[SOLVED] No wireless on my EeePC 900

Question

Last night I decided to try a full system upgrade (pacman -Syu). I figured upgrading the kernel might negatively affect the delicate balance I had achieved when I initially installed Arch--at least in regards to my wifi--but I had heard that the newer kernels worked much better with Eee's. After rebooting my upgraded system, my wireless was no longer working.
# dhcpcd wlan0
dhcpcd: version 5.0.2 starting
dhcpcd: wlan0: waiting for carrier
dhcpcd: timed out
I've heard from multiple people that Arch with the stock kernel works out of the box with EeePC 900s, but I get this error every time. My madwifi drivers are up to date.
Any ideas? Thanks in advance!
Last edited by NotMarkus (2009-05-22 15:55:20)

Answer 1

i've also heard the stock kernel is good, but kernel-eee from toofishes repo is just too easy to pass up.  i'd recommend that, it's maybe a fifteen minute process to get going and you can just leave your exiting grub entry in menu.lst to go back to stock if it doesn't work out.
add his repo to pacman.conf:
[eee]
Server = http://code.toofishes.net/packages/eee
install via pacman -S kernel-eee
adjust /boot/grub/menu.lst
# (0) Arch Linux
title Arch EEE Kernel
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuzeee root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/74398cff-692f-435e-ab0a-b101c50bc302 ro elevator=noop
initrd /kernel26.img
# (1) Arch Linux
title Arch Stock Kernel
root (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/74398cff-692f-435e-ab0a-b101c50bc302 ro elevator=noop
initrd /kernel26.img
then just reboot.
with this kernel i have MODAUTOLOAD set to NO, i manually load ath5k, mac80211, and cfg80211, and i use netcfg to manage profiles.  i have perfect wireless bahavior and functional two-finger scroll (w/o a xorg.conf).  these things i did not have with the stock kernel.
it's worth a try.