[Guide] Atheros WiFi scripts

[sYnie]

Hey,

 

I'm new here, but this site helped me alot. So I thought to share some of my investigations.

I've seen a lot of topics about those Netbook owners having problems with their AR500* Atheros WiFi cards. It works, but this KisMAC trick is kind of annoying. So I wrote some scripts, which do this for you.

 

This Guide is for you if ...

1. you need to Start/Stop Airport at Shutdown/Boot

2. you need to Scan with KisMAC to make Airport notice the networks

 

This is the case for most of those cheap Atheros W-Lan cards.

If you're here, having an Atheros card, which doesn't work at all, then search the forums. There are a lot of topics which are describing, how to make it work.

 

Here we go ...

 

1. Preparing

Open System Preferences and go to Network. Write down your Location at the top. Mine is called AON, but usually yours is named "Automatic". Create a new one and call it "AOFF". Within "AOFF" you'll have to remove Airport from the list on the right side. Add another (unused) service, if you can't remove Airport. Switch back to "Automatic", apply and close it. AOFF will be used to switch off the Airport. You can't do this via shell, but you can switch those network profiles via shell. If you switch to a profile, that has no Airport service, it'll be turned off. You can try this by switching between these profiles, applying them, and looking for what happens with your Airport symbol on the top of your screen.

 

2. Login-/LogoutHooks

Create two files, somewhere (Mine are located in /Library), which will be used for Airport and Extensions. I've called them wlankickstart and wlankickstop.

 

wlankickstart looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
scselect Automatic

Replace "Automatic" with your default network Location, or leave it, if you're not sure.

 

wlankickstop looks like this:

#!/bin/bash
scselect AOFF
rm /System/Library/Extensions.mkext*

If you don't have random kernel panics during boot time, then remove the last line, because it causes an annoying system message during shutdown.

 

Make those files executable (chmod a+x filename) and store them somewhere.

Now we're gonna make them executed while login/logout:

sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LoginHook "/path/to/wlankickstart"

sudo defaults write com.apple.loginwindow LogoutHook "/path/to/wlankickstop"

 

Now Extensions.mkext will be beleted and Airport will be turned on/off during boot/shutdown.

 

3. Kismac

If you don't have it, download and install it. Open Script Editor from /Applications/AppleScript and write a new script:

tell application "KisMAC"
  activate
  startScan
  delay 5
  stopScan
  quit
end tell

Try it. It'll run Kismac, scan for 5 secs and turn it off. Make sure, Kismac uses the Airport Extreme Passive Driver. Compile this script and save it as an Applications (without "Startup Screen"). Now Open up System Preferences, go to Accounts, select your user, go to Login Items and add the previous compiled application.

 

You're done. Reboot and enjoy. Now you'll only need to select your W-Lan Network after a reboot instead of doing this process by your own.

 

I wrote a Blog post with some more information - if you're interested.

 

Mario