Ath9k wireless card "Cannot assign requested address"

Question

# ip link set wlan0 up
RTNETLINK answers: Cannot assign requested address
#ip addr
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> ntu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope list lo
2: wlan0 <BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 qdisc noop state DOWN qlen 1000
    link/ether 01:08:ca:e6:bc:76 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
#iwconfig
lo      no wireless extensions
wlan0   IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:off/any
        Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated  TX-Power-0dBm
        Retry long limit:7  RTS thr:off  Fragment thr:off
        Encryption key:off
        Power Management:on
Please do excuse if there's a silly typo somewhere in those; not knowing how to do it any better, I've simply re-typed the terminal output into this computer, so I can't promise it free of mistakes. (There's got to be a better way to do that, right?
Asus UX31E-DH72 Zenbook
clean install of the 2011.08.19-core-x86_64 release
There is no ethernet port; only WiFi and a ASIX AX88772B USB-to-ethernet that shipped with the system. (no optical drive either; but that's not really relevant to this)
My current system has never been on the internet (well, since I wiped the Windows off of it...), and so I haven't been able to pacman properly. When I try to use makepkg, it claims it's missing a dependency on Linux-Headers. However, I do know that the wireless card works, seeing as how it had been working just fine under Windows.
If it's relevant: during install, I left the NETWORKING section of rc.conf blank (as the Beginner's Guide says to do for DHCP), like so:
HOSTNAME="zen"
interface=wlan0
address=
netmask=
broadcast=
gateway=
#NETWORKS=(main)
Disclaimer: I'm rather new to the forums here and entirely new to Arch (which is my first Linux distro after years of OSX and a few weeks of Windows). Not scared of the command-line, but you may have to spell things out. Also, I understand if you'd rather not spend time explaining yourself, but I'm a strong believer in teach-a-man-to-fish, so if you'd like to explain rather than just walk through, it'd be much appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

Welcome and congrats on your decision to grace your sleek new laptop with an equally sleek OS :-)
Just in case you have not found that yet: there is actually a wiki page on your notebook for later setup specifics: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Asus_Zenbook_UX31E
BTW: I just read there that the usb ethernet is supported in later/newer kernels out-the-box (if setting up wifi really does fail, you can get a later ISO maybe and use that for starters).
As I understand your current setup state, you have installed the system with the core August release and it boots fine? Please confirm.
Also please confirm the exact wifi card the notebook has:
lspci -nn | grep net
or
lspci -nn >> ryebookpcidevices.txt
The later pipes the output to a file. Doing the command again, appends to the file. We only need the exact PCI ID of the wifi card to double check. To save typing even that ID you can maybe copy the file you created "ryebookpcidevices.txt"  to an usb stick, if that automounts under /media/...
Next, please quote here any errors you get when re-loading the ath9k module (all commands below need root/sudo):
rmmod ath9k
modprobe ath9k
If you get errors, check whether
rfkill list
gives valid output (not sure if that package is on the ISO, i doubt it actually).
If modprobe does without error, please retry your trial to connect with the card by directly issuing
iwlist wlan0 scan
Give us feedback on what happens then. If there is an error, try
ip link set down
and start from step 0 in the wireless wiki: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wi … nual_setup
Your output says "Mode:managed", so something seems working there already..
For "makepkg" you indeed need the headers, but you dont say what you want to compile at this stage.