[ath9k-devel] Fighting with the driver

[Cedric Sodhi <manday@gmx.net>]

Hello everyone,

I'd like to ask for some help from you getting a

TL-WN721N

presumably based upon an Atheros 9271 chipset to work.
That's of course my priority, but I also have some questions, trying to
understand why it is so difficult to get this device to work.

So first of all, I have naively tried to simply compile the kernel with

CONFIG_ATH9K_HTC=y

and with the according ar9271.fw in /lib/firmware. It didn't work, the
device would not respond properly. My first question:

IF the correct drivers for this device exist, why are they not in the
kernel? Why is it not possible to have a specific CONFIG_ line in the
kernel that allows me to use my device - why does it have to get
complicated?

So after this didn't work I made some research and basically ended up
at

http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k_htc

I followed that guide, selecting, for reasons that remain unclear to me,
the required entries (as listed in that guide) as Module. I then tried
to make compat-wireless which unexpectedly requested that I also
compiled

CONFIG_CFG80211=m

instead of =y. So I did that. Question: Why is there no mention of that
in the guide?

I did that. And then make said, that

CONFIG_CFG80211_WEXT will be deactivated or not working

because CONFIG_WIRELESS_EXT=n and that iwconfig will not work. Well,
first of all I figured no way to enable WIRELESS_EXT, how would I? And
then, question: Why is that happening only for the ath9k_hcl driver from
compat-wireless? iwconfig works fine with the kernel-shipped ath9k_hcl
(although latter does not work with the chipset).

I then restarted, but I just got a couple of errors when wpa_supplicant
tried to start

ioctl[SIO...]: Operation not supported

which, I assume, has to do with wext being unfunctional. So what now? I
have to enable WIRELESS_EXT somehow? How? And why is there no mention of
all this in that guide?

Thanks for your help!