[SOLVED] Atheros AR9285 Issue

[imag1narynumber]

My notebook has Atheros AR9285 PCI-Express wireless. It shows that the ath9k kernel driver is being used, as well as the ath9k kernel modules. wicd sees several wireless networks, but if I try to connect to an unprotected network, it fails, telling me it's unable to get an IP address. What am I doing wrong?

[thenktor]

If you can see wireless networks your card probably is working well. Which networks do you want to connect? In rare cases there may be open networks without a DHCP server. No idea what happens to wicd then.

[imag1narynumber]

Just random open networks in my neighborhood as a test. There's a dlink, a netgear, I think, stuff like that. Tomorrow I'm going to bring it to work and try to get on there.

[thenktor]

OK, these networks should work. So at first tell us more about your hardware. Do a "lspci" and perhaps a "lspci -v" (of the relevant section).
If this is a newc chipset the Slackware kernel might be too old.

[imag1narynumber]

Yep. It works.

[thenktor]

So what was the problem?