HOWTO wirless working on Thinkpad R40e with Belkin Wireless G notebook card

philsta · 07-23-2006, 06:51 PM

First install Fedora Core 5 (make sure you use the acpi=off option to boot the CD (F6 and type it in at the end of the line))

Next enable the livna repository (http://rpm.livna.org/), just follow the instructions. Then execute the following as root to begin installing madwifi:

yum update

yum install madwifi

If you have no wired connection, just update wpa_supplicant and install madwifi from the livna repository. How, you ask? Try “sneakernet“.

Now dowload the excellent Rt2x00 driver from here: http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/HOWTOS making sure you follow the instructions on building and installing the modules.

After many nightmares with drivers from the install disk and other places I found this one works very well also it beats using Ndiswrapper.

NOTE: You will probably have to install gcc first:

yum install gcc

To build the drivers use:

untar package, open a terminal and: cd to modules dir followed by:

make clean
make
make install

Then, as root open up /etc/modprobe.conf in your favorite editor (you could use nano for example) and add the following:
alias ra0 rt2500

I added the line “ifup ra0″ to the file /etc/rc.d/rc.local
This way, the wireless interface is activated after wpa_supplicant is started, when the system boots, like it’s supposed to. It’s probably not the best solution, but it works.

Next open up /etc/sysconfig/wpa_supplicant and change it to this:
INTERFACES=”-ira0″
DRIVERS=”-Drt2500”

Finally, open /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf and edit it to suit your network.

Save, close AND reboot.

Now we can finally start using some GUI’s! Yay!
First go to System –> Administration –> Network. Select New –> Wireless connection. Then select the ra0 (it should be listed!) and continue. Now set it to managed and set the SSID to auto. Do NOT set a key or SSID! This will be done by wpa_supplicant. The rest is standard stuff.
Then go to System –> Administration –> Services. Look up “wpa_supplicant” and check the tickbox next to it. I think that should also start the daemon, but if it doesn’t you can just start it manualy (right click and select start). It should tell you that it was succesfull.
Then go back to that Network configuration GUI we used. You may now deactivate the wired network and then activate the wireless network. You may also wish to set this interface to start on every boot.

NOTE: I am experiencing have experienced big problems here, because for some strange reason, the
wpa_supplicant daemon is initialized AFTER the system tries to start the wireless network. While this may seem a logical order to people who first get dressed and *then* take a shower, this is not the default procedure for people who are NOT complete vegetables.
Fortunately, I found a solution, see this post.

And that is it! It really amazed me why something as simple and basic as this is so extremely poorly documented.

Fedora and wifi: success!

Taken partly from :
https://menzonius.wordpress.com/2006...pa_supplicant/

Good luck

XavierP · 07-23-2006, 06:53 PM

Goos howto, however, we do have an active Tutorials section. I am closing this in the hope that you will repost it there. Frankly, having it here will just mean it gets lost amongst all the other threads.