unsharpTech

Did a fresh install + updates of Kubuntu 8.10 on a customer’s laptop and had no wireless even though it’s an Atheros chipset.

Hardware:

• Laptop: Acer Aspire 4520
• Wireless Card: Atheros AR242x Communications Inc. 802.11abg

lspci | grep "Atheros"
07:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

Resolution:

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-intrepid-generic

After above install completes, reboot, then open up the Hardware Drivers manager (jockey-gtk or jockey-kde) and disable “Support for Atheros 802.11 wireless LAN cards” and make sure that “Support for 5xxx series of Atheros 802.11 wireless LAN cards” is enabled then reboot. You may need to reboot to see both drivers in the Hardware Drivers manager.

This is at least a temporary fix, you’ll end up with the ath5k drivers- hopefully a stable universal method for Atheros card support will become available soon.

Source:
8.10 Release Notes | Ubuntu

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If you lose any of your user passwords - including root you can change your password booting into single user mode. What you aren’t likely to find off the bat is the proper instructions to do it. They are out there, but chances are you will have to dig a little after some frustration. The main differece between all those super simple solutions and the one mentioned here is that you need to remount the OS drive in order to properly write your changes. This method has worked with the last three major releases of Ubuntu including Feisty. So, here’s the procedure…

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