TP-Link offers a wifi PCMCIA card based on a Atheros AR5007G chipset. This card doesn't work well with Ubuntu 8.10. Here is a way to solve it.

Installing the ath5k module

The ath5k module appeared in the package "linux-backports-modules-intrepid". It is a new open source driver for Atheros chipset and will replace the madwifi driver.

~$ sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-intrepid

Then we have to make sure the madwifi module won't be loaded and check that the ath5k module won't be blocked by madwifi.

~$ sudo cat > /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-local << EOF
blacklist ath_hal
blacklist ath_pci
EOF

If present, comment the line "blacklist ath5k" from the /etc/modprobe.d/madwifi file.

System can now be restarted to use this new module.

Card detection with NetworkManager

We now want the network-manager to detect and use this network card. Edit the file /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf and set the directive managed to "true" in the "ifupdown" section.

~$ sudo nano /etc/NetworkManager/nm-system-settings.conf
[main]
plugins=ifupdown,keyfile

[ifupdown]
managed=true

Finally restart the network manager:

~$ sudo /etc/init.d/NetworkManager restart

Happy surfing !