Wireless NIC

[qpang]

I am a newbie to Linux ,and I've installed Redhat 9, everything seems to work fine except my wireless network card, I cannot get the system to recognize it at all, and I don't even know where to start. I've been reading all day, but I've made no progress. As far as I can tell I need the MADWIFI driver, however I don't know how to download it from the site never mind how to install it. If anyone one has some patience and wouldn't mind helping me out it would be greatly appreciated

[JoeyJoeJo]

What kind of Wi-fi card do you have? In addition to MADWIFI there is linux-wlan( http://www.linux-wlan.com/linux-wlan/) and driverloader (www.linuxant.com) that I know of. Are you using a laptop or desktop? Lastly, and most importanly, run /sbin/lspci as root and post the results. Really all we'd need to see out of it is the line that talks about your wi-fi card. Here is mine, so you know what to look for

02:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM94306 802.11g (rev 02)

[qpang]

using a dwl g520, and I tried the lspci and get an error saying command not found or something. Not sure what I'm doing wrong. I'll post more specific info later....it's late I need sleep, been fighting with this all day.

[JoeyJoeJo]

For that card I reccomend using linuxant's driverloader. What it does is load the windows drivers instead of native linux ones. I use it for my Broadcom 44xx (dell truemoblie 1300) and it works great. The whole process takes about 5 minutes to set up. The only thing is you only get a 30 day trial, and after that you need to pay 20 bucks to use it permanatly. But after my 30 days I thought that 20 bucks was more than reasonable.

[qpang]

thanks, I did try that already and had trouble installing it. I am probably missing something stupid or making some error in procedure, as this is the first/only thing I have installed so far in Linux (REDHAT 9). I'm not completely computer illiterate, but I am a Linux virgin, if you could step me through the install it would be greatly appreciated.

[JoeyJoeJo]

what you should do is this

1) download the zipped up rpm file

2)download the windows drivers for your card. This link to the specific driver that will work is on the linuxant page.

3)extract the windows drivers. In my case it was an exe file, so I used wine. You can either use wine or just extract it on a windows computer.

4)unzip the file to get the licence agreement and rpm file

5) install the rpm file like this rpm -ihv driverloader_whatever.rpm

6)in a browser, go to 127.0.0.1:18020 and put in your root password

7)Click on upload windows drivers. First, upload the inf file, then the sys file.

8)Generate a licence. I think this will be on the 127.0.0.1:18020 front page.

9)After that, in konsole type redhat-config-network. Click on new and follow the steps.

Now you're done. It looks like a lot of steps, but linuxant has made it as easy as possible to install, so you should have minimal problems.

[chrisbs]

Originally posted by JoeyJoeJo
what you should do is this

1) download the zipped up rpm file

2)download the windows drivers for your card. This link to the specific driver that will work is on the linuxant page.

3)extract the windows drivers. In my case it was an exe file, so I used wine. You can either use wine or just extract it on a windows computer.

4)unzip the file to get the licence agreement and rpm file

5) install the rpm file like this rpm -ihv driverloader_whatever.rpm

6)in a browser, go to 127.0.0.1:18020 and put in your root password

7)Click on upload windows drivers. First, upload the inf file, then the sys file.

8)Generate a licence. I think this will be on the 127.0.0.1:18020 front page.

9)After that, in konsole type redhat-config-network. Click on new and follow the steps.

Now you're done. It looks like a lot of steps, but linuxant has made it as easy as possible to install, so you should have minimal problems.

Sometimes you will have a problem getting to http://127.0.0.1:18020 ... if this happens su - into root and type the following:

dldrconfig --webconf=127.0.0.1:18020

That should let you then login to the linuxant configuration page. This frustrated me for an afternoon until I went to Linunxants webpage.

[qpang]

thanks guys, I got it going now. Still had problems, then I reloaded Linux usinf Fedora Core 1 this time, then was able to install everytthihng no prblem. My only issue now is that evertime I reboot I have to run
su - root dldrconfig
and then reenter my email address and key. Once I do that everything runs smooth again.

Is there a way I can automate this during bootup? (I'm sure there is) but I don't really know how to do it. Any suggestions?

Thanks again.

:)

[o0zi]

If you don't want to use driverloader because of the trial, you can look at ndiswrapper (http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net).
If you want to use the madwifi drivers, get them here (http://aleron.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/madwifi/madwifi-20030802.tgz). Then type:
tar -zvxf madwifi*.tgz
cd madwifi*

Read the readme file and follow the instructions. Once everything's compiled, just type:
insmod wlan/wlan.o
insmod ath_hal/ath_hal.o
insmod driver/ath_pci.o
(check these, I'm on Win XP at the moment)

Now everything should be working. Type "iwconfig" and see if your card is there, and if it is, type: "ifconfig ath0 up". Then, to set an I.P., type:
ifconfig ath0 192.168.0.4
ifconfig ath0 broadcast 192.168.0.4
if your IP is 192.168.0.4. Then, if you're using a router, type:
route add default gw xx.xx.xx.xx
where xx.xx.xx.xx is the I.P. of your router.
Finally, find out the I.P. addresses of your ISP's nameservers (DNS servers) and add them to /etc/resolv.conf. That's it :)

[qpang]

I'm not worried about the trial, cause I paid the $20 for a key. My only question is can I set it up so that I don't have to manually run dldrconfig everytime I reboot my system.

[JoeyJoeJo]

I put my info in on the web interface and it keeps it. I don't have to re-enter it. May you could try that way.

[chrisbs]

Originally posted by qpang
I'm not worried about the trial, cause I paid the $20 for a key. My only question is can I set it up so that I don't have to manually run dldrconfig everytime I reboot my system.

You shouldn't need to re-enter your info every time. Goto the web interface http://127.0.0.1:18020 and enter your info there.

I have never had the information dissapear from there... I have used driverloader with fedora core1 and suse 9.0

--Chrisbs