How to setup wireless on a macbook using madwifi : 7.10 “Gutsy”

By | 2007/08/02
12 Comments

Update : Improved instructions available on a more recent post here.

I have been using ndiswrapper for wireless support for some time now due to the Core 2 Duo Macbook series not working with the madwifi drivers. You may remember a previous tutorial I wrote on Configuring Wireless using ndiswrapper. That tutorial is all fine and great if you don’t mind a little non-free running in your blood. This tutorial will let you use the more free madwifi system, but it may only work on Ubuntu 7.10.

Can one of the Ubuntu packagers get this into Gutsy? The current package version is too old from what I can tell.

On with the show…

To get the driver support (until a proper package is created) we’ll need to compile it from source. If you’re not familiar with doing that you should be fine in this case as I’ve outlined the steps as best I can. If you run into any weirdness leave a comment and we might be able to get you figured out. Follow the below commands and you should be fine.

sudo aptitude install build-essential

wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-hal-0.9.30.13-current.tar.gz

tar -zxvf madwifi [tab]

cd madwifi [tab]

make

sudo make install (answer 'r' when asked about previous modules)

at this point you should be able to reboot and wireless should work. I have tested it with unencrypted and WEP connections, but not had a chance for WPA yet. Anyone able to verify functionality with WPA?

Also, if you have followed my previous tutorial on using ndiswrapper you’ll want to make sure that module doesn’t load at boot anymore. (You may want to leave it installed as a backup driver or something, but remove the line ‘ndiswrapper’ from the /etc/modules file.) Enjoy.

12 thoughts on “How to setup wireless on a macbook using madwifi : 7.10 “Gutsy””

  1. dtlin

    0.9.3.1 (in linux-restricted-modules-2.6.22-9) is too old?

  2. Kieran

    WPA works okay, I found that that connection with (k)networkmanager seemed to drop after minutes however, WPA or WEP. The svn version is vastly improved for me.

  3. surfman

    hi im newbie, and my english is not so well, but i hope you understand what im about to write, have you tried to use aircrack?, does it work?, because i have had problems using it, i have ubuntu feisty fawn 7.05 with my kernel compiled 2.6.22.1 and madwifi-ng. when i use airodump-ng i cant get it work, i have got it work only to times, but no more, have anyone tryed?, saludos, ciao.

  4. Nicolas Robidoux

    Instructions also relevant to Thinkpad t60p with Thinkpad a/b/g/n card (which is an Atheros “0024”, apparently the same network card as in many macs), with the difference that you should

    wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-ng-current.tar.gz

    instead.

    Nicolas Robidoux
    Laurentian University

  6. im.tehk

    “No working leases in persistent database – sleeping.”

    It sees the networks but will not connect.

  7. lars

    works fine for me, but every time i update the system and reboot i have to “make install” again. why?

    -lars

  8. Gaba

    Works for me in WPA but is necessary wrong the password one time and then put the right password thru the manual configuration on the top right of the screen (Gutsy)

    gaba

  9. Keithb

    Should I be seeing that error 404?

    keithb@keithb-MacB:~$ sudo aptitude install build-essential
    Reading package lists… Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information… Done
    Reading extended state information
    Initializing package states… Done
    Building tag database… Done
    No packages will be installed, upgraded, or removed.
    0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
    Need to get 0B of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used.
    Writing extended state information… Done
    Reading package lists… Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information… Done
    Reading extended state information
    Initializing package states… Done
    Building tag database… Done
    keithb@keithb-MacB:~$ wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-hal-0.9.30.13-current.tar.gz
    –19:06:10– http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi-hal-0.9.30.13-current.tar.gz
    => `madwifi-hal-0.9.30.13-current.tar.gz’
    Resolving snapshots.madwifi.org… 217.24.1.134
    Connecting to snapshots.madwifi.org|217.24.1.134|:80… connected.
    HTTP request sent, awaiting response… 404 Not Found
    19:06:10 ERROR 404: Not Found.

Comments are closed.