also having the same problems as most of us here with gettting my wireless card to work. I was using a D-Link DWL-G510 card under 10.4.10 that worked great. I upgraded to Leopard and it quit working. I tried the old kexts, editing Leopard's, etc... The closest I came was it was recognized, Airport was on, but it was lock up my system. Then I tried a WMP300N card from Linksys. This card's ID is included in Leopard's IO80211Family.kext, so I thought it may work natively. No luck there either. So out of frustration, I tried Orange Ware's 3.3 version of their driver found at http://www.orangeware.com/endusers/wirelessformac.html and on reboot my card worked great! Don't ask me why because their driver is PPC and for Atheros chipsets. Maybe one of you can figure it out. Just a note, The apple airport in the menubar works, but Orangeware's included wireless utility does not (error about intel macs).

[kseelbo]

Just an update to my previous post, I uninstalled the Orange Ware driver because my machine would not shut down (fans would still run). Now on reboot the card still works and it still shows up in ASP as a "third party wireless card."

[Evgenystan]

My card is TrendNet TEW-503PI PCI (Atheros 5006XS based /5414 chipset)

Here is what I did:

Installed IO80211Family.kext from AirPortExtremeUpdate2007004

Well, everything seemed ok. After changing Info.plist to include my card IDs (168c,1b) I managed to load IO and AirPortAtheros.kext (not AirPortAtheros5424.kext)

SystemPreferences gave me a note that new interface was detected, bla,lba,bla I connected to my WPA network.

After an hour of happy surfing I decided to reboot.

And I've got my system freeze.

Reboot -v

I can see that it hangs after it tries to pick up Atheros5424ab (this is a string inside AirPortAtheros.kext's Info)

reboot -s

Remove AirPortAtheros.kext from it folder

reboot

Everything is back to where I was, whithout wireless.

Well, I put the extension back and tried to load it... freeze!

reboot -s, removing the extension, reboot

Well I decided to give it a shot one more time

This time it loaded succesefully, but when I tried to connect to my network ... guess what ... freeze.

And I tried and I tried (applied previous AirPortExtreme updates, tried many other things).

Randomly it worked (but froze on reboot), but most of the time it froze the system. Note that I couldn ever start up with patched extension in its folder, so every try I had to boot in single user to remove it.

 

Note, that AirPortAtheros5424.kext wouldn't load (I had a slight idea that this extension is what I need, since the chipset is not that different from the original Apple used 5006EXS/5424, the only difference is PCI, instead of Apple's PCIe, which is not at all different from the software point of view)

Finally, I came across of somebody mentioning that the 10.4.5 IO80211Family.kext is the only working one, others will load but will freeze your system when you try to connect.

So I downloaded it, didn't patch the AirPortAtheros5424.kext (!!!! It already includes many device IDs in it) and on the load I had wireless.

Reboot went ok. Right after reboot it connected to my wireless WPA protected network.

I guess AirPortAtheros.kext is very buggy, no wonder many people have have problems with it.

It is important that you install the whole extension, not just the Atheros one, otherwise you will see that message tellin you of unresolved dependencies.

[pluggulp]

OK.... That doesn't sound right. System Profiler is unlikely to get you a correct id -check your device id in windows. Your WG device id should be 0013, so try adding 168c,13

 

Thanks ... that fixed it ... sort of

By editing the 10.5 kexts as above I got wireless (including WPA2) working on Leopard. Once this was working I tried to reboot to see whether my machine would freeze as reported by others. It did. But on a subsequent reboot it worked again. I tried about 8 times and it seems that the machine works fine (including WLAN) on every other reboot and freezes on the reboots in-between.

 

BTW. Leopard 10.5.1 is now out and apparently it addresses some issues with stored passwords on Airport. I won't have time to try the new kexts tonight but will attempt it on the weekend.

[chipxsd]

BTW. Leopard 10.5.1 is now out and apparently it addresses some issues with stored passwords on Airport. I won't have time to try the new kexts tonight but will attempt it on the weekend.

Please report here when done.

[cyclonefr]

Doesn't add any Atheros kext.

[consolation]

Doesn't add any Atheros kext.

 

No, but it has a new Apple80211.framework, however, no change for me. .8 kexts works fine as long as I go through network prefs and not the icon. Well... one thing has changed, instead of hanging my system reboots - I guess it's an improvement of sorts, saves me having to push the button

 

Chipxsd's method of connecting through the assistant in prefs works fine for me, meh... I'll call it a win for now. Pointless screenshot included for you edification.

 

P.S. I just realised, my airport icon's status indicator is working now.

[consolation]

I guess AirPortAtheros.kext is very buggy, no wonder many people have have problems with it.It is important that you install the whole extension, not just the Atheros one, otherwise you will see that message tellin you of unresolved dependencies.

Not so much buggy as designed to work with Apple's hw & EFI. Have you tried the 10.4.8 update kext?

Thanks ... that fixed it ... sort ofBy editing the 10.5 kexts as above I got wireless (including WPA2) working on Leopard.

using 10.4.8 kext eliminates the lockups, use assistant in prefs to connect

[chinasky]

Hello,

 

i´ve running my dlink G520 (atheros chip) in tiger 10.4.9 without problems. I prepared a dvd for my amd system with the drivers ready to work in leopard (i included the IO80211Family.kext among others); the card is detected in leopard, but i when i click on "turn airport on" nothing happens.

 

I´ve tested with the 10.4.8 driver, including the device id (168c,13) and repairing permissions...without results...

Edited NetworkInterfaces.plist file...no results

 

I mean, i tried differents configurations and nothing worked.

 

Can someone please tell me what else to do?

 

thanks!

[eclau]

Updated to 10.5.1...

 

Changing devide id in AirPortAtheros.kext alone did not work. Card was not even detected.

[chinasky]

I finally got my dlink G520 working in leo.

I included the 10.4.8 driver (with the devid) in a new image installation for my amd system; when the installation finished and rebooted the card was detected and didn´t have to do anything else.

[BuXb]

I AM FINALLY ONLINE VIA ATHEROS WLAN (PCMCIA) IN LEO - DARN ..

 

the solution for me was what Alucard69 had found out before: "I took all other device ids and only left mine in there and it worked fine" - referring to IO80211Family.kext/AirPortAtheros5424.kext/contents/Info.plist. Writing from Leo right now, connected to neighbours WEP-Net .. via my Netgear 511 PCMCIA card (Atheros Chipset, forgot which one).

 

Also I still have LAN and FW DHCP set to off, will switch that back 2 DHCP now.

 

The connectivity is definitely better than in Tiger, they have worked on that! But still not as stable as in Windows (whyever)..

 

The two working kexts IONetworkingFamily 1.5 and IO80211Family 1.5.3 are attached. The latter one needs to be edited according to your Atheros card's IDs.

 

For PCMCIA glitchman's kexts (see sig) are still working. In the IOPCCardFamily.kext you need to swap ADP2,1 with Mac if you have successfully applied Netka's EFI bootloader + his AppleSMBIOS.kext 1.0.12.

 

Need 2 hit the sack ..

IO80211Family_1.5.3.kext.zip

IONetworkingFamily_1.5.0.kext.zip