where’s the [any] key?

Awhile back I posted some info on my experience installing Ubuntu Jaunty on my Eee PC 1008HA netbook along with instructions on getting the wireless card working. Here is the original post for those wondering:

Installing Ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty) on Asus Eee PC 1008HA

You can now get the Ethernet port working as well. Here are the instructions again, summarized. This assumes that you already have a working Wifi connection. If you don’t, please skip this step and go directly to the steps for downloading the Linux drivers for the adaptor. All the commands below should be executed from Terminal:

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

If there are any applications that needs to be upgrade, please install them and reboot the netbook. When it comes back up, continue with the following commands:

sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-jaunty

We now need to download the Linux drivers for the model of the network adaptor that is on the netbook AR81Family-linux-v1.0.0.10.tar.gz (http://partner.atheros.com/Download.aspx?id=103). If you don’t have any working network connection on the netboot, then you might want to download the file from another computer and transfer it over with a USB memory stick. The following commands will unzip the file, make the module from source and install it on the netbook. Make sure you change your working directory to where you have downloaded/copied the file:

gunzip AR81Family-linux-v1.0.0.10.tar.gz

tar xvf AR81Family-linux-v1.0.0.10.tar

cd src

make

sudo make install

sudo insmod atl1e.ko

…wait a few seconds and voila! You now have a working wifi and ethernet port. Please note that anytime you upgrade your linux kernel, you will need to recompile the module source and install as above. I’d recommend you keep the original source files for this module on your laptop in case you need to recompile again.