Search for hardware...

[ToolNIN420]

I'm still learning Linux and I'm trying to set up wireless on my laptop. The only problem is, I don't know what company or even model my Wireless card is. Is there a command that will search for my hardware or give me a system overall? Thanks for any help. Also I was wondering if there was a list of drivers for wireless cards in a repo somewhere or if I will have to find them directly through the manufacturer.

[Gonesolo]

open a terminal and type

lspci

This will list all the PCI devices in your system. You should be able to get some information about your network card from that. Hopefully enough to google the rest. If you want to post the results here and i/we can see what we can dig up?

[ToolNIN420]

Wow, that would have been easier then what I did. Anyway, i ended up going to the manufacturer of my laptop (Toshiba) and entered in the model number and got the Detailed specs finding out that it's an Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.11abg NIC (rev 01) (Which is what lspci told me as well) and I searched for that within these forums and found out that Madwifi is what to use. Well I've downloaded madwifi-0.9.2.tar.bz2 and madwifi-0.9.2.tar.gz and madwifi-0.9.2-1.lvn5.i386. I've installed the first file but when I try to install the rpm, it tells me there is a dependency I need. I downloaded one from atrpms and it started to install but then it said "Resolving Dependencies" when it froze. I try to restart and it just comes up with a window that says "Missing Dependency: madwifi-kmdl-1:0.9.2-28.fc5.at is needed by package madwifi". I've also tried to 'yum" this stuff but it just comes up empty handed. So I guess now I need help installing madwifi...

[pjfg]

To use yum to install the madwifi drivers from livna you need to follow the instructions here: http://rpm.livna.org/configuration.html#Core5 (I'm assuming you are using FC5). Once done you can run "yum install kmod-madwifi" to install the driver.

[ToolNIN420]

Well I went through what the page said and when I did everything the page said to, it said that I have all of that installed already. Then I tried 'yum install kmod-madwifi' and it still came up "No matches found. Nothing to do."

[pjfg]

Perhaps it is "yum install kmod-madwifi.i686". You can find out by running "yum search madwifi".

[ToolNIN420]

I did a yum search of 'madwifi' and the only thing that showed up was: madwifi-devel.i386 which it says is already installed. I even tried 'yum install kmod-madwifi.i686' to no avail. It says 'no match found, nothing to do'

[jim]

remove the madwifi tar.bz2 from your system also how did you install it ?

[ToolNIN420]

Ok, I removed the file. As for your next question, I'm not entirely sure. Although I don't think it was through yum. I think I found it in one of the repositories. Couldn't tell you which one at this point. I'm just stuck. I would like to get my wireless going and I just can't get the drivers onto this computer and working. Thanks again for your replies. What now?

[ToolNIN420]

Ok I've even gone back and tried to do the so called "no linux experience tutorial" on madwifi.org and I don't completely understand it. I mean I'm not linux retarded but I couldn't follow it. It kept saying make sure you are in the madwifi directory. The problem with that is that it never explains where that directory should be. It shows an example somwhere where it has the path "/lib/modules/<kernal version>/" but that is it. It doesn't tell me the path that madwifi needs to be in. Also, there are like 4 different madwifi files to download and I have all 4. Some have dependencies on the others so I can't download them until I make the other files into drivers but I don't know where to make them so that I know that whatever needs to find them can find them. If anyone can please give me some more help I would absolutely appreciate it. If you need to see a file or anything let me know and I will post it ASAP.

[pjfg]

If you have very limited linux experience then it is best not to try building and installing the drivers direct from madwifi. It can be done of course, but there are so many steps at which it can go wrong that you are likely to fail. Far better to persist with pre-built rpms from one of the repositories, such as livna.

The first step is to post here the output of "ls /etc/yum.repos.d/". It may be that you have configured conflicting repositories.

Also, the output of "rpm -qa | grep madwifi", to see if you have already installed any madwifi packages.

[ToolNIN420]

ls /etc/yum.repos.d/ reveals:
[root@localhost ~]# ls /etc/yum.repos.d/
atrpms.repo fedora-extras.repo jpackage.repo
dag.repo fedora-legacy.repo kde-redhat.repo
dries.repo fedora-updates.repo livna-devel.repo
fedora-core.repo fedora-updates-testing.repo livna.repo
fedora-development.repo flash.repo livna.repo~
fedora-extras-development.repo freshrpms.repo livna-testing.repo

Whilst 'rpm -qa|grep madwifi' revealed:
madwifi-devel-0.9.2-28.fc5.at