Aug 30, 2011

How to install the Pronet Wifi Adapter on Ubuntu


I bought the Pronet Wireless USB adapter at a local store, after hearing about its good performance. However, it does not come with Linux drivers supplied, so I had to figure out how to install it on my Ubuntu box myself.
The Pronet adapter is based on the Atheros chip, as evident from its hardware properties displayed in Windows and Linux OSes. Below are details on how you can go about installing the device on your Ubuntu machine.

Confirm the make of your USB device

Run lsusb at the terminal. If you see Atheros Communications, Inc. AR9271 802.11n in the list, these steps should work for you.

Install the ath9k_htc Firmware

To get the firmware, download htc_9271.fw from http://wireless.kernel.org/download/htc_fw/ (choose the latest folder version). Copy this file to /lib/firmware
sudo cp htc_9271.fw /lib/firmware

Get the wireless drivers

Extract the files

tar -xvf compat-wireless-2011-07-23.tar.bz2

Build and install the drivers

After cd'ing to the extracted directory above, run the following commands, one after another. Be patient, the first two commands take time to complete execution - it took me 6 minutes for the first and 3 minutes for the second.
sudo make
sudo make install
sudo make unload
sudo modprobe ath9k_htc

Confirm Installation

After you run the above commands, your WiFi should start working. You could also confirm it by running the following command:
sudo lshw -C network
Your wireless interface adapter should be listed in the output. For example:
$ sudo lshw -C network

*-network

 description: Wireless interface

 physical id: 1

 bus info: usb@2:1

 logical name: wlan0

 serial: b3:5e:4a:8e:7f:1b

 capabilities: ethernet physical wireless

 configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ath9k_htc driverversion=2.6.38-10-generic firmware=1.3 

 ip=192.168.1.6 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn

Alternate file downloads

If you are facing trouble accessing the files, try using these archived copies from technonstop:

Troubleshooting

If you run into problems, it's a good idea to confirm the validity of your downloads. The best way to do it is by matching the SHA1 checksum. Alternatively, you can simply compare the file sizes for a basic confirmation.

Acknowledgement

This Ubuntu forums thread was a great reference for me. The steps above are aimed at minimizing the surprises you might come across, based on the experience I had.
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