1.

lets see if Linux sees the card:

lspci | grep Wireless

You will get back a line like: 02:00.0 Network controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR9485 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01) That means Linux sees it, but of course it is NOT configured. 2. Lets see if the driver (ath9k) is loaded. We will use modprobe.
modprobe ath9k

if the device driver is loaded, it will just return a prompt. Thats a good thing as Martha would say. 3. Lets look to make sure the wpa-supplicant programme is installed. The WPA supplicant provides wireless protected access (encryption) for our connection.
dpkg -l | grep supplicant

and you should get back: ii wpasupplicant 1.0-3+b2 amd64 client support for WPA and WPA2 (IEEE 802.11i) Were good! 4. Now lets modify /etc/network/interfaces

cd /etc/network # go to network interfaces sudo cp interfaces interfaces.org # make a backup copy sudo nano interfaces

You will get back something like this: # This file describes the network interfaces available on your system # and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5). # The loopback network interface auto lo iface lo inet loopback #define the network interface for the wireless lan card iface wlan0 inet dhcp wpa-ssid MyHome wpa-psk MyPass

wpa-ssid is the name of the wireless network you are trying to connect to. wpa-psk is the password for that network. Yup plain text! The iface line defines wlan0 so it has access to the internet, and gets its ip address dynamically (dhcp). The card interface is STILL not up! 5. Bring up the interface!

sudo ifdown wlan0; sudo ifup wlan0;

you will get output that looks like: ifdown: interface wlan0 not configured Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.2.2 Copyright 2004-2011 Internet Systems Consortium. All rights reserved. For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/ Listening on LPF/wlan0/20:16:d8:e5:32:b4 Sending on LPF/wlan0/20:16:d8:e5:32:b4 Sending on Socket/fallback DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8 DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 DHCPOFFER from 192.168.1.1 DHCPACK from 192.168.1.1 bound to 192.168.1.4 renewal in 37985 seconds. 6. AND

NOW THE HOKEY POKEY PART 1!

Install wicd (Wireless Interface Connection Daemon)

sudo apt-get install wicd

once that is installed, REMOVE the gnome network mangler!

sudo apt-get purge network-manager-gnome

7. HOKEY

POKEY PART 2!

Reboot the machine. After re-booting bring up the interface.

sudo ifdown wlan0; sudo ifup wlan0;

It should look like this:

8. HOKEY

POKEY PART 3!

now go back to /etc/network/interfaces and remove (or comment out with a # in front the wpassid, and wpa-pskid for the wlan card. so just: iface wlan0 inet dhcp and whatever else was there just not the wpa information.

cd /etc/network # go to network interfaces sudo nano interfaces

9. Restart the network:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

you will get back something like this: [....] Running /etc/init.d/networking restart is deprecated because it may not[warnnable some interfaces ... (warning). [....] Reconfiguring network interfacesInternet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.2.2 Copyright 2004-2011 Internet Systems Consortium. All rights reserved. For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/ Listening on LPF/wlan0/20:16:d8:e5:32:b4 Sending on LPF/wlan0/20:16:d8:e5:32:b4 Sending on Socket/fallback DHCPRELEASE on wlan0 to 192.168.1.1 port 67 this basically makes sure we dont have any errors in /etc/network/interfaces

10. HOKEY

POKEY PART 4

Reboot once again, and this time the interface should come up automatically. Screensaver engagement should not knock the connection offline. And thats what its all about!