Cant't get airodump-ng to work with atheros Ar5700EG (acer aspire 5520)

[tinybilbo]

Hi,

I am new to this, though I have used linux before (Tivo hacking + MythTV).
I 'm having trouble getting airodump-ng to work with an atheros Ar5700eg chipset wireless card in my Acer Aspire 5520 laptop (Athlon64 X2 2.0ghz, 4gb ram, GeForce 7000m, sata Hdd).
I can boot my usb stick with Bactrack3-Final into kde vesa mode by using the "acpi=off noapic" switch.

I can then put the Ar5700 into monitor mode using 2 different ways;
airmon-ng stop ath0
airmon-ng start wifi0
or
wlanconfig ath0 destroy
wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode monitor
iwconfig confirms the card is monitor mode

I can then put the card up or down;
ie. ifconfig ath0 down

But when I try to run airodump-ng;
airodump-ng ath0
I get nothing - the timer counts and the channels scan but my router never gets picked up.
(I can pick up the router using my wife's laptop which has an intel chipset wireless card)

The laptop has a switch (which is software controlled in windows) to turn the wireless card on or off. when it is on (in windows least ) the led under it flashes. At no time in backtrack does this led light or flash (this may not be relevant since I can definately see the card using iwconfig)

Can anyone who has an acer aspire 5520 or uses the atheros 5700eg chipset, help me?

Many Thanks.

[imported_=Tron=]

As you say that the switch for the wireless card is software based, as are all switches on most Acer laptops, you will need the appropriate software to control it under Linux. Check out the following link as I do believe that you will find it helpful: http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi/

[tinybilbo]

Thanks Tron for your reply,

I was'nt too sure if it was a problem with the switch being off or not. Thanks for clearing that up.
Right now my knowledge of linux is what is letting me down.
I have got the acer_acpi package and run the "make" and "make install" commands.

I get 2 warnings during the "make" command
"WARNING: "led_classdev_register" [/boot/acer/acer_acpi.ko] undefined!
"WARNING: "led_classdev_unregister" [/boot/acer/acer_acpi.ko] undefined!
(/boot/acer/ is where I am trying to install the package from on my usb stick)

The "make install" command appears to work correctly and copies wmi-acer.ko and acer_acpi.ko to /lib/mdules/2.6.21.5/extra/ (I have checked that they are indeed there).The "depmod 2.6.21.5 -a" command does'nt throw up any error.

when I try to modprobe acer-acpi - I get the error
WARNING: Error inserting wmi_acer (/lib/modules/2.6.21.5/extra/wmi-acer.ko): No such device
FATAL: Error inserting acer_acpi (/lib/modules/2.6.21.5/extra/acer_acpi.ko) Unknown
symbol in module or unknown parameter (see dmesg)

dmesg itself says at the end
acer_acpi: Unkown symbol wmi_acer _has_guid
acer_acpi: Unkown symbol wmi_acer _has_evaluate_method
acer_acpi: Unkown symbol wmi_acer _has_query_block

I am running backtrack3_final from a usb stick in persistent mode (and vesa kde).
The changes I am making are not saving.
So I don't know if I need to make the changes save and then reboot or if in fact there is an error during the make/install process.
Any further help would be greatly appreciated